While laying in his hospital bed recovering from a minor heart attack, Professor Martin Hellman reads details of an ancient book he has been given for translation--Biblos Melas, or, the "Black Book." Excerpted from the forthcoming novel "Minion Web."

It’s hard to lose. Harder than you think. I guess the ultimate question is: If I had to give up one thing, my dog, or hazelnut gelato, which would it be? I’ll tell you, between those two, it would have been easy to choose. But losing you, that was a who

We have become// the sum of our appetites,/ the growth curve of our dominion.

In the sad suburban subdivision with its cul-de-sacs and broken curbs

In suburban Jeddah magnificent houses on every corner of the avenues are surrounded by high walls rising up from just inside the roadside curb to much beyond taller than a man.

pain and anger

Cockroaches may be falling through the holes in the floorboards of heaven, but we will not be disturbed. We are agents, free and clear, even if a little bit mean. I want to quit worrying about money, but the angels upstairs won’t let me. The

About four in the afternoon a pigeon began admiring itself in the shiny panel of a car door until another pigeon came along and it quit acting foolish.

We could act the anthropologist.

Then it gets worse—this reading of books—I go to the café and can only read a minimalist there, one crouton at a time.

Still Life with Dragon Fruit and Absinthe Glass ‚ Allgegenwart ist Einsamkeit. ‘. — Johannes Jakob Hrodebertsohn …And bright inside this space, though outside lightfall? The spillaging of streetlamps does not cross the…

1.It was unfair to my time and my small kitchen rug that it took me two days to finish reading Meg Pokrass' “The Big Dipper,” pp. 10-12

Dream

The Party and the Body The party at my mother's ended Saturday night deep into Sunday's morning. I tried to remember the exact circumstances of the end but although they wouldn't come it didn't worry me. I knew I would remember at a certain point. It…

Remove with care, then slowly lay the string, wide well-soaked end at left-hand edge, to start, and allow to curve, to bend, to almost loop and wind its way at rest across the mottled, patterned green