Daily Dose

From Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng

NO

"There are no lights anywhere on their street, except for Mrs. Allen's front-door light, which she leaves on all the time, even during the day. When Hannah was younger, she thought adults stayed up late every night, until two or three perhaps. She adds this to the list of things she's learned are untrue."

From Chapter 5

A Very Short Dog Story

"Mom always said, 'You need a good dog,'"  Bobby said of his mother, Dot Perry, "'... and a good cigar!'" Known for her support of local Fire Station #43, there was some irony when the volunteers were called to Dot's house on Figurello Road at 3AM on Wednesday last. "At least the dogs got out," said the Chief, Todd Baumgartner on the scene, "but we'll miss Dot's chili this Chrismas, for sure!"

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From The Refugees, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

MORE

"The more she listened to him, the more she feared her own memory was faltering. Perhaps they really had eaten ice cream flavored with durian on the veranda of a tea plantation in he central highlands, reclining on rattan chairs. And was it possible they's fed bamboo shoots to the tame deer in the Saigon zoo? Or together had beaten off a pickpocket, a scabby refugee from the bombed-out countryside who'd sneaked up on them in the Ben Thanh market?"

From I'd Love You to Want Me

Still Another Very Short Christmas Story

Barb and Wendy were inseparable at that age, though Barb tended to be a bit overshadowed by her more dynamic little sister. "Wendy was just an adorable little firecracker," Barb would say later, "so I just let her go." And it came as quite a surprise to everyone when Barb became the first woman in 100 years to be indicted in the state of Minnesota for running a brothel. "Fun girls are a dime a dozen," Barb would claim in her unpublished prison memoir, Minnesota Madame, "but bookkeeping takes skill." (Wendy stood by her sister to the bitter end. "Hell," she told friends, "who do you think paid for the bariatric surgery and all my divorces?!")

Brad Craft Reads A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote

Daily Dose

From Beneath the Lion's Gaze, by Maaza Mengiste

THIS

"There is this to know, she said. There is silence and no thought. All is carved away and swallowed in the dark. This is death, she told him each time she thought she'd breathed her last. It is like this, and I am leaving this way."

From 33.