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The Falling Marbles Bimonthly
An every-other-month offering of and about fiction from the premier publisher of literary fiction in the State of Texas
ISSUE V (Mar/Apr ’26)
featuring a peek into a classic’s rebirth, a murder with imperial implications, a viewing of Sam in Samuel, and much more
“Cascading worth, one work at a time”
Stories
LETTER TO AN AMERICAN EDITOR by Mark Gullick
A snippet snapshot of the great trouble of our times
DAY ONE, STORY FIVE by Stewart Berg
A selection from The Pentameron; or, The Five Days of Fifty Stories, as Told by a Group of Friends Escaping the Covid Pandemic, a reworking of the 15th Century work “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles.” Part romance and part satire of romance, The Pentameron features a group of Puget Sound friends who, spending a week on Lake Chelan, tell stories — all of them true — of the people at home.
HELL IS A PLACE ON EARTH by Shay Martin
A downswing-then-uplift for the livers of a certain time, in the vein of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.”
MURDER ON THE FIFTH FLOOR by Andrew Bacevich
A first-chapter excerpt from Andrew Bacevich’s upcoming novel, Murder in Manila, releasing May 2026. The story of a murder of imperial implications, Murder in Manila tells of an homicide investigation in the 1920’s Philippines that just might prove to alter the United States’ — or whoever else — control of the overseas territory.
UNCLE SAMUEL, THE PROPHET by Connor Nathans
What if Uncle Sam proved to be the Prophet Samuel?
WHEN HARRY MET SALLY by Stephen Paul Foster
An early-chapter excerpt from Stephen Paul Foster’s After Harry Met Sally, the parental investigations of a young man who never knew his father and only knew his mother on a first-name basis
On Stories
A STUDY IN INHUMANITY: “THE LOTTERY” by Stewart Berg
A shearing away of the uncertainty surrounding Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.”