It’s here! Tin House #76: Summer Reading (Vol. 19, No. 4). Now that I’m getting back to normal (sorta), it’s comforting to have easy access to some great reading in one of my favorite literary journals.

That night, though, a bad thought came to her as she drowsed in the old rump-sprung armchair near the bed. Where did Mr. Cowper keep his money?

She couldn’t worry about it then, in the middle of the night. But she did. Next day as soon as she’d got him looked after she went into the other room of the two he’d sub-rented from her and Petey two weeks ago and looked around. She felt like a criminal, but she looked into his coat pockets, and at the pocketbook she found there, which had twelve dollars in it. She checked the little chest of drawers where he’d put his shirts and stuff. There was nothing else of his in the room but some books and papers on the worktable, and under the table the little humpback trunk that was all his luggage.

He’d locked it, but there was a trunk key lying out on the table with what had been in his pockets when he went up to the mine. She had to look.

—URSULA K. LE GUIN, “Pity and Shame”

Continue reading →