Robert L Arend: 9 books

Michael was the lead story on the six o’clock local news. The too-clear surveillance camera footage showed him running on the edge of the traffic lane to grab the old lady’s purse. She would not let go, and their tug of war caused her to fall backward after he finally broke her grip. The tape...

Mother paused, drew the butterfly to her lips and whispered some secret before continuing her story.“It was but a month ago,” she recollected. “I wakened to discover your father resting on the side of our bed reserved to him throughout our marriage. To be sure, I was uncertain of his identity...

The more she aged, the darker Abigail Tucker’s solitary world had to be. Electric lights cost money. The cost of those twisty bulbs meant that, when the cheap but no longer made bulbs died, another lamp became only a decoration that needed dusted like her many knick-knacks spread on shelves and...

Stephen Hawking roamed the classroom in his powered wheelchair, undeterred by the narrow space between the rows. He simply passed through the desks and his students like every hologram instructor did. “The Higgs boson, though isolated, has never been observed directly,” his voice buzzed. “The...

Renee was reminded of that moment, eight years before, when her life froze and lost all hope of ever having any meaning, when she had been sitting alone on the school bus (nobody ever took the seat next to her) and gazing through the window. She’d been seventeen, thinking about the senior prom she...

“O, Jesus, sweet Jesus, thank-you,” his mother’s trembling voice was what Jared heard and her distraught tear-streaked face was what he saw when he dared to open his eyes again.A few feet away, his father stood, arms folded and expression wary. “How can he be alive? His brain’s almost all...

Had ICS been telemarketing products instead of debt collection, Reed knew he would never have made salesperson of the month. He would have quit the first payday and lied to his mother that he had been fired for being too honest with the customers. Though educated first by management in consumer protection...

“You’re a single mother,” the F.B.I. man stated, not questioned.“Yes,” Christina answered flatly, determined to resist the implications of being interrogated like she was white trash. “What’s that got to do with anything?”“No husband.” Again, a statement.“Not lookin’. Are you?”...

Andrea had created The Engagement Game eight years before, after the failure of her first marriage. She had edged the pink tapestry with red and gray squares that could fork into the path of the heart or into the storm. All of that weaving and stitching had helped her to survive all the hurt and the...