Short stories published in 1998

Listing 34 stories.

A girl witnesses her loyal childhood servant succumb to the demands of her sister's abusive husband.

An eight-year-old girl attends a family lunch with her aunt, uncles, and cousins. Family drama ensues as a baby is hidden from his grandmother, an uncle drinks too much alcohol, and children indulge in naughty conversation.

A group of young immigrant friends living in Paris spend the summer dining in a Tamil man’s small restaurant. One friend has an unexpected romance with the man, but they all come away with lessons learned about the human heart.

An Indian tour guide takes a second-generation Indian-American family to a tourist destination. When the wife becomes fascinated with the tour guide's other job as a doctor's interpreter, the tour guide entertains romantic fantasies about her.

When her kindergarten teacher's promise that their garden harvest will make an appearance at dinner goes unfulfilled, a young student enacts her revenge.

A petulant young boy in Yugoslavia goes on vacation with his parents and his uncle and aunt. While there, he only stops complaining when his uncle tells unsettling stories about his childhood.

Back in his teenage days, a boy encountered a man with a plan to murder his cheating wife and her lover. Now an old man, he replays the incident in his mind with alternate endings.

After a hurricane destroys a man’s island vacation spot, a guest with AIDS offers to save his family business in exchange for a controversial act of mercy.

In a near-future world, a civilian is caught in a strange criminal investigation when his AI device—which gives him advice about acts of kindness to perform—leads him to be a pawn in a software pirate's revenge scheme.

A couple marry after being unfaithful to each other in a scintillating game of cat and mouse.