“This isn’t the way it was supposed to be.” That’s all Adam Burlingham could say when City of London police, acting on a directive from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, came in and shut down his brokerage firm. “Be careful, you oafs,” he shouted as two men grabbed the antique stock ticker, the one his…

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Frances said as she sat in the green brocade wingback in her oldest friend’s living room, “but yesterday, while picking up my favorite pair of pumps at the shoe repair shop, I succumbed to the charms of a very attractive man.” Claudia swiveled round on the piano bench…

I can’t say how it happened. One day I was willing to stay and the next I wasn’t. No big bells and whistles. Not even the infamous toothpaste cap out-of-place. Just done. All the juice drained from the relationship like a lemon accidentally left in the car for too long in a hot summer. Desiccated…