A newfound faith wreaks havoc on a relationship.

"Some of you probably think it’s a bad thing to group ourselves according to skin color—the lighter the better—in social clubs, neighborhoods, churches, sororities, even colored schools. But how else can we hold on to a little dignity?"

The train to flavortown hits some speedbumps as an edgy Food Network host meets his match.

Interactions and complications ensue at a Seattle wedding.

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

Playing with a disabled boy on a summer afternoon.

Infinite libraries in infinite space.

"A memory of unspeakable melancholy: at times I have traveled for many nights through corridors and along polished stairways without finding a single librarian."

A postapocalyptic world, motherhood, and centaurs.

"The girls were born the day before the world ended. You had eighteen hours of bliss and then the satellites went out, and with them the systems that sent news around the world. An asteroid, you heard people say. Huddled in your darkened hospital bed, your daughter’s mouths so pink and empty. Like birds. One asteroid and then another, and another, and then so many more that no one could keep track. They pounded into the oceans and the hills. The shaking made the earthquakes come, and from them, the volcanoes. The oceans rose. The clouds that came in the wake of the asteroids were thick and hard, studded with cosmic ash."

A horrifying animal attack turns into an examination of rural life.

"Admit it. You want to jump to the part about Bubba tearing into Child, who still has no identifiable name. This story isn't about Child; it's about the town and its assumptions. But since I cannot narrate the story of the assuming town without touching on what it is they assumed upon, I will tell you the parts of the Bubba/Child story that will elucidate they and their assumings."

A Christmas classic from the early 20th century.

"One would think that our good old Santa Claus, who devotes his days to making children happy, would have no enemies on all the earth; and, as a matter of fact, for a long period of time he encountered nothing but love wherever he might go.But the Daemons who live in the mountain caves grew to hate Santa Claus very much, and all for the simple reason that he made children happy."

A strange correspondence between two men--hopes, fears, work, and garbage.

"Momentous. I received my permit. Now I am equipped, attached to my own industrial serial number, and there you have it. 90023-457-89-2. I’m not fooling around when I tell you this is big business dear Fred. I could convey any thing—spoiled fruit pulp, rusted play ground equipment, big hazardous syringes, worn out shoe horns, threadbare ear muffs, passé slot machines, unwound baseballs, and emptied paint cans. Pots and pans and kettles are no big deal what so ever. In dreams begin responsibilities Fred and what’s terrific is it’s not a dream any more. I am a licensed carrier on the make."

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."

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."

A public domain story of paranoia by the sci-fi master.

"Binary fission, obviously. Splitting in half and forming two entities. Probably each lower half went to the cafe, it being farther, and the upper halves to the movies. I read on, hands shaking. I had really stumbled onto something here. My mind reeled as I made out this passage."

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."

On the intersection of writing and daily life.

"There are the four AM’s where you let friends take you out against your better judgment and you find yourself grinding against the bodies of people you don’t know, and something you took is traveling like liquid fire through your veins, through the bird’s nest of neurons in your brain. There’s the four AM where you just met this girl and don’t want to stop talking, where even after you hang up you can’t get to sleep, everything is alive and awake, the universe is calling, the radio is playing the perfect song, you get your jacket and walk the streets and every other night walker knows you, knows that everything is connected to the novel you’re writing, and all of these people, all the cops, homeless people, partiers, drunks, loners, lovers, all of them are offering themselves to you, willing you to tell their story. There is joy in these late hours."

Infidelity and committment issues with a humanoid robot.

"'You know I love you, and that I have no prejudices against cutting-edge technology,' He taps his temple, at the faint bulge of a high-priced implant. A vanity item, more than anything else, meant to expedite long-distance communication in an utterly cost-ineffective way. “But, I just— I need you as a person. Not as a machine.'"

Scenes from an anger management facility.

"Mike began to curse his hands. Champion told him to calm down, that his hands were gentle, and that he was as likely brainwashed by this place as cured, something he would never admit sober. Champion suggested they try to escape; he was drunk enough, he thought, to just walk away."

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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."

A series of instructions for a woman in a small town.

"Purport, coyly, that you are dating a tall pile of driftwood arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way, and let’s say this wooden statue’s name is Chad and that he is generally a little slow on the uptake. Say Chad is like a Nordic carving of a real person in that he is extremely beige, even his hair, and he can go for a long time without blinking or saying anything of substance. Say you might as well be dating a Hummel, except Chad is more durable."

A story of disintegrated relationships and the odd things left behind.

"Tabitha positioned the big horn sheep in the front yard and I drank a third mimosa. On Sundays, we got together and searched for any random thing to do, but always ended up back at her place. A neighbor, watering bushes, watched as Tabitha dragged the sheep around the yard, trying to find the right place."

A story of disintegrated relationships and the odd things left behind.

"Tabitha positioned the big horn sheep in the front yard and I drank a third mimosa. On Sundays, we got together and searched for any random thing to do, but always ended up back at her place. A neighbor, watering bushes, watched as Tabitha dragged the sheep around the yard, trying to find the right place."

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."

On the way to a reading, an academic stumbles into a mysterious infrastructure.

"For some reason he couldn’t put his finger on he was feeling happy. Naturally it had been a relief to come in out of the rain—though this particular brand of happiness seemed unrelated to anything as simple as relief. No, there was something about being in the tunnel that was making him feel very happy, almost ecstatically so. Against the wall just inside the door someone had arranged cleaning implements—several brooms, a bucket with a mop in it, a pile of rags—but other than that the tunnel was empty. The walls at this end had been painted with the green, glossy paint beloved of institutions the world over, the paint having been applied in what seemed like a spirit of gay abandon. The smooth concrete floor was splashed with it, and it depended in hardened drips from a series of thin pipes running lengthwise along the ceiling."

Religious mysteries surround a strange young child.

"'And of course the one book she had arrived with onto the stoop was none other than a New International version of The Holy Bible, which sparked the longest conversation the girl and I ever had. One afternoon while her alleged father was in the basement workshop of his, tinkering. I sat there flipping its pages and heard her clonking down the hall. Now, was I looking for notes or marginalia? Arguments? So I see the souped-up red lights and then there she is, sitting on the floor in front of me with a banana in one hand and a stuffed doll in the other, suspicious narrow eyes. Asking whether I was a Catholic. I am indeed, I told her, which she answered by affirming, me too. Which gave me pause, cautious not to trigger and witness again her version of tears. Well, I said, technically speaking, that isn’t true. Not until you take your first communion. And at this point she stared into my own face in a way I couldn’t describe if you gave me a full week.'"