Literature Short Stories

Paige Barrett was living her dream as a journalist in New York City, racking up bylines as a staff writer at The Razor, a cutting-edge online magazine. But when she’s suddenly fired from her job and dumped by her boyfriend, she finds herself back home in the quaint seaside town of Shoreham, Florida, waiting tables and living in her sister’s guesthouse. Restless and itching for something meaningful to occupy her time, she decides to launch a true-crime podcast about the death of Jessica Cady, a beloved teacher who died mysteriously 20 years earlier.

The Starship Atlantis takes you on an unforgettable journey through the extraordinary. From alien civilizations and rogue AI to desperate missions on the brink of collapse, these stories will transport you across the stars into the heart of the unknown. This anthology features six never-before-published novellas and short stories, plus two exclusive bonus tales.

This is collection of 18 crime stories with a diverse range of characters and scenarios, from guilt-ridden fraudsters to lovesick murderers.

A seventeen-year-old boy, bullied and heartbroken, hangs himself. And although he felt terribly alone, his suicide changes everyone around him. His parents are devastated.

Emery Thompson hates Calvin Chamberlain. From the way he acts like he’s better than everyone to the way he moves through the world thinking his podcast is the cream of the crop, every little thing about the man gets to him. Even that dashing, oh-so-confident smile. He’d rather be caught dead than be around the man any longer than necessary—or admit that last part out loud.

In this charming and heartwarming retelling of the classic It’s a Wonderful Life, Camille Pagán introduces us to Bailey, a dutiful yet sharp-witted 30-something who finds herself on the verge of a nervous breakdown as Christmas Eve approaches. As if it wasn’t enough that Bailey’s husband just cheated on her, the family business she’s been running since her parents died, which employs most of her small town, is about to go under. But even as she’s questioning whether her life has any meaning, Bailey bumps into a handsome stranger who claims to know her.

Last year, Night Shade Books unleashed The Book of Cthulhu onto an unsuspecting world. Critically acclaimed as the ultimate Cthulhu anthology” and a must read’ for fans of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos,” The Book of Cthulhu went where no collection of mythos tales had gone before: to the very edge of madness and beyond. For nearly a century, H. P. Lovecraft’s tales of malevolent Great Old Ones existing beyond the dimensions of this world, beyond the borders of sanity, have captured and held the imaginations of writers and aficionados of the dark, the macabre, the fantastic, and the horrible. Now, because you demanded more, anthologist Ross E. Lockhart has risked all to dive back into the Cthulhu canon, combing through mind-shattering manuscripts and moldering tomes to bring you The Book of Cthulhu 2, with even more tales of tentacles, terror, and madness.

Season Two, Volume Two. Three more catastrophic crimes lead the Baker Street Team to distant shores as they struggle to save Lucy’s mother and defeat a relentless foe once and for all.

In this festive anthology, you’ll find 12 original short stories to start getting your kids excited for Christmas morning. Some stories are fun, and some are silly, but all will bring the magic of Christmas into your child’s life.

29 Brand-New Sci-Fi Horror Stories. The future is now, and it's not what we were promised. The optimistic science fiction of old was wrong. Progress is not linear, technology creates as many problems as it solves, and the concept of a better tomorrow has become an abstraction that is in no way guaranteed. When looking at the future now, we no longer ask what is possible, we wonder how we'll cope. Contained within this anthology are 29 never-before-published works by supremely talented authors.

From renowned author Jules Fox comes a scary story collection of 18 original scary stories for children ages eight and up. This collection starts with some not-so-scary stories, and then gets a little scarier - though none of the scares are nightmare inducing (no graphic violence or adult content of any kind). Each story has a Scare-ometer before you listen to it so that you know what you are getting into. Some stories contain mild violence and horror elements, all appropriate for young ones.

Hot on the heels of her 2018 This Is Horror Award–winning short story collection Spectral Evidence, critically horror author Gemma Files compiles fifteen more of her most startling recent nightmares—a creepily seductive downward spiral of dark poetry and existential dread, entirely suitable to the slow apocalypse going on all around us. So take your mind off your troubles and send it somewhere the rules still operate, if only to punish those who violate them.

This engaging collection of short, heartwarming stories helps children recognize big feelings, manage tantrums, and discover positive ways to express themselves—all while winding down for a good night’s sleep. Through fun tales of dragons, monkeys, and other characters, kids learn simple emotional regulation tools they can actually use. Each story is designed to model coping skills like deep breathing, staying calm under pressure, and choosing kind responses instead of explosive ones.

When electricity hangs in the air so thick the moon and stars fizzle and drown in a sea of light, the people living within it, breathing it in, can never be “normal”. From disfigured mutants accidentally murdering god to a man falling madly in love with a bloodthirsty VCR, we promise you’ve never listened to anything as bizarre as this! In these six tales, Pauley explores the lives of those living in the darkest corners of the world, those living electric: Goddamn Electric Nights.

As a child, Henry Cadmus lived on Catalina Island, a scenic vacationland off the Southern California coast. But Henry's experiences were far from idyllic. Today, even though Henry has seen firsthand the horrors of war, the ghastly images that haunt his dreams are ones he associates with his childhood... and the island: a snarling pig-man holding a cleaver; a jackal-headed woman on a high balcony, dripping blood; strange occult rituals... and worse. If it was up to Henry, he would avoid the island entirely.

When a robot defies his programming, is he broken? Or is he something else?

For thousands of years, we have set out sailing for all kinds of reasons - for battle, for infinite wealth, for the excitement of exploring the unknown, and for escape from the mundane. We have always had a primal relationship with the sea - even those who have never been to sea remain fascinated by the seafaring life and tales of salty adventure. Now in a brand–new series collection, The Best Sailing Stories Ever Told brings together such diverse authors as Charles Dickens, Jack London, John Masefield, Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, and dozens more.

Timeless themes of courage and danger, leadership and honor, along with the bare-knuckle struggle between right and wrong are the hallmark of L. Ron Hubbard’s military and war adventures. Experience the action in these tales set against historical backgrounds as the characters face relentless adversaries and overwhelming odds.

"In The Falling World", Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud Court, has traveled with Chime and Balm to another Raksuran court. When she fails to return, her consort, Moon, along with Stone and a party of warriors and hunters, must track them down. Finding them turns out to be the easy part; freeing them from an ancient trap hidden in the depths of the Reaches is much more difficult. "The Tale of Indigo and Cloud" explores the history of the Indigo Cloud Court, long before Moon was born.

Included. The Apparition Of Mrs. Veal by Daniel Defoe,. Alice Addertongue by Benjamin Franklin,. The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving,. Prosper Mérimée by Mateo Falcone,. Napoleon And The Spectre by Charlotte Bronte,. The Mortal Immortal by Mary Shelley,. Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne,. Dr. Heidegger's Experiment by Nathaniel Hawthorne,. Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol,. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe,. The Cask Of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe,. An Honest Thief by Fyodor Dostoyevsky,. Frog by Edgar Allan Poe,. The Knitted Collar by Mary Anne Hoare.