Showing results by narrator "Scott ODell" in All Categories

An eclectic selection of short stories.

Two portraits of history's most evil serial killers are on display here. Robert Howard died old and decrepit in a jail cell...but he remains one of the sickest individuals to ever set foot in the United Kingdom as he raped and tortured young girls, all the while bragging to anyone that he was a real life wolfman. On a cold, winter night in November of 1981, Cassie Hansen was abducted from a family service at the Jehovah Lutheran Church in St. Paul. Authorities were baffled as the young girl seemed to have disappeared in thin air.

If someone observed us from afar, they could claim that our civilization was a civilization of walls. That was its main purpose. Such observers would likely not be able to explain why. I cannot either. Walls do not protect. They just trap and kill. Three short stories about a dystopic future, about people turning into machines, about walls and fences, about the way history works. Three short stories about now.

When James "Reggie" and Carol Sumner moved to Jacksonville, Florida for their retirement, they had visions of good health and happiness. They never thought that their overnight invitation to longtime South Carolina neighbor, Tiffany Cole, would end up the way it did - with the Sumner couple being buried alive.

“A powerful memoir of one man’s struggle for freedom, 15 to Life tells in vivid prose the story of Anthony Papa, a painter and a casualty of the War on Drugs. This journey of a soul shows the power of art to transcend the violence of prison, and all that is possible when the human spirit refuses to be contained. Papa’s account should be required reading for New York lawmakers and all Americans who care about civil liberties.” (Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking)