Dark Comedy Short Stories

Seal Island is home to a moonshine-making billionaire, a pot-growing fisherman, a celebrity flower child, a handsome romance writer, a sex-addicted realtor, a womanizing pub owner, a cop, a pot-bellied pig…and a serial killer. The island is serene and remote. It is only accessible by boat. The residents like it that way, until those with the deepest and darkest of secrets start dying in the most bizarre of ways.

These 11 stories by Joshua Ferris, many of which were first published in The New Yorker, are at once thrilling, strange, and comic. The modern tribulations of marriage, ambition, and the fear of missing out as the temptations flow like wine and the minutes of life tick down are explored with the characteristic wit and insight that have made Ferris one of our most critically acclaimed novelists.

Nada Alic's women—the perverts, nobodies, reality TV stars, poetic hopefuls, shameless party girls, and self-help addicts of Los Angeles and its environs—are all wrestling with a shared stark reality: the modern world. To cope, they live in their baddest thoughts: the lush, strange landscape of female make-believe.

From Award Winning and Best Selling Author Duncan Whitehead, comes a short story with a twist........ When two old friends, bound together by their love of growing fruits and vegetables enter the same competition, how far will they go to ensure victory? A charming story with more twists and turns than a tomato vine. From the Author A short story with a twist. How far would you go to win? How important is something that seems so trivial to others, but paramount to you? We all have a breaking point....but some are more fragile than others. This book is short and sweet. Set in a small English ...

Rachel Klein never meant to kiss her creative writing professor, but with his long eyelashes, his silky hair, and the sad, beautiful life he laid bare on Twitter, she does, and the kiss is very nice. Zahid Azzam never planned to become a houseguest in his student's sprawling Connecticut home, but with the sparkling swimming pool, the endless supply of Whole Foods strawberries, and Rachel's beautiful mother, he does, and the home is very nice.

"ALICE CROWLEY'S EROTIC STORIES ALWAYS HAVE SURPRISE ENDINGS!" ~ Hwk "I LOVED THE IMAGINATION OF THIS AUTHOR!" ~ Satisfied Kindle Reader "ALICE CROWLEY IS ONE OF OUR GREATEST LIVING WRITERS!" ~ G. Taylor Big, burly, alpha male KING KONG is at it again in this hot and hungry tale of tail! Two civilian women have a threesome one day in LA with a sexy chef named John, only the ladies are unaware of the man's hidden dark side. Things go all the way south as John shifts and mutates mid-coitus, turning into a half-beast, half-man with the size and strength to service a gaggle of females! Only ...

Twister does (as "they" say) what it says on the tin.... It twists us around and spits us out saying "Really?" and "Well I never!" Yes, each of these tales has something unexpected to startle and tease!

Q: What do a set of LEGO toys, a mountain of cocaine, a glitter-dusted stripper, and a monkey who's grown tired of his dead-end day job have in common? A: Absolutely nothing. Except that they're all key elements in some of the stories featured in this dark and funny collection.

Gus has traveled out of state and up to the city of Seattle to visit his daughter. She’s sharing an apartment with two criminology majors. Naturally their thoughts turn toward talking about crime and they ask Gus to talk about one of his cases. Since he doesn’t want to discuss anything too recent or else his daughter might know the people involved, he digs down deep into his memory banks for the perfect case from his first year as a sheriff. It also just so happens to be the first case he crossed path with Father Xavier. As he remembers it, Gus was called in to investigate an apparent ...

Set in the author’s native Belfast, the ten stories in Sweet Home lay bare the heartbreak and quiet tragedies that run under the surface of everyday lives. A lonely woman is fascinated by her niqab-wearing neighbours; a middle-aged teacher becomes obsessed with a young Gaelic football player; and an employer covers for his two employees caught having sex in a public toilet.

When a woman’s fed up there’s hell to pay. When a female demon is fed up? You’d better get the f-ck out the way. Wassup? I’m Xenia, and I’m sick and tired of my mate. And no, he didn’t cheat on me, that’s human crap to get mad at. No, the f-cktard can’t get over the thought of his baby brother one-upping him; and has been neglecting me as a result. Well, an idle mind is a dangerous place, especially when it belongs to an intelligent, female demon. When my father-in-law, the devil himself, gives me a task to wipe out an entire country, I jump on it. Especially when I see just...

It was, maybe, the first job I'd ever had where people were happy to see me. An odd feeling indeed, to wield this kind of power. To be this kind of force. As near to magical as any mortal should stride. A technician of unspeakable joy. Braving the neon mountains to return with blue raspberry concentrate. Tearing out sundae cone fangs from the mouths of snow beasts. And so on.

Tales from the Beach House is a satiric work of fiction that sharply captures the "man-bites-dog" world of contemporary South Florida. The Beach House, a crumbling old motel, is home to a collection of eccentric residents. Amongst their ranks: a tennis pro at the end of his game, a mortuary scientist whose love life has flat-lined, a paparazzo photographer searching for scoops, and more. Each member of this cohort is in search of something - fast money, an easy hustle, fleeting romance, enduring love, fame, power, dignity, happiness...a place they can call home.

A cheerful snack mascot who snaps under the pressure. The nightmarish effects of the most depressing holiday song of all time. A virtual-reality environment that allows you to enact your most depraved fantasies...sort of. Giant mutant cockroaches doing battle with zombies in the Old West. An unnerving discovery in the Book of Revelations. The true secret of silent comedian Buster Keaton's success. Plus a Halloween curse, a lot of psychopaths, and much more!

Peculiar Monstrosities is packed with 14 exquisitely crafted stories from new and established authors of Bizarro fiction.

"J'ai commencé à éprouver un sentiment, je veux dire un vrai, à ce moment-là. En sortant de la voiture, à Wandermines, sous la pluie. On ne parle pas assez de l'influence des lieux sur l'affect. Certaines nostalgies remontent à la surface sans prévenir. Les êtres changent de nature, comme dans les contes. Au milieu de cette confrérie en habits du dimanche, se pressant vers la mairie pour échapper aux gouttes, tenant le bras d'Odile pour l'aider sur le parvis glissant, j'ai éprouvé la catastrophe du sentiment.

If you're a fan of Roald Dahl or Gillian Flynn you'll love these unsettling stories with a twist in the tale. Are you ready to stay up all night with USA Today best-selling author JT Lawrence? Click now to start listening.

An urgent and unforgettable collection of stories, Show Them a Good Time explores types - men and women, their assigned roles and meanings - in modern society. A young, broke Irish woman narrates her relationship with a successful comedian in New York; two hapless university students take to the stage in a bid to assert their autonomy; a school teacher makes her way through a series of dead-end dates, gamely searching for love or distraction as the world teeters towards ruin.

Before she knows it, Turquoise finds herself in strange and perilous worlds populated by the likes of human oddities, shape-shifters, serial killers in flying saucers, flesh-eating hippies, man-eating house cats, and sleazy televangelists who produce snuff films for Christ.

Alicia Erian's characters are brave, disarming, affectionate, and deeply flawed. They inhabit the not-so-very-wide space between a good intention and a bad outcome. The Brutal Language of Love challenges traditional notions of right and wrong with what has become Erian's signature—an achingly stylish humor and a deep understanding of the brutal truth about human nature. These surprising, provocative, and deeply resonant stories marked the emergence of a major talent.