Excerpt from The Fruit of Stone by Mark Spragg, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He loops an arm over Woody's shoulders and shuts his eyes and thinks of the refuse God must make in his industry, and it is his father's voice he hears.

"B. McEban," Jock would shout into the air. "Come here, lad. My world needs you." And louder, "B. McEban."

In the dream he sits naked on a plain wooden chair. He breathes evenly. His breath enters, spreads, bubbles in his blood. There is moonlight in the room and the ambers and shadows that it brings. The windows stand open and the night is warm and deep and green, and it has rained but the rain has quit and the sky is clear. He can hear the collect and release of water through the open windows. It falls from the palms of leaves, to broader palms of leaves, pooling on the night-dark ground.

She stands before him. She knows desire is what has brought him to her room. She smiles and begins to turn. And then faster, and there is the sound of her turning in the air.

Her arms and legs lift and fall away as she spins, head back, hair black, as thickened with the night as a dark shuck of succulent. The hair falls to her waist and arcs and slaps at her back, at her shoulders, and her body rotates, glistening brown and terra-cotta in the moonlight. Sweat drips from her knees, breasts, elbows, fingertips, and soaks the smooth board floor.

He hears the horses outside stamping in their sleep. Dark horses. Bay, sorrel, black-brown, gray horses. Horses with hides as pale as his own.

Copyright © 2002 by Mark Spragg. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, Putnam.