Cleveland woke to roosters crowing at daybreak downstairs in one of the hotel garden courtyards. He and Anong had left the balcony door open by..

AThe woman standing outside in the drizzling rain without an umbrella is Suspect X and has been under surveillance a while now. A black leather..

Tell her, just tell her, I told myself. She towered over me on Broadway as we crossed in front of traffic, her long legs stretching..

She could not reconcile the large oil painting hanging in the shadowed hallway of the assisted living suite with the frail woman lying on the..

Your mother, unbeknownst to you, tries to reach you. With a barren heat mere inches from her scented palms, she breathes deep unthinkingly at home...

We sit at the open courtyard, around a small, round table in bamboo chairs gazing out at the passing heads. The garden would gift us..

I thought about torching the place; finally, just burning the house, the barn, and the field to the ground. I longed to hear the wooden..

NPerhaps the blue ones would take her swimming in the cobalt waters, diving into the deep, deep ocean of oblivion, breathing water and narcotics instead..

Pishi’s car had still not pulled out of the driveway. Inside the house, Baba’s door closed on us. Under the yellow porch bulb that was..

They say drowning hurts.  Really, really hurts. They say it’s excruciating and scarier than you can imagine.  I suppose that makes sense, given that water..

I was dressed in a ghastly shade of pink, bright and sugary, like a Popsicle. My skin reeked of sun block and bug repellant. The..

Genevieve wanted a leprechaun. She’d never held a leprechaun. She’d never even seen one, not a real live one, but when Papa spoke and when..

He was running wildly, panting for breath as his heart beat furiously like a terrified bird trying to break out of its cage. They were..

Twenty years ago, they were madly in love. She loved him so much that she left her long-term boyfriend for him and moved to a..

Rels meant relatives. Cooz stood for cousin. Fat was for father. This new lingo exasperated me. I bit my nails every time I heard it..

In the late 1980s, Bombay (now Mumbai) had morphed into a rebellious teenager, the child of loving philanthropic parents but an incomplete adult, a poster-child..

I haven’t been homeless all my life.  There was a time when I had a cozy bed to sleep in and a fine roof over..

“Lassiwala..oy… lassiwala!” The young girl’s voice drifted down the dark, rain-washed corridor of the chawl. She stood for a moment at the door of their..

The lane in front of the school was a nightmare with its worn-out tarmac, non-existent pavement and the huge buses, mud flecked cars, rickety vans,..

Cooch Behar, West Bengal, India That week the rains came. On the morning of July 21 there was a heavy shower and a good deal..

When I was nine years old, I accidentally knocked over my father’s vase. It was the last decoration his late wife bought for the house..

The therapist’s office looked out over the park. Gold curtains framed the windows, the ends grazed oat-colored shag carpet. The room was spartan; only a..