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My Aunt Gold Teeth
V. S. Naipaul, from 1958

I never knew her real name and it is quite likely that she did have one, though I never heard her called anything but Gold Teeth. She did, indeed, have gold teeth. She had sixteen of them. She had married early and she had married well, and shortly after her marriage she exchanged her perfectly sound teeth for gold ones, to announce to the world that her husband was a man of substance ...

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Walter Abish, The Second Leg

Lauren Acampora, Self-Evident

André Aciman, Monsieur Kalashnikov

He is sitting in a café speaking French. Correction, he is not speaking. He doesn’t speak. He rapid-fires machine-gun style, in bursts and sputters—rat-tat-tat—cranky, jittery, crazed, ...

Alice Adams, Flying

Alice Adams, Ocracoke Island

Chris Adrian, You Can Have It

Benjamin Anastas, Falstaff, 193-

Scott Anderson, from Triage

Odillo Antoni, A Piece of Pommerac

Robert Antoni, My Grandmother's Tale of How Crab-O Lost His Head

Donald Antrim, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World Full Text

It was Friday, the day of the big theriomorphism workshop Rotary luncheon out at the Holiday Inn. My wife, Meredith, and I and a crowd of red-faced Rotarians and their well-dressed wives (Rotary Anns) sat around ...

Jessica Apple, Animal Scary Scary

Max Apple, The Four Apples

Reinaldo Arenas, The Parade Ends

John Ashbery, Further Adventures

John Ashbery, The System

Don Asher, Ambassador

Sheila Asher, Between Two Walls

Linda Ashour, Stories I'd Rather Not Tell

Margaret Atwood, Bodily Harm

Bernardo Atxaga, Pirpo and Chanberlán, Murderers

Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things

Jane Avrich, La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Jane Avrich, The Great Flood

Mary Alice Ayers, Of Sisters

Paulé Bártón, Emilie Plead Choose One Egg. The Broom Is Busy, The Woe Shirt

Ingeborg Bachmann, Everything

Jesse Ball, Archon LLC

Jesse Ball, Plainface

Jesse Ball, The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp, and Carr

The First Four of them were on one side of a dim room. —I’m going to try it, said the first. The girl watched herself in the mirror as the young man approached. —I wonder, he said. I ...

J. G. Ballard, The Index

John Banville, from The Book of Evidence

Alessandro Baricco, Overture to the Twentieth Century

John Barlow, Eating Mammals

Helen Barolini, Going to Sicily

Andrea Barrett, The Other Williamsburg

John Barth, The End: An Introduction

Donald Barthelme, Alice

Donald Barthelme, Mouth

Donald Barthelme, Several Garlic Tales

Rick Bass, Her First Elk

Rick Bass, Platte River

Rick Bass, The Cave

Rick Bass, The Hermit's Story

Rick Bass, The Legend of Pig-Eye

Rick Bass, Two Deer

Rick Bass, Where the Sea Used to Be

Rick Bass, Wild Horses

Glen Baxter, Stories

Charles Baxter, Westland

M. F. Beal, Space Time

M. F. Beal, Veterans

Ann Beattie, Hoodie in Xanadu Full Text

Most nights my neighbor, a middle-aged man in a red hoodie, would stand on his front porch, reaching up every now and then to knock the icicle Christmas lights dangling from the porch roof back and forth. ...

Samuel Beckett, from How It Is

Samuel Beckett, from Molloy

Nathaniel Bellows, First Four Measures

Aimee Bender, Faces

On an unusual day during my childhood, my mother showed up at school and asked me questions about myself. I was twelve or so then, and generally I found my own way home: bus, walk, bike, hitchhike. I hardly ...

Aimee Bender, The Leading Man

R. Michael Benson, On Dying

Laurel Anne Berger, The Storks

Kenneth Bernard, For Irving: A Conversation

Stephanie Eve Bernstein, Anamnesis

Gina Berriault, Around the Dear Ruin

Gina Berriault, The Bystander

Jon Billman, Indians

James Blake, Day of the Alligator

Samuel Blazer, The Fire-eater, or The Left Thigh Mocks the World

Antoine Blondin, Death on the Avenue de Segur

Jorge Luis Borges, Funes the Memorious

Keith Botsford, A Member of the Delegation

Daniel Boulanger, The Grand Turk

Ward Bowers, The Admiral's Hat

Jane Bowles, Emmy Moore's Journal

T. Coraghessan Boyle, Balto

T. Coraghessan Boyle, Descent of Man

T. Coraghessan Boyle, Going Down

T. Coraghessan Boyle, Greasy Lake

T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ike and Nina

T. Coraghessan Boyle, Mungo Among the Moors

T. Coraghessan Boyle, Rapture of the Deep

T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Ape Lady in Retirement

T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Hector Quesadilla Story

T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Second Swimming

Joe Brainard, The Friendly Way (Continued)

Kate Braverman, Histories of the Undead

Don Bredes, Mr. S.

Bowden Broadwater, Ciao

Harold Brodkey, from The Runaway Soul

Rhidian Brook, A Real Disaster

Ken Brower, Time and the Jungle

Larry Brown, A Roadside Resurrection

Michael Brownstein, Lorenzo's Collection

Michael Brownstein, Out West and Back East

Michael Brownstein, The Plot to Save the World

Michael Brownstein, Three Stories

Judy Budnitz, Dog Days

Melvin Jules Bukiet, Manhattan Reverie

Melvin Jules Bukiet, Splinters

Melvin Jules Bukiet, Squeak, Memory

Jerry Bumpus, The Attack on San Clemente

France Burke, In the Footprints of the Dinosaur

William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside

William S. Burroughs, The Valley

William S. Burroughs, Twilight's Last Gleamings

Frederick Busch, Widow Water

Robert Olen Butler, "Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover"

William Butler, The Building

Dino Buzzati, Seven Storeys

A. S. Byatt, Crocodile Tears

A. S. Byatt, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye

Kenneth Calhoun, Nightblooming Full Text

I was told they found themselves retired and so they said, Now’s finally the time to form a band! You should see the instruments they fished out of attics and basements. Not so much the instruments ...

Italo Calvino, Last Comes the Raven

Peter Cameron, The Middle of Everything

Ethan Canin, The Palace Thief

Rachel Cantor, Minyan of One

Emmanuel Carrere, Channel Crossings

Jim Carroll, Curtis's Charm

Raymond Carver, Careful

Raymond Carver, Why Don't You Dance?

R. V. Cassill, And in My Heart

Louis-Ferdinand Céline, The Colleague

Michael Chabon, The Final Solution

Susan Chace, Stickup

Vikram Chandra, Dharma

Victor Chapin, White Christmas

Jerome Charyn, The Man Who Grew Younger

Helen Chasin, Marriage

Anton Chekhov, What You Usually Find in Novels

Alfred Chester, Here be Dragons

Alfred Chester, In the Cold

Claude-Antoine Ciccione, Assunta Speaks

Kay Cicellis, Mother Nature

Stephen Clark, The King Will Ride

Andrei Codrescu, Monsieur Teste in America

Andrei Codrescu, Samba De Los Agentes

Robert Cohen, A Flight of Sparks

Keith Cohen, Grecian Dreams ,At the Inlet

Keith Cohen, Natural Settings

Keith Cohen, Phenomenal Feelings

Keith Cohen, The Balustrade

Jaime Collyer, A Businessman Disappears

Evan S. Connell, from The Alchymist's Journal

Evan S. Connell, Cocoa Party

Evan S. Connell, The Beau Monde of Mrs. Bridge

Evan S. Connell, The Fisherman from Chihuahua

Evan S. Connell, The Scriptwriter

Bernardine Connelly, Bait and Switch

Frank Conroy, Please Don't Take My Sunshine Away Full Text

I don't remember everything about meeting Maurice ... probably we simply faced one another in the middle of the white coral road, hesitating to speak, staring at each other. We were the only boys for miles around. I ...