Short Stories/Novellas

Twenty-nine year old Devon is a luckless fisherman who ekes out a living on Hogg Island, a cork of rock and misery off the New England coast. He has no future, no opportunities, and only one last vestige of hope: a liaison with the mysterious and perhaps magical Louisa Cecelia Christensen, aka Queenie, the island s maker of shadowboxes and miracles. Queenie is a bit of a miracle herself, a woman over 200 years old who has not physically aged beyond her adolescence. Local legend claims that an assignation with Queenie can either make a man his fortune or secure him an early grave. As Devon sees it, either fate would be an improvement. In this shadowbox of a novella, stories within stories reveal the magic underlying the mundane. Proclaimed as a masterful storyteller by the New York Times Book Review, and as a wordsmith extraordinaire by Booklist, Randall Silvis has crafted in Flying Fish yet another poignant and powerful tale of life s numinosity. As Jeff VanderMeer, editor of Best American Fantasy said of Randall Silvis s acclaimed In A Town Called Mundomuerto, Silvis's haunting prose renders reality strange whether anything actually fantastical occurs in his books or not.

Originally published as a Black Mask novella in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and later selected for inclusion in the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Harcourt anthology Best American Mystery Stories 2013, The Indian is a powerful story about love and betrayal between three brothers and their families. When the seller of a vintage Indian motorcycle reneges on a deal, the brothers enter into a pact to exact revenge. Unfortunately, their simple plan unearths ugly family secrets, and the resulting violence cuts a wide swath of devastation through all of their lives. Praised by the New York Times Book Review and other critics as “a masterful storyteller,” Randall Silvis is the author of 13 acclaimed books of fiction and nonfiction. Winner of the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a finalist for the Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing, his books have been named to Best of the Year lists from The New York Times, the Toronto Globe & Mail, and the editors of SfSite.com. In 2007 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in recognition of his “distinguished literary achievements.” In the words of Pulitzer Prize nominee William Allen, founder of the Ohio State University MFA in Creative Writing program, “Randall Silvis is not only this country’s most pitch-perfect stylist, but he is also one of our most original and most important writers.”

In this short story from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, TV station manager Michael gets caught between a desire to be a good man and an irresistible attraction to his friend’s fiancée, and in so doing he learns the hard way that most people, including himself, are seldom what they seem.