Siren Song
Reading Time: 16 minutesWhen a chain-smoking, foul-mouthed finned gypsy washes up in a small Oregon town, the acting Chief of Police finds herself becoming a reluctant mermaids’ rights activist.
Short Stories
72 Versions of Simon
Reading Time: 15 minutesSimon, a weak man who suffers from stomach pain and headaches, is afraid of everything–fog, insects, his boss. But all of his pain and fears disappear when Simon finds a whole new universe on his Peek device.
The Angel of El Escorial
Reading Time: 8 minutesI concealed the marvel that we discovered in the foothills of Sierra de Guadarrama. That I kept it a secret is my greatest sin.
The Remover
Reading Time: 37 minutesIn a world where vampires are evolved alongside humankind, one a vampire is experiencing a mid-life crisis which includes an unhealthy attachment to his long-dead wife, a struggle with his faith, and mental illness.
Lily
Reading Time: 15 minutesWhen this narrator finds his “special lady,” he is swept away with her beauty and perfection. However, she has a hidden secret and events become increasingly bizarre until he finds out the outlandish truth about her.
Even Black is Bright in Oz
Reading Time: 5 minutesToto doesn’t understand why Dorothy ever wanted to leave Oz, so he finds a way back.
A Pleasant Walk, A Pleasant Talk
Reading Time: 5 minutesWho are they what do they want with us? We bring you the breaking news.
Refugee
Reading Time: 17 minutes“A unique, bizarre talent” was how critics described Timera Lovich and her wildy speculative poetry. But even she didn’t know the true genesis of her imaginary tales until she realized she wasn’t who or what she thought she was. Until it was too late.
Alien Fugitive
Reading Time: 12 minutesQuinn Baxter escaped from a tyrannical government and finds that he is now an alien fugitive on the run from his planet’s security squad.
The Howler on the Sales Floor
Reading Time: 8 minutesA hellbeast stuck in a crappy office job struggles to comply with his sensitivity training.
Maize
Reading Time: 21 minutesFor Althea Stagg, demigod detective, family history and mythology are often the same thing. So it comes as no surprise to her when a case leads her to a corn maze, and the monster that stalks its prey within.
Safe Harbor
Reading Time: 12 minutesA story about a young woman’s journey to find her true identity after her mother dies. It’s also a story about love, Mother Earth, and living without fear.
Excerpt: Krim Times
Reading Time: 8 minutesOnce upon a time, there was a virtual world that was almost, but not quite, completely unlike 1500s England. The assassin peered out from the window overlooking Leadenhall Street. It was mid-day and there were plenty of targets. Local residents, mostly, but also a fair number of tourists and would-be adventurers looking for quests. The
The Hungry Ones
Reading Time: 15 minutesA woman with no memory wakes up in a city with no history. The city is alive. Among skyscrapers of flesh and bridges of bone, Kora hunts for her identity and for the forbidden food she craves: a predator and prey at once.
Milagro
Reading Time: 11 minutesJimi awoke, moving only her eyes. It was something she learned from Lonny. He called it pulling together the threads of your life before you start moving around. It’s a focusing thing. She reviewed what she could do this day to make her dreams come true. Life is more manageable if you start each day
Quietly, Ross
Reading Time: 13 minutesTen-year-old Ross stopped sleeping when a rat-that-was-more-than-a-rat crept from his closet every night.
Heaven’s Shutting Gate
Reading Time: 7 minutesA time traveler decides to rid history of serial killers. Men like Manson & Bundy prove easy, but just how does one track down Jack the Ripper?
The Church of the Written Word
Reading Time: 2 minutesI slip into the confessional booth and sit down on the pale green cushion. It’s a peaceful place redolent of oiled wood, clean old ladies, and thousands of years of tradition. On my right, where the outline of a priest will appear, is a beautiful screen of elaborately carved wooden filigree. Before he arrives, I feel tranquility like in no other place on earth.
The priest appears. I can tell from his voice he is younger than I would like. As is traditional, I start the session.
The Revenge of the Trees
Reading Time: 5 minutesThe Dutch Goose is one of those cozy little bars in the neighborhood surrounding MIT. It’s a place where you can pick up a sandwich on the way home from campus or have a few beers while doing homework. Couples drop by to have a quick drink before their special event. It’s the kind of
A Drama in the Air
Reading Time: 23 minutesWe were to start at noon. The impatient crowd which pressed around the enclosed space, filling the enclosed square, overflowing into the contiguous streets, and covering the houses from the ground-floor to the slated gables, presented a striking scene.
The Evil Eye
Reading Time: 26 minutesThe Moreot, Katusthius Ziani, travelled wearily, and in fear of its robber-inhabitants, through the pashalik of Yannina; yet he had no cause for dread.
The Star
Reading Time: 15 minutesIt was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in December.
The Crystal Egg
Reading Time: 23 minutesThere was, until a year ago, a little and very grimy-looking shop near Seven Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of “C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities,” was inscribed. The contents of its window were curiously variegated.
A Story of the Stone Age
Reading Time: 75 minutesThis story is of a time beyond the memory of man, before the beginning of history, a time when one might have walked dryshod from France (as we call it now) to England, and when a broad and sluggish Thames flowed through its marshes to meet its father Rhine, flowing through a wide and level country that is under water in these latter days, and which we know by the name of the North Sea.
A Story of the Days to Come
Reading Time: 107 minutesThis story is of a time beyond the memory of man, before the beginning of history, a time when one might have walked dryshod from France (as we call it now) to England, and when a broad and sluggish Thames flowed through its marshes to meet its father Rhine, flowing through a wide and level country that is under water in these latter days, and which we know by the name of the North Sea.
The Man Who Could Work Miracles
Reading Time: 22 minutesHis name was George McWhirter Fotheringay—not the sort of name by any means to lead to any expectation of miracles—and he was clerk at Gomshott’s. He was greatly addicted to assertive argument. It was while he was asserting the impossibility of miracles that he had his first intimation of his extraordinary powers.