Category Archives: Fiction

AN ITALIAN PLAN by Peter Nolan Smith

CHAPTER 1 The winter of 1987 was cold enough to freeze the Housatonic River and the town of Kent erected an elaborate float on the thick ice. Each year the townspeople organized a pool to guess the date when the ice could no longer bear the float’s weight. Two days after a January blizzard I […]

MAYBE TOMORROW Chapter 5 by Peter Nolan Smith

Nightlife on Bleecker Street panned out after the Village Vanguard. Sean gazed out the taxi’s window at the forlorn sidewalk grilled yellow by cruel chrome streetlights. This was how New York looked unprotected by the eyes of love and he turned to Johnny. “Are we there yet?” “Almost.” Johnny slapped on the plastic divider. “Stop […]

THE RULE OF MR. KLAUS by Peter Nolan Smith / Anthony Scibelli

In the early 70s the Twin Towers rose over Lower Manhattan with the promise of a bright future, but by 1975 New York City was declared bankrupt and seven million people lived on the edge of anarchy. The project’s landfill created a desolation along the Hudson. The wind curled around the Twin Towers to blow […]

SHABBAS STARKER by Peter Nolan Smith

New York in the 70s was a tough place. Tough guys were a dime a dozen. Killers cost a lot more. Nowadays some guys think they are tough. Few of them are. Four years ago Richie Boy, his father Manny and I went to Sofia’s on West 48th Street for an after-work drink. Sitting at […]

CHAPTER 17 – FREE AS A BIRD

A humid dusk blanketed the air over Amarillo. The passing semi-trailers dragged diesel fumes on 75 mph slipstreams. AK and Sean stood on the eastbound shoulder of I-40 and a murder of crows clutched the top wire of a barbed wire fence, regarding the two hippies as future carrion. Off in the distant several dirty […]