Urban Short Stories

Journey to the farthest reaches of the universe. Explore the deepest mysteries of creation. Behold the brightest lights of the imagination. Discover the Writers of the Future...and experience the power of science fiction and fantasy to transform your world.

How hard do you have to shake the family tree to find the truth about the past?

Rish Outfield presents a dozen stories performed by the author. Includes some bonus flash fiction pieces not available anywhere else!

From sultry international jungles to the rugged terrain of the American Southwest, join the larger-than-life, scorching-hot alpha heroes of the Bureau of American Defense, Black Ops, Inc., and the US Navy SEALs for all the pulse-pounding, heart-racing, toe-curling excitement. They're cool under pressure, steamy under the sheets, and when the enemy strikes, there's not a lethal mission these gorgeous men can't handle.

Gutta Mamis includes four novellas featuring cold-hearted women who get ahead in America's grimiest underworld: "Twisted Loyalty" by Kai, "Three the Hard Way" by C. J. Hudson, "The Face of Death" by Brandie Davis, and "Chasers" by N'Tyse.

This collection represents the best of Alcott's adult oeuvre. The stories in this volume display dramatic intensity and thrilling, suspenseful plots that show Alcott to be a complex and passionate writer. Listeners will discover within this maelstrom of murder, deceit, obsessive desire, treachery, duplicity, and betrayal that love and honor can still conquer all.

Are you a fan of the upside-down worlds of the Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, or Black Mirror? How about Stephen King or Neil Gaiman? Then spend some time reading these 26 twisty, turny stories that cross genres and blur the lines between reality and fantasy. In "Seven Hundred and Seventy-Six", a timid bank clerk working in the Arizona frontier encounters a strange man and an even stranger gun. In "Captain Coffee", a caffeine-powered superhero comes to the rescue...and many more fun ways to spend a few minutes of your day.

Max Thorton faces a life-altering revelation: werewolves exist and his best friend might be one. What does that mean for his friendship? What does that mean for him? Enjoy this short for Max's introduction to Lycan and the Texas Pack.

Thirteen hundred years ago, the conquering wizard, Nasoj, cast three great spells on the people of Metamor Keep. Fueled by the power of the dark gods, these spells would irrevocably change the castle's defenders in body and soul, rendering them helpless against his advancing armies. Things did not work out as he hoped. The spells were countered, but only partially. They wove together with the castle's own magic, becoming a curse that blanketed the entire valley.

There's a saying in Brooklyn that if you come from my part of town, you're from around the way. Around the Way Girls is a fast-paced look at the life of some street-smart women who think they know it all but are about to get the lessons of their lives.

From the vaults of the British Library comes a new anthology celebrating the best works of forgotten, never-since-republished supernatural fiction from the early 20th century. Waiting within are malevolent spirits eager to possess the living and mysterious spectral guardians - a diverse host of phantoms exhumed from the rare pages of literary magazines and newspaper serials to thrill once more.

Mary is a gas-station attendant with an epileptic son who can barely make ends meet, when she makes them meet at all. She has dreams of a forbidden love but can’t focus on those dreams when she can’t even buy her son’s medicine. She has a real knack for staying calm under pressure and steadfastly does what she needs to, in order to keep food on their table and a roof over their heads.

Many a confident urban lesbian in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago was once a wide-eyed newcomer. Every year thousands of young women arrive in these queer-friendly cities, seduced by downtown life and its erotic possibilities. In Where the Girls Are, D.L. King collects explicit memoirs and stories about these newly arrived country girls. Here are stories of first times, initiations, bars, dance clubs, and parties, reading (or misreading) the codes - and sometimes teaching those city girls a thing or two in the process.

Jenna thought becoming a Blood Vice agent would solve all her problems, but now she’s sworn to solve House Lilith’s problems, too. And there’s no shortage of trouble when dealing with the most regal vampire family in the United States. The duke’s first assignment for Jenna and company is to locate Ursula, the estranged Duchess of House Lilith suspected of murdering her sire. It’s a tall order - a wild bat chase, some might say - and the long hours with half-sired agent Roman Knight soon drive Jenna to distraction, and possible destruction.

This collection of stories by science-fiction and mystery author Gary Alan Ruse explores fantasy realms and the dark side of human - and nonhuman - nature with thrills and chills, and, in some cases, a touch of humor.

The Detective Story Club's first short story anthology is based around a London detective club and includes three newly discovered tales unpublished for 100 years, plus a story bearing an uncanny resemblance to a Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes story but written some seven years earlier.

Kate and Michael, twenty-something housemates working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket, are thoroughly screwed when people start turning into zombies at their house party in the Oakland hills. The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers.

Carl Weber brings the best of urban street lit authors together, all telling their own dramatic tales of life in the streets in known cities across the USA. The second installment continues with Treasure Hernandez telling the tale of the Dirty South.

When Desa Rae Jenkins ended her tumultuous relationship with Roc, it seemed like the appropriate thing to do; but now she's second-guessing her decision. Roc moved away to Kansas City, leaving street life back in St. Louis up to the brothas who can handle it. He continues to live his life on the edge, though, and when he returns to St. Louis, Desa Rae shows up at his doorstep to reconcile. Roc is reluctant to go there with the one woman who ripped his heart from his chest.

A Lover's Embrace 2 by Skyy: Rayne has a new attitude. After taking six months to travel, Rayne is coming back to Memphis with a new job, a new love, and a new outlook on life. But coming home means coming back to the reality that she left behind. Can she stay strong in the presence of the man who turned her world upside down? Or will she fall back into the disastrous routine that made her run away to begin with?