“Summer in a Summer Town,”
Fiction by Vincent Lardo (July 2, 2009)
Book parties are as indigenous to the Hamptons as grapes are to the Napa Valley.

“Spiral Staircase,”
Fiction by Al Burrelli (June 25, 2009)
He was the most brilliant doctoral student that Harvard University had ever graduated.

“Daddy,”
A Memoir by Alice Foster Rogers Martin (June 18, 2009)
You could always tell my father was coming by the heavy jingling of his pants pockets.

“How She Learned to Fly,”
Fiction by Alexandra Branyon (June 11, 2009)
You hear light clicking of stiletto heels. Without a carpet on ceramic tile, the little airport terminal is loud.

“Peg,”
A Pastorale by the Rev. Robert Stuart (May 28, 2009)
“Sit there in the rocker,” she said, pointing to the chair in her small living room. “I have white wine or nothing. Which you will you have?”

“The Exterminator,”
Fiction by Francis Levy (May 21, 2009)
Yesterday I penetrated the inner sanctum, which turned out to be just another office, presided over by someone named Laurie who comes to work with her poodle. I had been trying to get through all morning and my calls were either sent to voice-mail or I was told that the chief exterminator was on another call.

“Douse the Lights, Cue the Elephants,”
Fiction by Dan Marsh (May 14, 2009)
I talked on the telephone for an hour a couple of weeks ago with Aunt Maritza about her trip to the circus.

“The Family Luftmann,”
Fiction by Lona Rubenstein (April 30, 2009)
CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK
It did not augur well. How could Jews, a nation, a race residing in each of them, become good Germans?

“The Family Luftmann 1900,”
Fiction by Lona Rubenstein (April 23, 2009)
The kitchen was particularly busy this Sunday. Frau Luftmann, while preparing second breakfast — weisswurst, schwartzbrot, with both weissbier and dunkles — was cooking a host of foods for the special dinner, a celebration of their daughter’s baptism.

“Uncle Jack’s Buddy,”
Fiction by Kat O’Neill (April 16, 2009)
I woke up in a bad mood. It had nothing to do with the wrong side of the bed. I always get up on the same side. It was just one of those nights where people, ones you never even liked in the first place, get in your head and won’t get out. Then the coffee ended up more rotten than usual. And when I looked outside, I saw that the dogs had torn apart the garbage, ignoring the leftover special of the week, again.

“Vinyl Heaven,”
Fiction by Lawrence Murphy (April 9, 2009)
Capt. Henry Hudson had come here wanting to see for himself, having heard so much in the years before. It was early September in 1609 and Hudson was encountering a New World. A few evenings before, on or around the sixth, Colman, his mate, had been killed.

“Finally”
A Memoir by Adrienne Kitaeff (April 2, 2009)
In 1960, in my high school graduating class, most of the boys, and some of the girls, were going on to college. Most of the girls, and some of the boys, were going to get married. I was going to get a job.

“Twenties,”
Fiction by Terence Lane (March 26, 2009)
The pastoral sun was a close presence on my neck and hot in my hair, a nest of dry tinder. The rural New York summer was a crisp heat laced with currents of fresh tree air. It was a joy to be so young there with nothing on my mind except dessert and who I would be hanging out with later.

“How I Became a Potato Farmer,”
Fiction by Alexandra Branyon (March 19, 2009)
I like to dig in dirt. To let all the bad stuff in me go down into the ground and all the good stuff in the ground come up into me. And that is why I became a potato farmer.

“In Concert”
Fiction by Meg Coffey Bennett (March 12, 2009)
CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK
On the night of Alex’s concert, I was heating soup for supper when Joseph called to say that he had work to finish in Springfield but he’d be home late that night. He sounded happy and told me I was beautiful.

“In Concert”
Fiction by Meg Coffey Bennett (March 5, 2009)
When we first saw the doe in early September, her hind leg hinged at an impossible angle, her ribs visible through mud-matted fur, Joseph and I had just returned from dinner in town. Standing by the back door, half-horrified, half-amazed, I watched the deer grazing at the flounce of lawn that fringed the patio.

“Thank You”
Fiction by Nathaniel Halpern (Feb. 26, 2009)
CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK
Over the years I’d occasionally hear a tidbit or two about Marvin and where his life had taken him. After college, he attended a prestigious law school in the city. Maybe he could be my lawyer someday — wouldn’t that be a kick in the head? Shortly after that he met his wife, a kindergarten teacher from upstate. I hear she’s very nice. And until now, that was all I knew about what had come of Marvin Greene.

“Thank You”
Fiction by Nathaniel Halpern (Feb. 19, 2009)
Just like that — I was hit with a pitch. No warning, no old score to settle, just a mean one to the ribs, courtesy of the pitcher from Montclair. It was senior year of high school and the bottom of the sixth in the last game of the season. We weren’t one of the top squads in the area, but we weren’t pushovers either. If anything, we had one of the toughest schedules around — ask anybody, or look it up for yourself. In fact, the kid who hit me would go on to rack up a one-hitter in the state championships. Oddly enough, he had a reputation for his remarkable control.

“Deck Chairs,”
Fiction by Al Burrelli (Feb. 12, 2009)
It didn’t seem too promising, since her first awareness of him was to have his shadow intrude on her privacy. She was “17 going on 22,” and she had risen early to get one of the deck chairs on the port side of the cruise ship, the side facing the sun, and the side that promised to be a sunrise painted by Turner. No heavy reading this morning, just one of the month’s many young women’s magazines, which, if you’ve read one, you’ve read them all, each one’s cover promising the reader more and better boffo sex, and thinner and better drop-dead bodies.

“Winter in a Summer Town,”
Fiction by Vincent Lardo (Feb. 5, 2009)
CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK
July. Monday. 6 p.m. Sam’s has a second dining area situated to the rear and left of the main room. Just at the point where one turns in to the back room, and opposite one of the loos, is a booth that stands by itself. Neither front nor rear, it’s ideal for those who wish not to see or be seen. He arrived very early and commandeered that booth, nursing a whiskey and soda as he waited, confident that his vigil would not be in vain. He was correct.

“Winter in a Summer Town”
Fiction by Vincent Lardo (Jan. 29, 2009)
He thought it resembled a film set abandoned by cast and crew for the evening. A mockup facade of Main Street, U.S.A., replete with shops, cinema, and traffic light, but devoid of people. He was a summer resident and it was the dead of winter. Actually, the 29th day of the new year. He had driven from the city to East Hampton to keep a date. As he approached the light and made a left onto Newtown Lane he wondered, not for the first time since he began the long drive, if he had come on the proverbial fool’s errand.

“Small Town/Damp Night”
Fiction by Lutha Leahy-Miller
There was a thick fog this eve, a sparkling gloom in the small-town corner streetlights. A seaside fog was creeping over the town as the south ocean wind blew in 40-degree dampness. You could feel it in the joints, in your bones, in the crick of your neck. You knew it was going to be damp all night, that local residents around town would be few, and that those who would be plodding through the street would be doing so with downcast stares and lack of energy. No inner light, no glee. That had gone with Labor Day, and with the passage of the parties of All Hallow’s Eve.

“End as a Boy,”
Fiction by Jeffrey Sussman (Jan. 15, 2009)
CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK
I figured that Cliff was motivated to steal because his own inheritance had been stolen by his neighbors, and by the deaths of his parents. Though gregarious and full of fun, he was a wounded child who saw no future for himself. Drink, laugh, speed, steal, fornicate: In an abbreviated life with too many unhappy endings, the life of a sybarite seemed an antidote for unhappiness that was difficult to overcome.

“End as a Boy”
Fiction by Jeffrey Sussman (Jan. 8, 2009)
There have always been young men who, through a combination of good looks and a charming personality, draw others to them like metal filings to a magnet. And Cliff indeed had a magnetic personality.

“Sands That Freeze Time,”
Fiction by Erin Golding (Jan. 1, 2009)
Everybody left, eventually. They loaded up their trunks, closed their windows against the sand, and took themselves away, one by one. Furniture, and half-tended gardens, cutlery and ice chests, and bathtubs with solid gold legs remained, as though some of them expected to return. But no one ever did. The people moved out, and the sand moved in. The town had long since come and gone.