Dark Comedy Short Stories

It’s just another morning on the fifth of July. The country is another year older; Gus is a touch hungover, the coffee in his office is stale, and all Gus wants to do is go home and start over again on July sixth. Unfortunately Father Xavier visits the sheriff’s office and he’s brought along a gift. He has a green jacket that should have been put in the church’s lost and found. The father suspects it belongs to a missing girl named Erica Torres which is odd given the jacket is marked as belonging to E. Rossi. Erica went to school one day and never came home. She was picked up by a ...

ROMANTIC LIES (BOOK 2) Five years after coming to New York for her cousin Emma's funeral, Abby has it all: the man of her dreams, a well-paying job, and a luxury apartment that she shares with her billionaire boyfriend. Little does she know that Liam has been keeping a secret from her...one that could ruin things forever. When he suddenly ends their relationship without any explanation, Abby's beautiful world comes crashing down. Her best friend, Isabella, gives her a clue that might explain everything, and Abby sets out on a journey to solve the mystery of why Liam left. What she discovers...

From bourgeois facial-hair trends to parental sleep deprivation, Joseph O’Neill closely observes the mores of his characters, whose vacillations and second thoughts expose the mysterious pettiness, underlying violence, and, sometimes, surprising beauty of ordinary life in the early 21st century. A lonely wedding guest talks to a goose; two poets struggle over whether to participate in a “pardon Edward Snowden” verse petition; a cowardly husband lets his wife face a possible intruder in their home; a potential co-op renter in NYC can’t find anyone to give him a character reference.

Spring is in the air. Gus is feeling pretty good about the change in seasons until an unknown man decides he would rather change from being alive to being dead. He clearly drank something toxic, and it didn’t agree with him. The question is, did he really decide to do that, or did someone make that decision for him. Only that question is buried under a lot of other layers of questions. Why did the man visit Gus a few days before his death proclaiming the end times were near? Why didn’t he take enough poison to kill him near instantly instead of lingering around for days slowly dying? ...

Eight short stories about art, shadows and self. Creighton's second short story collection introduces us to a gallery owner who worries her husband will leave her for a doppelgänger; an artist whose creativity is blocked by intense fear on a retreat; a would-be writer who opens a PO Box to gather other people's letters to God; two mothers with guilty secrets; a young student contemplating suing a lecturer for boring her into deep slumber; a geologist travelling the earth to find herself; and a woman who flies home to bury her dead uncle, only to end up in a compromising situation. ...

A baby rat freed from the bottom of a dumpster becomes a white ibis wandering the wet driveway after a storm. Goodbye, hello, goodbye. It was the garbage times; it was time for something else. A tale of two tales, connected by a mysterious sunlit portal.

In the town of Name Pending, Wyoming, Elijah Potbury does brisk business as the territory's only practicing necromancer. For a reasonable fee, he'll raise any friend or family member. Stories contained in this fourth volume: "The Ravenous Man-Eater": Mr. Seven, owner of the airship Azincourt, assigns Professor Hemplewick the task of creating a many-tentacled, armor-plated monstrosity in the form of a giant slug to work in the engine room of the Azincourt. A reanimated human brain from a freshly deceased corpse is needed to power the creature, for which Seven turns to Potbury. Aware of ...

ROMANCE QUICKIES Discounted Boxed Set, Encounters 7-12 WHO WILL WIN? Seven friends living in New York City. One unusual competition. Who can have the most intimate encounters in a month? Ten thousand dollars is on the line... Quickies are bite-sized steamy stories that follow a group of women living in New York City who compete to see who can have the most casual hookups in a month. Which woman will sleep with the most men to win the bet? Will any of them fall in love with their conquests along the way? These sizzling-hot books can be read as stand-alones or as part of the Quickies series. ...

In the spirit of those hilarious 80s and 90s comedy spoofs, get ready for Naked Noir! Picture Jim Cummings, a washed-up detective stuck in a lover's waltz. When Jane, the damsel in distress, storms in one dark and stormy night, Jim's in for a rollercoaster ride. Her beau's been offed, and guess who's got to untangle this mess? You got it – Jim, our reluctant hero. But wait, there's more! A shadowy assassin lurks, determined to throw a wrench in Jim's detective work. Can Jim crack the case and save his own bacon (mmm bacon) before he's next on the hit list? Will he unveil the sneaky killer...

"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 ...

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.

Bleak Punchline Joke Book set the bar somewhere in the dirt and lost it. Bleak Punchline Joke Book II accidently came across the bar again and buried it deep in the grubby earth. Bleak Punchline Joke Book III, the final act of humourless hubris in the trilogy, forgets about the bar altogether and settles for the dirt. If you have endured Sammy Madden’s musings so far, feel free to repent and absolve yourself of wrongdoing, or, if that doesn’t suit your intellect, please, by all means, lie down and roll around with the remaining swine.

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!

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

All Gus wanted to do was take a day trip up to the big city to get away from his constituents. However, some constituents are harder to avoid than others. He inadvertently bumps into Father Xavier while at an antique show. Neither this chance meeting or Gus’s appraisal are the worst thing to happen to the sheriff while out of town, because the other thing that’s hard for him to avoid is getting involved in a murder case. When one of the big winners at the antique show turns up dead it’s up to Gus to figure out who the murderer is. With the Father’s help, can Gus sort out the clues ...

"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.

Ordinary realities and yearnings to transcend them lead to miraculous other worlds in this dazzling collection of stories. A woman's deceased father appears in her dreams with clues about the afterlife; a Russian professor in a small American town constructs elaborate fantasies during her cigarette break; a man falls in love with a marble statue as his marriage falls apart. With the emotional insight of Chekhov, the surreal satire of Gogol, and a unique blend of humor and poetry all her own, Tolstaya transmutes the quotidian into aetherial alternatives.

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.

When God descends to earth as a Dinka woman from Sudan and subsequently dies in the Darfur desert, the result is a world bizarrely new yet eerily familiar. In Ron Currie's provocative, wise, and emotionally resonant novel we meet God himself; the Dinka woman whose mortality He must suffer when He inhabits her body; people all over the world coping with the devastating news of God's demise.

Gus has the unfortunate task of judging the local art show at the Tannehill Ranch. The only thing Gus knows about art is you shouldn’t eat the macaroni after your child has glued to their artwork. Given the art show is displaying art from the daughters of most of the wealthier members of society in his state, Gus could hardly have said no to the request to be a judge. Things heat up at the art show when one of the teenage contestants ends up missing. It is the sort of news that isn’t exactly easy to tell parents with large bank accounts. Worse, it turns out she’s likely run away with ...