I had no interest in helping Lakshmi Stores thrive or in fobbing off greedy accountants. It was the word Delhi that exploded in my head. Delhi. I was going to Delhi. I spent the rest of the day salivating at the prospect. Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Books Gandhi Colony People leave home … Read more
We’re rolling past some police vehicles now. As we screech to a stop at a large, four-lane street, we’re greeted by deputies moving cones for us to pass. One of the sheriff’s SUVs has been disabled. It lies by the roadside, front pushed in. The ambulance rides into a cul-de-sac, and the driver silences our … Read more
And the birds of a feather flocked to her parties each summer. They came early and left late. Days later, neighbors would reminisce about the sangria in the punch bowl, and the music they could dance to, and how no one else’s pretty blossoms grew quite like hers. Those meaningless measuring sticks – he couldn’t … Read more
Midway through our meal, Kate made an announcement. She was going to walk 500 miles of the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage in Northern Spain. She was leaving the following summer and would take five weeks for the trek. Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Books The Search for the Phoenix Woman Chapter … Read more
The last time we all got stomach cramp from laughing so hard over a game of charades as we gave up on getting film titles exactly right and went for mildly similar-sounding syllables, until eventually the titles were so far off the real thing it was a hysterical shambles. It was agony to think I … Read more
There was a slight pause and then he said, ‘Were you best friends?’ ‘Spoken like a true only child. We were sisters.’ ‘Aren’t sisters supposed to be best friends?’ Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Books We Were Having Such a Good Time It was probably about a month after we met that Ben … Read more
The EM systems could run for decades, but in time, after the ship left the solar system, they would have to be shut down. The Freeman would coast along on any final inertial vector, forever. The captain’s voice, with urgency. “STAN?” STAN made an instant decision, logged an internal note accessible only to itself: “Is … Read more
But I knew there was something out there. I knew that, while Citizens hid away after curfew, others ran free. I could hear them through my window, the tiny window in my bedroom in the attic of the house in Streatham. I could hear their distant howls, deep into the night. Winner of The Letter … Read more
“Look at him, Steward. Until the traitors who did this are found, he is the source of your continued existence. He is the beginning and the end of your pursuit. Take your time to examine him.” Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books Graemist PROLOGUE Through the diminishing rains a bell tolled, an alarm ringing out … Read more
I didn’t upset Mam. Continued to live with her, just as she continued to live with her story of the paintings by her great-grandfather, the ‘moonlight man’, Edwin Tate. Who left the dockside tenements to live in a Jacobean Manor overlooking the bay, just like the one on the books. Whose paintings reach six-figures. Whose … Read more