These are three very different stories, both in the sense that they are not your everyday reads and that they are very different from each other. All smart, all sharp, all at least a little bit strange–all favorites.
So: a link and a snippet for each.
“Sing a Song of Sixpence” by Samuel Ligon
This was after the pie was opened, after the king had turned to the bottle, and the queen to one of her young lovers. It was a pattern with them, part of the reason for all the laundry — the king soiling his robes and pantaloons, the queen binging and purging and fornicating all over the castle. They were horrible people, the king and queen.
“Twin Study” by Stacey Richter
Of course, we were identical genetically; what’s more, we shared a placenta; but inside, in our brains, souls, and hearts, we weren’t the same. This became apparent slowly, even though I knew what Samantha was going to say before she said it, and I knew which boys she’d like before she met them, and we always got up at the same time in the night to pee, among other uncanny similarities.
“Girl and Giraffe” by Lydia Millet
They had cats instead of children—George had raised scores of lions while Joy had moved on from lions to cheetahs to leopards—and lions and leopards could not cohabit, so George and Joy also lived apart.