A poem by Lauren Aliza Green, novels by Georgi Gospodinov and Kevin Barry, a short story by Matthew Klam, and a memoir by Abigail Thomas

~
I refused to throw out 
a single one— 
eggs, milk, Wonder Bread— 
the tiny blue checks 
like a secret code, . . . 
—From "My Mother's Handwritten Grocery Lists," a poem by Lauren Aliza Green, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Fall 2024).  

Years later, when many of his memories had already scattered like frightened pigeons, he could still go back to that morning when he was wandering aimlessly through the streets of Vienna, and a vagrant with a mustache like García Márquez's was selling newspapers on the sidewalk in the early March sun. A wind blew up and several of the newspapers swirled into the air. He tried to help, chasing down two or three and returning them. You can keep one, said Márquez.
          Gaustine, that's what we'll call him, even though he himself used the name like an invisibility cloak, took the newspaper and handed the man a banknote, a rather large one for the occasion.
—From Time Shelter, a novel by Georgi Gospodinov, translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel (Liveright Publishing Corporation/W. W. Norton & Company, 2022). It was originally published as Времеубежище (Janet 45, 2020).

It is night in the old Spanish port of Algeciras. . . . Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond sit on a bench just a few yards west of the hatch. They are in their low fifties. . . . Maurice Hearne's jaunty, crooked smile will appear with frequency. His left eye is smeared and dead, the other oddly bewitched, as though with an excess of life, for balance. He wears a shabby suit, an open-necked black shirt, white runners and a derby hat perched high on the back of his head. Dudeish, at one time, certainly, but past it now. 
—From Night Boat to Tangier, a novel by Kevin Barry (Doubleday, 2019). The paperback was released by Vintage in 2020. 

My daughter walked into the house with a boy named Brendan. She came into the kitchen limping a little, her mascara smeared, and lay down on the floor in front of the stove. I was dipping a cookie in icing, checking the color to see if it needed more green. Every year, in December, our block had a Christmas-cookie swap, a ritual that had become one of the less disgusting parts of the holiday season. 
—From "The Other Party," a short story by Matthew Klam, The New Yorker (December 19, 2022), pp. 50-59.

Sitting with the dogs, drinking coffee, listening to the weather. Snow out there. "Wind chill warnings for today and tomorrow," says the reporter, "Most at risk, children and the elderly." At first the word "elderly" conjures up someone thin, frail, someone I might help across a busy street. Someone else. A moment passes before I realize, with a jolt, that I'm elderly. I don't feel elderly. I feel like myself, only more so. 
—From Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing, a memoir by Abigail Thomas (Golden Notebook Press, 2023). It appears that Scribner just released (re-released?) this essay collection in paperback, e-book, and audiobook formats on November 19, 2024.