Story Excerpts
by Sandra McDonald
After Henri dies in their Versailles cottage—alive and joking on Christmas morning, flown to heaven before noon—Claudine needs a new purpose. She moves back to Paris, pays the movers to hoist her belongings up through the window of a cozy attic in the Latin Quarter, and begins teaching mortal tourists how to make tarte Tatin.
After all, she’s more than a thousand years old, give or take, with no heirs to dote on. Her condition makes childbirth impossible, and Henri sired no children elsewhere. Everything is in order—jewels and gold caches hidden throughout the city, overseas bank accounts in multiple names, legal trusts and contracts updated with a very expensive and long-lived firm of solicitors. Until her demise and next incarnation, then, she can host strangers in her humble accommodations. She can manage tart red apples, organic flour, and sugar caramelized on a hot plate, all served up with folklore and charm. READ MORE
by Allen M. Steele
September 8, 1934; 1:30 a.m.
In the darkest hours of the cool autumn night, with sunrise still several hours away, the Atlantic Ocean seven miles off the New Jersey coast lay silent and still. The stars were masked behind thick rainclouds shrouding the night sky; when morning finally arrived, it would be with the amber glow to the east that an old nautical rhyme admonishes sailors to be wary, foul weather is approaching. But when the rain finally came, it would be welcome, for it would help control the inferno that would soon be blazing out here on the ocean.
Alone in the darkness, the cruise ship Morro Castle sailed the quiet waters. Now on the last leg of its latest nine-day round trip between New York and Havana, the liner was heading home, scheduled later this morning to drop anchor on the East River. There the two hundred passengers still asleep in their cabins, most of them East Coast residents, would disembark at the wharf where they expected to be picked up by friends and families. READ MORE