Renna’s Crossing Chapter 6: Rainy Day Bird Cafe
Reading Time: 14 minutesRenna’s quest for knowledge takes her to a hidden library, and the path to its doors reveals a town’s strange undercurrents.
Fiction
Where Old Wood Decays
Reading Time: 5 minutesA timeworn witch, the last of her coven, fights her young replacement to cling to the post she’s held for centuries as the steward of the Mother Tree.
Shrinking
Reading Time: 5 minutesA woman goes home to visit her parents, even though every visit causes their house to shrink.
Toddler’s Tidy Tale: Every Mother’s Dream
Reading Time: 3 minutesA weary mother’s wish comes true when her toddler’s toys mysteriously start tidying themselves. As she embraces the magic, she soon learns that all enchantments—like the holiday season—must come to an end.
Renna’s Crossing Chapter 5: Gift From the Magi
Reading Time: 25 minutes“Magic may be held by any hand and bred by any soul. That was one of your grandmother’s most insistent lessons. It is all just a matter of discipline, and passion.”
Shadowed
Reading Time: 9 minutesA cable network host of the paranormal, Dr. Knute Quinn, ignores his old professor’s warnings about investigating shadow creatures, monstrosities much more aggressive and dangerous compared to the more passive shadow figures, dedicating his premiere second season telecast to the subject . . . with horrific consequences.
Playing with Lions
Reading Time: 2 minutesAboard a spaceship of giants is a school in which a teacher uses the creatures of Earth to show his pupils that the value of life is not determined by its size.
Not-Your-Earth Day
Reading Time: 4 minutesHumans consume micro-plastics and nano-plastics in huge quantities starting in the womb. These plastics never leave the body. Yet the public rejoices in the advent of micro-organisms that consume plastic wherever it might be. Should we really thank nature for taking out the trash this way?
Through a Glass Darkly
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn the quiet depths of an Ottawa laboratory, Malcolm Reiner dared to rewrite the very fabric of biology, pursuing the dream of mirror-image life forms—an uncharted path on the edge of human understanding.
Renna’s Crossing Chapter 4: Renna’s Going on a Trip + We Who Bloom in Early Spring
Reading Time: 17 minutesKyle ducked his head as a spinning flapjack narrowly missed him. He brandished a batter-covered spatula at Derek. “Cease fire at once! You know that’s against the Breakfast Geneva Code!”
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A Taste of Evil
Reading Time: 4 minutesAn old vending machine serves up more than just a stale Devil Dog.
The Dark Side of Sweet Corn
Reading Time: 8 minutesThe corn field across the road had always been a part of the landscape, a quiet presence that whispered in the wind and marked the seasons with its growth. This year, though, something was different.
Renna’s Crossing Chapter 3: The Visitor, Twelve Years Prior
Reading Time: 11 minutesSomething from the direction of the forest made them turn about sharply, muscles tensed, a reflex with no apparent trigger. Mab put her thick, gnarled hand upon Job’s shoulder. “A bad visitor. Reeking of sulfur and forgotten hate.”
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The Curio Shop
Reading Time: 4 minutesA blind man makes a deal with the devil that doesn’t work out as he had hoped.
The Oracle at Delphi
Reading Time: 14 minutesThe salesman of a device that predicts the immediate future finds himself in the pitch meeting of his life when he’s taken hostage by a trio of armed criminals.
Blood and Saltwater
Reading Time: 2 minutesA mermaid’s lament over her murdered lover, and her call to wage war against those who killed him.
Come Back Yesterday
Reading Time: 7 minutesA man learns of his destiny when he discovers the body of the mother he never knew. A letter left at he scene is hard to believe.
Renna’s Crossing Chapter 2: Renna’s Room
Reading Time: 12 minutesSurely Job had a Reason for coming to see her, with lots of Relevant Information and perhaps even some Responsibilities. She didn’t know, so she was nervous. She wanted them to speak first and get on with it.
Act of God: In The Beginning
Reading Time: 6 minutesEarth is facing a coming ice age. Humanity has marshaled its technology and resources in an attempt to delay the great cold; a diversion necessary to maintain hope for the people. But some few know the truth. There is little hope left on Earth. But there may still be hope in the stars.
Our God is a Jealous God
Reading Time: 12 minutesA woman seeks healing at an isolated ranch in the southwest. It goes as expected until it doesn’t.
Providence Will Provide
Reading Time: 4 minutesNaima has everything she needs, and everything she wants, and more besides. Providence does just what it says: whatever you need, it provides. Coming here was the right thing to do, the best thing. Coming here was the only thing that made sense. Coming here was Naima’s idea, after all.
car·niv·o·rous
Reading Time: 19 minutesA detective investigating a string of gristly murders comes face to face with an unimaginable horror.
Renna’s Crossing Chapter 1: The Visitor, Twelve Years Later
Reading Time: 13 minutesJob, a youthful but accomplished witch, has come to the foster home of Inglenook to meet with 16-year old Renna Porter. Their purpose is a mystery even to the three dads of the foster home, but Job’s quiet tension indicates sudden change incoming.
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Audit
Reading Time: 8 minutesIn the future, the government conducts regular audits of people’s thoughts in order to root out criminals and to prevent corporate fraud. A young man discovers a hack on the black market that allows him to have his objectionable thoughts overwritten with benevolent thoughts. Naturally, however, there is a catch.
Transference
Reading Time: 4 minutesDr Peters’ new patient suffers from a particularly unpleasant recurring nightmare but, after a session with the doctor, it seems that the ‘fetus-man’ has gone away for good.
The Coffee Shop
Reading Time: 4 minutesA celebrated sci fi author gets annoyed by fans constantly tracking him down at his favorite writing haunts and pitching him with ideas.
The Significance of the Ostrich
Reading Time: 4 minutesJoin Anya Lasagna on a tour of the Historic Ballyhoo Place World Heritage Site! Marvel together at the ingenuity, whimsy and stoicism with which old-style humans once faced the endless vicissitudes of their own bleak reality.
*Parking validation available on request.
Traveler
Reading Time: 25 minutesVera and Sorrow thought they were going to the Facing Cities to intercept a missive sent by their enemies, the League. What happened next was…unexpected.
In the Shadow of the Lotus Tree
Reading Time: 4 minutesWhat would you give up in order to be young again?
Schrödinger’s Dilemma
Reading Time: 4 minutesA man receives a mysterious puzzle box with no sender, igniting an existential journey into the nature of self and reality. As obsession consumes him, the box reveals an impossible and horrifying truth—one that will shatter his reality and unlock his own doom.
When It Found Us
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhile returning from a nearby lake on a camping trip, a couple discovers their camp trashed—with a strange sparkling substance coating everything—and are forced to run when something unnatural gives chase.
At a higher dose, love
Reading Time: 13 minutesIs human photosynthesis the future we need to avert climate change?
This Place Will Be the Death of Us
Reading Time: 14 minutesA group of therapists are attacked by their own building. They must rely on a drug-induced second sight to survive.
The Wager
Reading Time: 17 minutesAfter a supernatural entity kidnaps their unborn child from the womb, a young New Orleans couple seeks help from a Choctaw conjuror to get him back.
A Kindness, A Cruelty
Reading Time: 4 minutes“The arrow is easy,” Elspeth said. “If it is a kindness, it is only in comparison to a cruelty.”
Slip
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe plan failed, or I wouldn’t be here assisting a paramedic as he straps my corpse onto a gurney. Confusing? Yeah. Try being me.
Life In 2050
Reading Time: 32 minutesThis novel is a pastiche of the classic novel by George Orwell 1984.
All In The Game
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn a battle-ridden world, lives are spent like currency, and one soldier tries to understand what happened to his comrade.
The Rarest of Contraband
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe best thing about running the ship’s laundry was the many nooks and crannies to hide contraband. I had powder, of course, and weapons, the bread and butter of any smuggling outfit. But a month ago things changed when the hyperdrive malfunctioned.
Gods and Monsters Installment 45: Love Without Compromise
Reading Time: 5 minutesHe will miss the fog and the light on the Bay. But he hungers for the solace of the Redwoods’ towering shadows. He needs to hear waves break endlessly on wild rocky shores.
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Imaginary Children
Reading Time: 24 minutesA lonely, powerful woman takes part in a risky experiment that allows her to see visions of the children she could conceive with certain men—strangers whom she would find deeply attractive. She becomes obsessed with finding a man who is triggering visions of one child in particular.
From an Ixil, To a Gringo
Reading Time: 4 minutes“Juana has stopped ageing,” the village elder tells Theo as they step towards the distant shack. “She ceased about five years ago. Said she couldn’t grow any older without dying. And if Juana dies, there’s no telling what Edna might do.”
The End Is Nigh: Gods and Monsters in Retrospect
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe release of the final installment of Gods and Monsters is only a week away, so we now invite you to look back on the story and hear from King herself about what the writing and publication process has been like for this unique and thrilling novel.
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Red Jenny and the Pirates of Buffalo
Reading Time: 25 minutesIt is a time our children will know better. The sloth and frivolousness we wallowed in has left them a world with new players in different positions, where the spotlight has shifted and those that were once proud are now desperate. In this new world, the North American center of political and economic power has moved up above the 49th Parallel, and the relationship between the old and new superpowers is not as warm as it had been before.
Gods and Monsters Installment 44: Premonitions of Endings
Reading Time: 5 minutes“Tarantulas are loners, like you,” says Ryo, resting a weightless hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “I was a loner too. Perhaps if I had it to do over… But that’s foolish talk. I don’t, I can’t. I don’t know if you can, but…”
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