Recommended Reading from Online Magazines

Great new(ish) stories from around the Web. Forget work for a minute and read some fiction. It’s good for you.

– The shoe was not a literal shoe but a shoe-shaped apartment, a long centre hall ending in a crimp. From above, it looked like a boot lain on its side. She rented, but two grandsons would later buy the place. Her upwardly mobile desires were reserved for progeny, though naturally some children succeeded where others didn’t. “Neither tragedy nor triumph,” she told herself, “just a life.” — J. David Stevens in The Journal

– It was late night Tuesday, or maybe Sunday, early—I’m a recovering alcoholic, so bear with me—when I swallowed down my last cup of coffee, picked up the phone, and dialed my agent. I said, “Babe, I’d do anything to get published. I’d buy a scented candle. I’d settle down with a nice girl, get married and pretend everything is OK. I mean anything. I’d quit drinking forever, maybe.” – Sean Lovelace in Pank Magazine

– We’re at a tea party, it’s the second tea party in a month, only this one at least includes wine, even though it’s served in teacups; as a vessel for wine, bone china seems to lie somewhere between a juice glass and one of those awful Tupperware cups that our children drank from for years. Our children have their own sets of wineglasses now, and those Tupperware cups still look like new. This will apparently be our children’s legacy: four foul-tasting but otherwise perfectly good plastic cups along with the rights to an essay that simply won’t die and that has in fact paid for several very nice bottles of wine. — Carolyn Foster Segal in PIF

– Alex paced back and forth in front of the movie theater and wondered if he should try and sell his extra ticket. He did not want to sell the ticket. Getting some money for the ticket would be a pathetic consolation for the loss that was the occasion for having an extra ticket. It would rob him of the one thing he still had, which was a sense of loss. He spent ten minutes loitering around a table full of used books across the street from the theater. The guy standing behind the table wore a short sleeve shirt, his arms were crossed at his chest, and he had a beard. He looked like he ate wood for breakfast. — Thomas Beller in Tsarina

– Mom put our lunch dishes in the kitchen sink, shoved plates, pizza crust, chicken wing bones and all into a messy teetering stack. Her red hair lit up the window and the falling snow outside behind her. I was glad I didn’t inherit her red hair, and always kind of figured I looked more like my father. “Sam,” she said,  seriously. “It’s not really a place for kids.” — Amy Amoroso in Upstreet

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– Ed. Note: DSM is not affiliated with these publications. We merely appreciate the hard work being done by the authors and the editors and wish to bring more light to their efforts. Every Monday we present to our readers essays, poems and stories from other literary magazines. Our goal is to showcase the Web’s strongest writing, and also to serve as a literary hub for time-pinched, interested fiction enthusiasts. Meanwhile, throughout the week, we’ll continue to publish our own stories, interviews, and poems.