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

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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.  

Short stories by Kevin Barry, poetry by Judith Harris, a novel by Colm Tóibín, and essays by David Sedaris

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Living alone in his dead uncle's cottage, and with the burden lately of wandering thoughts in the night, Seamus Ferris had fallen hard for a Polish girl who worked at a café down in Carrick.  He had himself almost convinced that the situation had the dimensions of a love affair, though in fact he'd exchanged no more than a few dozen words with her, whenever she named the price for his flat white and scone, and he shyly paid it, offering a line or two himself on the busyness of the town or the fineness of the weather.
—From "The Coast of Leitrim," the opening story of That Old Country Music, a collection of short stories by Kevin Barry (Doubleday, 2020). I first read this story in print in 2019, and I really liked it. Now, though, in 2024, I listened to it as part of the audiobook for That Old Country Music, and this added a whole different dimension. If you have the option, I highly recommend reading the text in addition to listening to it in an audio format read by the author. "The Coast of Leitrim" first appeared in print in The New Yorker (October 15, 2018), pp. 70-75, and is available online with the option to read and/or listen to the story. 

Then a flash of a cardinal
like a struck match, 
—From "Cardinal and Pine Through an Open Window," one of two poems by Judith Harris, Terrain.org (September 14, 2023).  

Eilis Lacey, sitting at the window of the upstairs living room in the house on Friary Street, noticed her sister walking briskly from work. She watched Rose crossing the street from sunlight into shade, carrying the new leather handbag that she had bought in Clerys in Dublin in the sale. 
—From Brooklyn, a novel by Colm Tóibín (Scribner, 2009). The sequel to this book, Long Island, is forthcoming from Scribner on May 7, 2024.   

Bonus books to read again: 

"Oh, for God's sake," my mother said, tossing her wooden spoon into a cauldron of chipped-beef gravy. "Leave that goddamned cat alone before I claw you myself. It's bad enough that you've got her tarted up like some two-dollar whore. Take that costume off her and turn her loose before she runs away just like the last one." 
—From Naked, a memoir/collection of essays by David Sedaris (Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 1997).

My performing career effectively ended the day my drug dealer moved to Georgia to enter a treatment center. Since the museum I'd done a piece at a gallery and had another scheduled for the state university. "How can you do this to me?" I asked her. "You can't move away, not now. Think of all the money I've spent on you. Don't I deserve more than a week's notice? And what do you need with a treatment center? People like you the way you are; what makes you think you need to change? Just cut back a little, and you'll be fine. Please, you can't do this to me. I have a piece to finish, goddamnit. I'm an artist and I need to know where my drugs are coming from."
          Nothing I said would change her mind.  
—From Me Talk Pretty One Day, a memoir/collection of essays by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2000). This section is from "Twelve Moments in the Life of an Artist," Eleven, pp. 39-59 in the paperback. A version of this piece first appeared on This American Life (August 22, 1997) in an episode called "Blame It on Art."

Fiction and poetry by Domenico Starnone, Sayaka Murata, Mary White, and more

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One evening Betta called, crankier than usual, wanting to know if I felt up to minding her son while she and her husband took part in a mathematics conference in Cagliari.  I'd been living in Milan for a couple of decades, and the thought of decamping to Naples, to the old house I'd inherited from my parents, and where my daughter had been living since prior to getting married, didn't thrill me.  I was over seventy and, having been a widower for some time, had lost the habit of living with others.  I only felt comfortable in my own bed and in my own bathroom.  Furthermore, I'd undergone, a few weeks earlier, a small surgical procedure which, even in the clinic, seemed to have done more harm than good.  Though the doctors poked their faces day and night into my room, to tell me that everything had gone fine, my hemoglobin was low, my ferritin was poor, and one afternoon, I saw small heads, plaster-white, stretching toward me from the opposite wall.
--From Trick, a novel by Domenico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri (Europa Editions, 2018). Originally published in Italian as Scherzetto (Einaudi: Torino, Italy, 2016).

The morning period is passing normally in the brightly lit box of the convenience store, I feel.  Visible outside the windows, polished free of fingerprints, are the figures of people rushing by.  It is the start of another day, the time when the world wakes up and the cogs of society begin to move.  I am one of those cogs, going round and round.  I have become a functioning part of the world, rotating in the time of day called morning.
--From Convenience Store Woman, a novel by Sayaka Murata, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove Press, 2018).  Originally published in Japanese as Konbini ningen (Tokyo, Japan: Bungeishunjū Ltd., 2016). 

When my fiancé left for the war 
Which is still going on 
I prepared increasingly elaborate foods
--From "Expectation Management," a poem by Mary White, Communion Arts Journal (June 2019).

Like, he's definitely cheating.  He's not even trying to hide it anymore.  He's such a piece of shit.  Take a left here.  And the worst part is she's not going to say anything either.  I mean, she's basically just waiting for him to leave her.  It's honestly stressful just being in the same room as them.
--From Bottled, a graphic novel by Chris Gooch (Top Shelf Productions, 2017). 

I didn't belong there.  I wandered through the succession of rooms, with a glass of overly acidic champagne in my hand.  I looked at the other guests.  Their self-confidence, the way they held their heads.  Their facial expressions.  They formed familiar little clusters, burst out laughing, glanced over at rival groups, occasionally glanced at the canvases, gushed noisily, turned away, murmured a spicy anecdote or scathing commentary into the ear of an acolyte, demolishing the opus they had just praised in the blink of an eye.  
--From Exposed, a novel by Jean-Philippe Blondel, translated from the French by Alison Anderson (New Vessel Press, 2019).  Originally published in French as La mise à nu (Libella: Paris, France, 2018).

Living alone in his dead uncle's cottage, and with the burden lately of wandering thoughts in the night, Seamus Ferris had fallen hard for a Polish girl who worked at a café down in Carrick.  He had himself almost convinced that the situation had the dimensions of a love affair, though in fact he'd exchanged no more than a few dozen words with her, whenever she named the price for his flat white and scone, and he shyly paid it, offering a line or two himself on the busyness of the town or the fineness of the weather.
--From "The Coast of Leitrim," a short story by Kevin Barry, The New Yorker (October 15, 2018), pp. 70-75.