Elise Landau is a Jew living in Vienna before World War II. Her parents realize the danger they are facing and make plans for the family to leave the country. They must all go separate ways and Elise ends up working as a housemaid on an estate in England. Being from an artistic family in […]
Gustine is a dress lodger (lower class prostitute in an upper class dress) in Sunderland, England in the 1830s. One night she meets Dr. Henry Chiver, a surgeon in disgrace who has promised his small group of students that he will find a human body for them to dissect and study. Unfortunately, there is still […]
Calliope Stephanides is born to a family of Greek immigrants living in Detroit. She tells the story of how she came to be by starting with her grandparents in their isolated village. As the Turks and Greeks were fighting, they managed to flee to America and start a new life there. Calliope then moves on […]
Miri is a small teenage girl from the mountains. She feels inadequate in her village because she isn’t allowed to help in the quarry, the lifeblood of trade. She tries her best to help every way she can, but she just knows that everyone must think she’s a burden. One day, with the spring traders, […]
Gemma Doyle is living in India, but she desperately wants to move back to England. As 16-year-old girls will do, she’s bickering constantly with her mother over it. One day, in the midst of an Indian market, tragedy strikes and Gemma gets sent back to England. But she also starts having strange visions. Can the […]
Sara Stevenson has shamed her family and has been exiled to a remote Scottish island for months. Along with her lady’s maid, Kate; Kate’s husband; and the lightkeeper, William, she will have to weather a long winter, unsure of the fate of her lover. I thought this was pretty good. It’s not exactly my typical […]
Cassandra Mortmain lives in a castle. Don’t let that fool you–the castle is crumbling around her family’s ears. Her father had the (mis)fortune to publish an incredible book early in his career and he hasn’t been able to write another word since. In other words, the family is practically destitute. But then the owner of […]
The Cantrell family has lived in Hoot Owl Holler in the mountains of Virginia for as long as anyone can remember. They love hard, play hard, and suffer deeply. There doesn’t seem to be any in-between for them. Oral History follows…let’s call it three…generations of Cantrells, starting with handsome Almarine and his run-in with a […]
In a future that strongly resembles Invasion of the Body Snatchers, humans are an endangered species. A militantly peaceful race of extraterrestrials known as “souls” has decided that the passionately violent humans don’t deserve to live on the Earth. So they have calmly taken over the vast majority of human bodies. Sometime after the aliens […]
June Bentley “Jubie” Watts is 13 years old in 1954 when her mother decides to take all four of her children to visit her brother in Pensacola, Florida. As any affluent housewife of the time would do, she asks the maid to come along on the trip to help take care of them. Jubie does […]
Anya falls into an abandoned well one day and finds herself alone with a skeleton. Needless to say, she is terrified. Especially after the ghost of a girl about her own age shows up. Anya is rescued fairly quickly and tries to put the whole experience behind her. But she’s brought something back out into […]