Excerpt from Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Day after day, I told Clara not to worry: "We just need one good night." We kept lying to each other, pretending that our hunger was part of the game. Social graces get you meagre results in a shuttered town. We started haunting the bars around the C.C.C. camps. The gaunt men there had next to nothing, and I felt a pang lifting anything from them. Back in the boarding house, our fingers spidering through wallets, we barely spoke to each other. Clara and I began to disappear into adjacent rooms with strangers. She was better off before, my mind whispered. For the first time since we'd left Florida, it occurred to me that our expedition might fail.

Excerpted from Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell. Copyright © 2019 by Karen Russell. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.