“Feeding the Spirits” by Katia D. Ulysse

Everyone knew. My mother never tried to hide who she was . . .

“Rainy Day Duppy Stories #12 & 35” by C.J. Farley

Hurricane Charlie was hurtling down on Jamaica, but instead of cutting their yearly vacation short, Winnie’s parents packed her off to her Grandma’s place in the countryside, a tiny town called Change-Your-Life . . .

“No Man” by Nathaniel Kressen

Bugs fornicate in the still water from the storm. They leave their young to swarm my knotted limbs. I flash my teeth like a horse resisting the needle . . .

“On Being One” by Susan I. Weinstein

He looks at me with woebegone betrayal in his large baby eyes. My tyrannical one-year-old son is teething, recovering from roseola. How could you leave me? say his eyes so expressively. His tiny hands reach out, appealing to me: Pick me up now! . . .

“On or Off This Island” by Robert Arellano

My grandmother Fefita sits for la cena while my great-grandmother Maria Antonia cautions her on the caprices of obstetrics. Fefita is six months pregnant with her first child, my aunt Juana.

“The crying is horrible,” Doña Maria Antonia counsels her fresh-faced daughter-in-law, “but the silence is far worse.”

Read “Home Invasion,” Kaylie Jones’s story from Long Island Noir

To celebrate the release of her new novel The Anger Meridian, today we’re pleased to feature author Kaylie Jones’s story from Long Island Noir.

“The Butcher and the American” by Andrew Cotto

The American walked the ancient Italian countryside on unsteady feet. It was a familiar path, but he had been up very, very late with guests from the States, toasting to liberal optimism with liberal quantities of Tuscan wine. They had, essentially, drunk all night, waiting for election results from the States, which didn’t report until three a.m. Italian time that Barack Obama had become the forty-fourth president of the United States . . .

“Johnny Was” by George Dimos

Johnny was barely fourteen when he started drinking . . .