"Imagine a farmhouse surrounded by snow. Not a thin layer of soft, flaky whiteness, the kind you might see in more civilized climates--this is Northern Michigan, where the snow falls and falls until it buries the roads, covers the windows, and mounts up before the door. The nearest neighbors are a mile away, impossibly far. Every morning, the men in this scattered community dig their way through to the barn where the livestock are sheltered from the cold. Every winter, some of the wives go mad."
"The spectacles of the priest gleamed, reflecting Bartram's face – that was what woke Daniel up. He resisted the urge to run to the bathroom, to make sure that his face was still his own, not the mutilated visage that reflected in the spectacles of the old priest. Bartram, whoever he was, possessed the most ostentatious scar Daniel had ever seen or imagined – running from the inner corner of his left eye, across the bridge of his nose, smashing through his lips, and coming to a rest at the right side of his jaw."
"Morning opens with a blaze of trumpets and the subtle hint of a timpani. Rene pours his coffee, sits in his chipped-green-paint kitchen chair at his chipped-white-paint kitchen table, and starts to doubt."
Five Ways Jane Austen Never Died
by Samantha Henderson
"It was carved from a jet-black stone that seemed to swallow the light from the wide, sunny window, leaving nothing but a void in a convoluted knot of tentacles. It was cold, colder than stone should be in a woman’s warm hand, and it gave her a strange feeling, like the memory of a toothache or the lingering weakness of a fever."
