A profile of a new icon.

A double life across two cultures.

A first date; a viewing of a classic musical.

Childhood friends, escalating traumas.

The complexities of aging and desire.

Sexual and personal growth intertwine.

Scenes and thoughts from an affair.

A European vacation, a quietly crumbling marriage.

A mother and daughter take a complicated trip to Central Asia.

Loneliness and longing at an Arizona Renaissance fair.

Reflections on a scientific autopsy and the nature of intimacy.

A cabbie and a passenger discuss Chinese economics and generational gaps.

How Bill Kennedy, the only openly gay referee in the NBA, came out.

A conversation with (and memories of) an unscrupulous bar owner.

A girls' camp nature walk takes an unusual, grotesque turn.

Secular crises of two workers at a religious camp.

Religion, high school football, and racial problems in small town America.

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

Theft and magic in the early 20th century.

A tornado causes physical and psychological turmoil in a religious community.

A woman buys a life-like, anamatronic man named Simon.

"She found the little velvet bag, dropped two tokens into his neck, and went to the computer while he booted up. She searched the website, but there weren’t any programs for what she wanted. Apparently, there were rules, the first of which stated that a robot may not injure a human being. Not even a little. Not a butter-knife nick or a cigarette burn or an intentional pull of the hair. She bought the phrase “I hate you” and a package described as brooding that looked close enough to anger. She stuck the USB drive under his arm and waited for the green light."

Vampire movies, sex tapes, aging, and complicated relationships: new fiction from the great Kelly Link.

"It’s not much fun, telling a ghost story while you’re naked. Telling the parts of the ghost story that you’re supposed to tell. Not telling other parts. While the woman you love stands there with the person you used to be."

An uneasy relationship between two people squatting in a crime scene house.

"But that guy was gone. In between the fourth and fifth beer at the bar, he disappeared in a haze of yellow and heat. Someone’s joke. A crack of broken glass. Tony and the guy out the door. Maybe in the back alley. And then it was all Tony Disco sidling up to me at the bar, his arm warm against mine, his breath like juniper. And now here he and I were, slumped on a dead woman’s couch."

In a series of diary entries, a woman explores her terrifying relationship with a vampiric count.

"The first thing I saw this way was me. I was in bed beside him, and began to drift into sleep. When my eyes closed I saw myself, dozing. My hair was silver and gold on the moonlit pillow and my mouth was smeared with his blood. I opened my eyes and he was leaning over me, studying me. I asked him what was the matter."

A series of memories and addictions from various years.

"I come here after my shift at the record store and sit around at picnic tables outside, scribbling into notebooks while drinking shitty coffee and waiting for my girlfriend, Velvet, to get off work so we can go get high. The crowd here is varied: AA people alongside art people and punks alongside dirty Deadheads and downtown casualties. There are many open mic poetry events, usually outdoors at dusk. One night I decide to read. I go to the mic and drop weapons. I go to the mic and read about Kuwait City and southern Iraq. I go to the mic and read about prostitutes and hashish and drinking homemade wine made out of grape juice in the middle of the Indian Ocean. I go to the mic and curse over and over again. Nobody claps. Nobody moves. I am not asked to read again."