60 4 2
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We do not want to encounter this man. Fear of him curdles in our stomachs like an ocean of spilled oil.
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83811
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He’d've been up there belting out the hymns then bickering with the vicar after.
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5101
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She got up and left the table and when she reached the passenger side of my car, I imagined her high-heeled shoe leaving the glistening tarmac. She was Lauren Bacall, I was Humphrey Bogart. She was Sharon Stone, I was Mickey Rourke. She was Brigitte Bardo
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3900
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This blog seemed to find me. The post I read couldn't be real. The blogger had a session in his therapist's office without the therapist. He'd already been there once that week and paid his hundred and ten dollars. In thirty …
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9433
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There is a small resort village on the northwest Pacific shoreline of Costa Rica, within the province of Guanacaste, near a town called Tamarindo. It is arguably the most beautiful of the Esmeralda beaches. Below Playa Hermosa, even further down than Playa Flamingo,…
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118600
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Walking home, carrying his guitar case, Jed felt the sums of his life adding up to dangerously high numbers, the deadly inertia of vaguely comfortable apathy swallowing his time. His moment would soon be fading. Because, like many young men before him, Jed…
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17921
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HE feels the town before he sees it, the vibration of the train's brakes telegraphing its presence up ahead in the gathering evening. Outside the warmth of the carriage, lights amid the darkening fields and lanes grow more frequent, plush commuter houses reduced…
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79900
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He glances at the other patrons of the café. He has the mix of middle management goliath and shy, fat kid at a school swimming pool. Neither fit comfortably but it's as bespoke as his suit, protective as fat. The arm rests on the table curling protectivel
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74700
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Sally knows the situation: if your name's on the list you can't come in. If they try to walk past her, swipe their card on the electronic barrier's scanner, instead of a short benevolent bleep and the gate sliding open, it will fail. The hapless individua
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102721
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Lucy shrugs into the corner of the train's seat. She envelopes her IPod in both hands as if she's praying or holding a conch shell: safe, secure like when she visited a Morcombe beach in the school holidays. The only giveaway's the white headphone cord.
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90300
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“Has a letter arrived for me?” Billy sat on the third stair from the bottom, drumming his little hands on his Spider-Man pyjama bottoms. “Dad!”
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5200
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When Roger opened the closet door, several guns fell forward at his feet. Most of them were rifles, weapons his stepfather had collected over three wars. Wooden bolt-action carbines, with worn leather shoulder straps, of this caliber and of that caliber. Both…
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4900
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Around and down the curved slope of slippery embankment walked the young black male deer, lifting only one leg from each side, front-to-back then back-to-front, leaning to-and-aft, diagonally digging the heels of his alternate hooves into the quick caramel mud. …
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6510
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“Now let's just start again, real slowly, and from the very beginning,” the taller darker investigator leaned across the desk and spoke directly to the young male bank teller, face-to-face, “you say that she was attractive then — this,…
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4610
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Peter had recently cracked his tooth chewing ice. It was the top left molar, not the far back one, but the one just in front of that. His dental insurance covered most of the extraction but none of the implant. An artificial tooth was considered cosmetic, and they…
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