On claiming the conquistador Juan Ponce de León as an ancestor and the fictions we tell ourselves.

A young girl uses unusual coping mechanisms after her father's death.

Sober living, loss, and unexpected connections.

An undercover alien observes various human behaviors.

Various time passages in an old home.

A young woman's fears and observations, both past and present.

A dangerous trek to visit a dying father.

A story of high school, sexuality, and tagging; from Puerto del Sol's first online issue.

Intertwined memories of institutions, family, and the creepy side of industrialization.

On the eve of their daughter's wedding, a divorced couple is confused by old feelings despite sexual identities.

On mathematical shapes and family ruptures.

A story of science, weirdness, and alternate realities.

An elderly woman renovates her basement for renters and discovers uncomfortable truths about herself.

Family relationships and the complexities of childhood imagination.

"Out the side door and into the yard. Plastic table, plastic sandbox in the shape of a turtle, two plastic chairs blown over. An empty birdfeeder. Ella had no idea why Blanket would be out here. This was why adventures needed preparation: because once they were underway they were always disappointments. In her backpack the string was unused, the flashlight unlit. She took the fork out just to feel like she had packed more wisely than she did."

A convergence of sex, fears, and family drama.

Loss and family in an era of police crime and black protests.

Southern generational and gender divides.

"I got the word. When I saw her turning up the earth for peonies, it was like those clumps of hard red clay were speaking to me. Those spindly arms of hers with tattoos down to her elbows begged for someone with a hearty dose of Luke, Matthew, and Paul."

On fishing, physics, and life's intangibles.

<p>“Back when his girls were girls, with fluffy pink rugs on their bathroom floor, Burgundy wasn’t much of a second-guesser. He was a richly confident physicist with work at the university. He golfed. They went to the club. Even when there were questions of the girls smoking or skipping school (and there were always questions, wink-wink), Burgundy hadn’t worried about His Girls. They weren’t that kind of a family. And anyway (so lovely were His Girls) if they would have been that kind of family they would have worn it well. Being well-paid, occupied and cohesively married does wonders for a man’s confidence.”</p>

Family problems and a myriad of solutions.

"I don’t know if my husband and I are on the way to church or a hangover. It is too early in the drive to tell. The first Thursday of every month, my husband’s sister comes over to watch the kids. They are too old for a sitter, but the older one keeps trying to kill herself and we don’t want to risk it. Always keep an eye on them, I tell my sister-in-law. Don’t leave them alone for a second, not even to ice a cake, organize a closet, dry the dishes, say a prayer."

The truth about a girl's father, shrouded in mystery.

A man arrives in the US from Hong Kong in search of his mistress; family and medical complications arise.

"At sixty, Boss Yeung had completed what the ancients deemed a full span of life. Now the cycle would start over, and he’d be born again in time to guide his heir, who would conquer China and then the world. He had outlived his father, his grandfather, possibly every male in the long line of ancestors that had led to him. Against his protests, his eldest daughter, Viann, was planning a lavish celebration in Hong Kong, with longevity peach cakes gilded in twenty-four-carat gold flakes and fireworks over the harbor. He wasn’t eager to publicize his age, to give off the impression that he was close to retiring and no longer possessed the fire that had lit the ambitions of his youth."

Strange beasts reenact scenes and memories from a woman's childhood.

"In the kitchen, the beast was pushing onions around in a pan. It glanced up, not minding me at all. I could hear a rustling sound just around the corner, where our kitchen table used to be, like the sound of my sister doing her homework or cutting pictures out of magazines. There was a small beast doing exactly that, holding a pair of red plastic scissors, snipping out pictures of animals. She was arranging the cutouts on the table: a cow, a giraffe, two dogs, and a bear."

The inner thoughts and worries of a Bingo player.

"Phyllis didn’t need to focus when she was daubing her numbers. Her mind could wander. She could think of all of the fortune she’d had in her life, all the loving family that surrounded her, even if their visits fell few and far between. As the next BINGO was called, she ripped off her top sheet and placed it into her trash bag. She remembered when she’d started coming to play, how she’d thought what a waste it was that each player had their own plastic trash bag, but it wasn’t long before she’d blinded herself to this detail, too."

Details from a Lord of the Rings fantasy game interrupt details of a tragic, complicated personal life.

"Right about now, I assume you’ve gotten a bit bored. Dead babies! Let me tell you, dying babies bore the shit out of pretty much everyone, I’ve learned. So, let me take a moment to tell you a humorous LOTRO anecdote (that is, Lord of the Rings Online) about my level 25 minstrel character, Sinuviel. You see, LOTRO is free up to a point, and great fun if you have access to a computer that is badass enough to run it. Just before my fiancé, James, died, I bought a refurbished ASUS laptop for dirt cheap, and it was the best thing in the world for distracting me from how boring my dying child was to everyone I’d ever known."

The death of a pet leads to unique, unsettling mental strains.

"She needed to take a seat. Altogether too much for a morning already, and it was only seven. She collapsed backwards onto the couch and the thing jumped into the lap of her nightgown, settling into the space there, the way Caleb had done as a puppy. She touched it tentatively, and the thing seemed to shiver pleasantly under her hand."