By Michael Shapiro
What’s the worst that could happen, I asked myself, when an attractive young woman I’d met in Tiananmen Square invited me to dinner. Three hours later I was being held against my will in a dimly lit ground-floor room many miles from the heart of Beijing. I didn’t know where I was, a [...]

by Pamela Cordell Avis
A modern tale of metamorphosis.
I was at one of life’s crossroads, you know, the kind that either can or cannot divert you to a journey down an untraveled road.
To move from L.A. to a tiny farming village in France was not an option, it was not even an idea. It often happens, [...]

by Carmen Semler
“I wish for you that when you grow up you will return to Malta and visit the good Sisters at the orphanage.” Those were the words my father repeated to me during his worst of times. I knew what he meant by “the good Sisters” and how important it was for him that [...]

by Catherine Watson
If the key had been pretty, I could have worn it around my neck like jewelry for the last 40 years, but it’s utterly plain — bronze-colored, round-headed, the kind the Yale company stamps out by the millions every year.
I have kept it anyway, not for its looks, but [...]

by Larry Habegger
Do you remember your first time?
Sometimes the simplest thing can shake you loose from your moorings and show you the world again through fresh eyes. I was daydreaming at 30,000 feet above the Pacific with Pachelbel’s Canon in D wafting through my headphones when we ruffled through light turbulence. I looked out [...]

by Matthew Link
When we were out at sea on Bungo Rye, we kids always wanted to jump into the crystal Pacific when it was calm. Dad would haul out the sea anchor: the big round canvas tarp connected by a ring of ropes like a parachute connected to the boat. Its drag would stop the [...]