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    The Box Top Man
    The Box Top Man
    The Box Top Man
    Ebook57 pages47 minutes

    The Box Top Man

    By Joseph D'Agnese

    ()

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    About this ebook

    (Note: This book contains three short stories. All three are included in a larger collection entitled Daggyland #2.)

    INFIDELITY
    An insecure housewife falls for a man she won in a contest.

    MURDER
    A dying man delays breaking the truth to his wife in order to hear the juicy gossip of a neighborhood slaying.

    BETRAYAL
    A self-absorbed shrink is haunted by a childhood crime.

    D’Agnese gives us three stories that read like Cheever gone from bad to worse, where disillusioned characters dwell in the realm of metro-suburban surreal.

    *

    “D’Agnese writes the most unusual and interesting books.”—Bookviews

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJoseph D'Agnese
    Release dateJan 7, 2015
    ISBN9781941410158
    The Box Top Man
    Author

    Joseph D'Agnese

    Joseph D’Agnese is a journalist and author who has written for children and adults alike. He’s been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Discover, and other national publications. In a career spanning more than twenty years, his work has been honored with awards in three vastly different areas—science journalism, children’s literature, and mystery fiction. His science articles have twice appeared in the anthology Best American Science Writing. His children’s book, Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci, was an honoree for the Mathical Book Prize—the first-ever prize for math-themed children’s books. One of his crime stories won the 2015 Derringer Award for short mystery fiction. Another of his stories was selected by mega-bestselling author James Patterson for inclusion in the prestigious annual anthology, Best American Mystery Stories 2015. D’Agnese’s crime fiction has appeared in Shotgun Honey, Plots with Guns, Beat to a Pulp, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. D’Agnese lives in North Carolina with his wife, the New York Times bestselling author Denise Kiernan (The Girls of Atomic City).

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      Book preview

      The Box Top Man - Joseph D'Agnese

      The Box Top Man

      The Box Top Man

      Three Short Stories

      Joseph D’Agnese

      Nutgraf Productions LLC

      THE BOX TOP MAN

      Published by Joseph D’Agnese at Smashwords

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright © 2014 Joseph D’Agnese

      NutGraf Productions LLC

      First digital edition: September 2014

      Cover design by GoOnWrite.com

      The Box Top Man, Knickerbocker Kill, and Fork in the Heart © 2014 Joseph D’Agnese

      This e-book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced in whole or in part, scanned, photocopied, recorded, distributed in any printed or electronic form, or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without express written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      josephdagnese.com

      In this e-book

      The Box Top Man by Joseph D’Agnese

      INFIDELITY

      A young housewife falls for a man she won in a contest.

      MURDER

      A dying man delays breaking the truth to his wife

      in order to hear the juicy gossip of a neighborhood slaying.

      BETRAYAL

      A self-absorbed shrink is haunted by a childhood crime.

      D’Agnese gives us three stories that read like Cheever gone from bad to worse, where disillusioned characters dwell in the realm of metro-suburban surreal.

      To learn about special offers and events, and to claim your free e-book, sign up for the author’s newsletter

      .

      The Box Top Man

      Cal tended to forget that he was the one who suggested Sharon send in the box tops. Cal was one of those enthusiastic advertising executives who enjoyed trying out the competition’s campaigns on his family. The Cranstons lived in a renovated farmhouse in Greenwich and belonged to that generation of young college grads who regarded Phil Donahue as their mentor, bran as a twice-weekly ritual, and argyle as a kind of family crest.

      Cal himself was a handsome man who shunned polyester socks and mowed his lawn on Saturdays wearing his old Yale sweats. He enjoyed this weekend exertion because, of all the things he possessed, he took the greatest pride in his home, in his daughter Kristin, and his wife Sharon. Whenever he thought of his responsibilities as breadwinner, he was inclined to think of his own hoary father waging daily battles with Manhattan’s subway engines just to provide a future for his growing family. I want yiz all to be happy, his father would say.

      And Cal was happy. He derived pleasure from those things related to beginning a home. Even in this day and age, he delighted in Sharon’s questions on furniture and the right clothes and pre-school for Kristin and finances because making decisions was the husband’s job—or so he felt. The thrill of parenthood and husbandhood and imminent success made him feel so charged with pride that he dared not tread upon the corny Home Sweet Home doormat his mother had given him.

      It was Kristin who demanded the cereal in the first place. Two-year-olds tend to do that. CRUNCHLY-UNCHLY CHEWS! (The cereal with the roly-poly-ohhs). She had heard the commercial on TV and sang it at breakfast:

      Hey nonny-nonny-oh!

      What’s the good news?

      Better hurry and go…

      Get your Crunchly-Unchly Chews!

      Cute, was all Cal said.

      She doesn’t even know what she’s saying, Sharon had said, frowning.

      Cal thought his wife looked prettiest when she wore her maternal frown. She was one of those intelligent women whose fate it was to be forever torn between her extensive schooling and the reality of her daily life, the loftiness of Shakespeare, and the complexity of the Sunday coupon pullout section. She ardently wished to devote her life to motherhood, despite her qualifications as an English teacher, or possibly a professor,

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