Trouble in the garden — The bunnies were cute until they began dining on my asparagus. Squirrels raided the bird feeders but they were cute and their antics fun to watch so we forgave them. A creek borders our back yard, making us a way station for all sorts of wild life. We’ve had raccoons…

Sometimes they never leave — The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. I was twelve years old that year, in 1972, the year Nixon went to China and his buddies broke into the Watergate hotel. Billie Jean King beat Bobbie Riggs at tennis…

The taste of memory — I come from generations of gardeners. When we moved into our house last year, it was too late in the summer for planting. I vowed an early start in the next season. This year, however, brought mostly failed experiments with container gardening. My tomatoes grew weary in the dry heat…

When a gift is a warning — If Mina had knelt at any other gravestone, she would have missed the locket. She was working on restoring the moss-covered tombstone of Adeline Coombs. The locket lay wedged in the grass at the base of the monument, its gold chain glinting in the late afternoon sun. She eased it…

Our pain makes us who we are — I couldn’t put it off any longer. I would have to tell him the truth. That morning, while my android assistant, Arnie, ran through his usual cleaning routine, he found the dog toy under the bed. I thought he’d make the connection. Instead, his carefully composed face stayed in the…

By the time Charon realized someone had taken his rowboat, there were twenty-two souls stacked on the banks of the River Styx. “You’ll have to ferry them over somehow,” Hades, his boss, commanded. “We can’t have them backing up like that. Don’t want folks to get the wrong idea about…

Fences can’t hide all their secrets — I’ve heard it said that good fences make good neighbors. If that’s true, I suppose the opposite must be as well. Bad fences make for bad neighbors. The guy who moved in next to Miss Dianna wasted no time putting up a fence. It was chain link, cobbled together from…

There’s nothing as dangerous as a lover betrayed — There are five ways to tell if your boyfriend is a vampire. I can think of only three ways to tell if he’s cheating on you. First, he starts keeping secrets from you. I can’t always tell when Derrick’s lying, but I try to keep my eyes open. Like this…

The day before her twentieth wedding anniversary, Doreen Clark traveled alone to the Excelsior Hotel, where ghosts were rumored to roam the halls. The hotel, built in the late 1800s, had wood floors that creaked and moaned at night, as though the place were filled with spirits burdened by ghostly…