The Bet

Men like him always wanted to see and be seen. Nadine Schreiber read people the way other people read headlines: in passing, effortlessly. Was it different this time?

The cocoa at half past one

The cocoa was still there when Greta Sonnenschein pushed open the door. Half past two in the morning. Divorce papers on the passenger seat. A gas station in Norristown that smelled of machine oil a...

The House on the Cliff

For twelve years, Johanna had avoided the house. Now she stands on the threshold, with a binder that is supposed to sort everything out, and a silence that cannot be pushed away.

Ink and Silence

The bell above the door gives Johanna away, even though it knows nothing about her. She arrives with a picture on her phone, a template, a prepared answer, and the conviction that she knows what sh...

The Man Without a Face

The rain hits her in the middle of a deserted country road, a flat tire, no reception, no witnesses. Then a motorcycle stops.

Over the bar

She hummed an old song of her grandmother's as he stopped. Ruben Hartog, team manager of the Dutch national football team.

Revenge Plot with a Heartbeat

Nora Takahashi has been using a false name and carrying a knife in her boot for three years. Both for the same man: Ryō Metzger, whom she blames for the death of her brother Kenji. When she finally...

The Ice of Calgary

Calgary, 1988. The ice smells of cold, already hard at work. Diane Okafor-Calloway sits in the press box, watching a Russian hockey player who moves as if the ice belongs to him – or as if he knows...

Kethara-9: What Awakens in the Engine Room

The hum of the reactors was Saskia Brenner's most constant companion—until the first alarm sounded. Not loud. Never loud. Just a discrepancy in the navigation data, minuscule, so subtle that anothe...

Little Italy

Little Italy in October: wet brick walls, roasted chestnuts, and Gia Caruso, setting up her record stand like she does everything – without permission, without apology. Then Matteo Ferrante appears...