I knew I was always going to be a second-rate lawyer, that's when I switched to crime and as it turned out, I was much, much better in that field.

Looking out of the kitchen window Elizabeth saw a hot air balloon descend onto her lawn and watched in horror as a man wearing a black top hat and a bathrobe jumped out and kidnapped her dog.

"Sal you ain't smart, you ain't handsome and you got no conscience so the only way you're going to make it in this life is to stick to killing," Roberta told her son one morning over coffee and toast.

Sometimes I'm back there in that lodge with them and ol' Stan is playing on the sax so soft and of course she's there, with her beehive and that voice...that voice so smooth and sweet it soothes my aching head.

His fingers were losing their grip on the slimy rock as the swift water relentlessly beat against him.

The old woman invited him in and though he was told not to go into strangers' homes, he entered, even eating a few cookies offered—not caring that they might be poisoned—because she seemed so sad and alone.

The house I lived in my entire life seemed to both expand and contract—in my youth, so large; in my adulthood, so small; and with the passing of my family, a vast expanse—like I was Alice in Wonderland.