Killer Cuts and Dead Letters
A salon owner and a mail carrier between them know everything about a block, which turns out to matter after chapter two. A dark comedy crime novel.
Tag: Writing Craft (Page 48)
CrimeUnlikely Hero
A career criminal and a veteran patrolman collide on a desert highway, and what is in the trunk forces both to decide who they are. A 146-page thriller.
FamilyFamily on Ice
The Toba eruption cut sunlight across Eurasia seventy-four thousand years ago. A family group tries to stay alive through it, in prose with no quotation marks and no comfort.
FictionThe Woman Who Walked Through Walls
Brit finds a phone that opens doors in walls, where nothing she does follows her back. A psychological thriller about what a person does when consequences become optional.
AdaptationThe Mysterious Island
Verne's castaway novel retold as the private record of Gideon Spilett, with Neb given his own story and a New Mexican widow the original did not have.
FictionThe Blonde With a Violin Tattoo
Annabelle is twenty-two and watching a clock when two strangers kiss in the lobby at 10:47 on a Tuesday. A year of finding out what she actually wants.
Creative WritingForty Worlds
Forty short stories in forty genres, each with a note on where it came from. A detective dog, the fall of Constantinople, a vampire in therapy, and a chicken that outsmarts God.
FictionShield of Ashes
A near-future nuclear escalation across four continents in 2029, told in twelve phases, with the doctrine grounded in the real thing and the civilians given equal weight.
Children's BooksJake and the Bullies
A viral dodgeball video pulls Jake into the internet, where a Hate Engine feeds on what kids feel when the comments arrive. Cyberbullying handled inside an adventure, ages 7 to 14.
FictionPeacekeeper: To What End Peace
Admiral Jessica Lang has served an empire for two hundred thousand years. A routine inspection of one frontier colony costs her everything, including the voice in her head. Military science fiction.
Ancient RomeA Treachery of Legions
Rome, 69 AD. Marcus Antonius Primus marched without orders, won at Cremona, and then let a city burn. He tells it himself at sixty-three, with decades to have chosen a version.
Fantasy FictionDungeon
A deserter enters the dungeon under the white house to fill a trophy case with twenty categories of treasure. Literary fantasy built from the 1977 MIT text adventure.