Katie's parents, both teachers, rigged the vote to guarantee she would lose the class election, believing the humbling experience would be "a good teaching moment" for the family.

Turnip Tucker was a gambling man so he took his chances with love.

Stumbling on his childhood hiding place, he was transported back to that happier time.

At dinner each of the guests sat in a bubble of their own self-importance and while they were only inches apart they were too far away for any meaningful connection.

The squirrel mocked me without cease, its tail twitching with mischief.

She took Tango lessons to prepare herself for the day she could dance on her enemies' graves.

As a reporter she knew the truth was like a greased pig — you were more likely to end up covered in mud and holding onto nothing but air than find it — yet in her personal life she held on to a view so black and white it would have made a bible-thumping Baptist preacher blush.

The rumors Ted told were so ridiculous eventually even he found them not worth spreading.

The clouds hung low in the valley and the wind carried the smell of decay from the river.

The battle lines drawn, the neighbors hunkered down in their respective hovels and prepared for the long war ahead, which would be filled with calls to the cops and late-night sorties to perform small, but highly annoying acts of vandalism.

Time seemed to shift and sway for Trudy, memories and current events all a jumble.

The bullet ripped through him and sent him tumbling from his horse, stopping his men in their tracks, all raw recruits suddenly unsure of themselves.

"Trying to find an obscure, long-dead historian was like looking for a sober man on Bourbon Street," he thought, sitting in the New Orleans public library staring at the endless shelves.

He carried his gun in a guitar case because he was a traditionalist.

Their attempts at improvement made their products unwieldy, ugly and superfluous.

The fires burned at the edge of their land.

"The well had dried up and it was time to move on," he later recalled, his face still wearing the brutality of those years.

The men's humor was course and of the gallows variety and grated on Trey, with his Cambridge education, as they lay in the trench waiting for the Germans to attack.

In Rivertown only the ghosts remained.

The ship's mournful horn signaled its demise.

Words often lodged themselves in Lilly's mind, bouncing around as she went about her daily tasks and today it was "palimpsest"she couldn't shake.

the down-and-out wine taster held his nose and swigged the cheap booze, recalling a time when only the high-dollar stuff passed between his lips.

The boat's wake was like a zipper opening a jacket.

When younger, he loved blustery weather - spitting rain, a hint of a chill and a roaring wind - but as he grew older he hoped for nothing more than days filled with warmth and calm.

Patricia Patrice McPatrick came from a family obsessed with the New England Patriots and alliteration.

The media was clamoring at their door on Tuesday and had forgotten their names by Friday.

The dying man's last words: "His voice...It was reedy," left the detectives wondering if the killer had a high pitched voice or went by the name Reedy.

Temptations, by the standards of the average man, were everywhere in Las Vegas, but Daggert, there for a checkers tournament, cared only for the red and black pieces before him.

The SUV jumped into gear and slammed into the storefront, cheap lingerie and sex toys cascading into the street.

All of his coworkers were either clowns or freaks, Burt thought, but then what did he expect from a traveling circus.

"Martha Stewart and hippies are a lot alike," she mused. "They both like to make their own stuff."