Psychological Science

The story centers on Frank Aguilar, whose troubled 19-year-old son Alan — struggling with depression and his hidden sexuality — impulsively signs up for the service after a romantic betrayal. Despite Alan's desperate last-minute pleas for help (captured in a voicemail to his father), he's brutally killed by one of the company's "employees." When Frank's legal battle against Suicide Inc. fails in court, he teams up with his friend Danny, an Iraq War veteran who discovers his own uncle was also a victim of the service.

From A. J. Payler, master of modern fiction behind Bank Error in Your Favor, The Killing Song, and Terror Next Door comes Should the World Fail to Fall Apart—6 stories of people pushed beyond forgiveness in a world without pity, personal struggle against overwhelming odds and unstoppable fear, & the resilience that resides at the center of the human heart.

From the outside looking in, Mora's life appears perfect. She lives in an affluent neighborhood, attends one of the most prestigious schools in Maryland, and has a father who is one of the top psychiatrists in the nation. But if you take a closer look inside, things are not as wonderful as they seem. Voices whisper in Mora's ear, ghosts flicker in her peripheral vision, and chilling text messages warn her to be quiet. Then, a reflection that resembles her appears in the mirror - even while she's medicated.

Jude is dragged out of alt-country obscurity, out of the dismal loop of booze and sadness baths and the boundless, insatiable loneliness, to scrub up and fly to Australia for a last, desperate comeback tour. Hardly worth getting out of bed for - and he wouldn't, if it weren't for Coreen. But Coreen is dead. And, worse than that, she's married. Jude's swan song tour becomes instead a terminal descent into the sordid past, into the meaning hidden in forgotten songs, and into Coreen's madness diary, there to awaken something far worse than her ghost.

This gripping tale of the future anticipates Ayn Rand's later masterpieces, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. In the dark ages of the future, individuals have no name, no independence, and no values. In this faceless world, one man dares to love the woman of his choice and to seek and find knowledge.

Six Rings is a book interested in analyzing the complexities of the brain, as well as identifying the various changes substance addiction makes to the neural pathways. The brain takes centre stage, and apart from providing insight to aid in the understanding of addictions, enormous effort is put into analyzing the different strategies that can be employed to develop the brain.

Step into the mind of Anders in Warm by Robert Sheckley—a hauntingly cerebral sci-fi tale that delves into the boundaries of love, perception, and identity. As a mysterious voice invades his thoughts, Anders is forced to question the very fabric of reality during what should be a simple evening with the woman he adores. Set against a backdrop of mid-century science fiction, Sheckley’s story masterfully blurs the line between the known and the unknowable, inviting readers into a surreal journey of existential unraveling.

In a near-future America where an iron-fisted theocracy weaponizes faith, Calvin has spent decades burying his true self, meticulously conforming to a system that demands absolute obedience. But when a profound, devastating encounter shatters his carefully constructed world, this disgraced former minister finds his authentic calling through an unexpected act of rebellion. Cast out and facing ruthless persecution, Calvin witnesses an act of shocking state-sanctioned violence that shatters his apathy.

Tutto comincia nella sala d'attesa di un aeroporto. Non poteva essere altri che lui, una vittima perfetta. È stato sufficiente parlargli. E aspettare che la trappola scattasse. Tutto finisce nella sala d'attesa di un aeroporto. Va detto comunque che il caso non esiste. Un giallo? Forse. Certamente la doppiezza dell'uomo, la crudeltà, la bellezza e la bruttezza.

"When we are happy, we are always good," says Lord Henry, "but when we are good, we are not always happy." Lord Henry’s lazy, clever words lead the young Dorian Gray into a world where it is better to be beautiful than to be good; a world where anything can be forgiven - even murder - if it can make people laugh at a dinner party. Oxford Bookworms Library reader for learners of English, adapted from the Oscar Wilde original by Jill Nevile.

Question: when do sewer rats in suburbia acquire intelligence and cunning? Answer: when they begin calling each other names. For Duff and Tuff, newly arrived on Conner's lawn after being ejected from a drain culvert during a flood, their I.Q. soon begins to rise while Conner's falls. Conner, you see, is obsessed with TV. Now the plan is to keep this bachelor from going through with his vow to change his life (and their situation) by pretending to be his supposedly deceased ex wife. Inspired by "Who Moved My Cheese?", this short fable has but one lesson: imagination is linked to reading, not watching television.

A gentleman enjoying the morning over the River Seine waves to a steamer, and the nightmare begins. He believes he may be going insane, but then he begins to feel there is an entity that he cannot see invading his mind and his home. The entity is perhaps an invader from another world. Guy de Maupassant's tale of classic horror will enthrall you.

El doctor Templeton había viajado mucho en sus tiempos juveniles, y en París se convirtió, en gran medida, a las doctrinas de Mesmer. Por medio de curas magnéticas había logrado aliviar los agudos dolores de su paciente, que, movido por este éxito, sentía cierto grado natural de confianza en las opiniones en las cuales se fundaba el tratamiento.

Dostoyevsky was never shy to play with the issues of human mind in his work. A Funny Man's Dream is one of his shorter pieces that, nevertheless, lacks none of the profundity or the mind-bending power of his larger works.

Franz Kafka's profound and disturbing novella Metamorphosis was first published in German in 1915. In this recent translation by David Wyllie, Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, wakes to find himself "transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin". How he, his family, and others deal with this untoward situation is subsequently revealed.

I, Mars by Ray Bradbury is a haunting tale of isolation, technology, and mortality set against the desolate backdrop of the Red Planet. The story follows Barton, an aging man who has spent 50 years waiting alone on Mars for rescue. When a telephone rings in the dead of night, he discovers it is his own recorded voice—an invention he once created to stave off loneliness. What begins as a comfort turns into a relentless torment, as the recording manipulates him toward exhaustion and ultimately death.

A man is arrested for breaking the rules in a dystopian society, reminiscent of 1984. A short dystopian story illustrating the cost of rebellion within totalitarianism.

Lost in the rubble of a society long dead, a small group of survivors forages for what supplies are left to be found. Their explorations will lead to a fatal confrontation as their paths cross with one young man with a death wish. The story of what drove him to that place on that day is one that will change their outlook forever on their increasingly bleak existence on the landscape of a newly alien world.

A great science fiction short story from the age of the digest size sci-fi magazines in the burgeoning science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s by one of the masters of the genre.

Caught in an electromagnetic wave, the ship's artificial intelligence wakes the Organics for an opinion, an options appraisal; but why? The eventuality planning for this trip had taken decades, for god's sake, so why are the machines waking me? Jatan ponders as the data stream enters and becomes his thoughts displacing his idle memories of the Faction war and his carnal thoughts for his mate. Who holds the moral high ground with the machines asking and the Organics telling? What is it to be an Organic? "The Blast" is a 5000-word short story.