I saw a tattoo, or rather a fuzzy, blurry image of a tattoo, deep red in color. I didn’t know what it was of—some kind of animal, maybe. I thought it had legs, but I wasn’t sure.

he flowers’ leaves . . . serve as bridal beds which the Creator has so gloriously arranged, adorned with such noble bed curtains, and perfumed with so many soft scents that the bridegroom with his bride might there celebrate their nuptials with so much the greater solemnity.

Many of the stories in the collection are told by characters who break molds; they are outliers in their societies, and in reading their stories we understand something of what it means to endure in their worlds. These are unexpected tales that satisfy and perplex. In other words, they expand our narrative expectations

A plump woman in a white nurse’s uniform stands in the doorway and reads a few names aloud. She juts out her hip, and from just above the clipboard, her eyes survey the room like she’s about to have a showdown with it. Tyler leans over and whispers in my ear, “I love you, Miggy.” 

This collection is an unflinching exploration of the human body as architecture, as aquatic animal or ambiguous cloud, which pushes rhetorical boundaries concerning “able-ness.”

Most of us at Epiphany are no longer in school, so we’ve moved away from required reading to reading that is individually urgent. Here are the books we’re enjoying these days, from coming-of-age novels to true espionage, and beyond.