Psychological Thriller Short Stories

From literary icon Joyce Carol Oates comes a brand-new collection of haunting and, at times, darkly humorous mystery and suspense stories. These are tales of psyches pushed to their limits by the expectations of everyday life - from a woman who gets lost on her drive home to her plush suburban home and ends up breaking into a stranger's house, to a first-person account of a cloned 1940s magazine pinup girl being sold at auction and embodying America's ideals of beauty and womanhood.

Two hitmen in a depressed rust belt town struggle with a job gone wrong. A girl witnesses a horrifying accident and carries it with her for the rest of her life. Medical students bring a severed foot to a college party. Five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joyce Carol Oates has made a career of exploring the forbidden corners of human experience, and the stories collected here, spanning her first three decades as a writer, are among her most unsettling and unforgettable works to date.

The book opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper's Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door.

Neighbors are shocked when Harold Pardee reports his wife dead. No one even knew the eccentric TV repairman was married. Within hours, horrible rumors spread about what that poor woman must have endured for 30 years. Until the Pardees' carefully guarded world is exposed. New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh delivers an endearing short story about our misguided perception of strangers, the nature of love, and the need for secrets.

"I know where Allison is." Former child star Jason Turner is excited about the direction his life is taking. He is about to open the business of his dreams, and his sister is now a published author. All thoughts of his dark past are at bay. Until he meets Stacy, the new doll in his daughter's life. She looks and sounds just like Allison, his other sister who turned up missing that day in the woods while they were camping so long ago. When Stacy says she has a secret to share with Jason he realizes there is something sinister behind the doll's existence. Let the nightmares begin.

Witness to Silence: Tales of Vanished Friends is a haunting collection of gripping short stories by G.J. Fene, exploring the chilling moment when someone you love simply… vanishes. From eerie carnivals and dark forests to chaotic protests and midnight highways, each story immerses readers in tales of friends who disappear without a trace—and the ones left behind, desperate for answers. Blending mystery, thriller, and supernatural elements, these tales pulse with raw emotion, psychological tension, and the chilling question: What if the ones we’ve lost are still out there, watching us ...

Time slips. Doomsday scenarios. Killer butterflies. C. J. Tudor's novels are widely acclaimed for their dark, twisty suspense plots, but with A Sliver of Darkness, she pulls us even further into her dizzying imagination. Riveting, macabre, and explosively original, A Sliver of Darkness is C. J. Tudor at her most wicked and uninhibited.

The turning point in history came with the exposure of the government's betrayal of basic freedoms. The spy agency BIM cloaked itself behind the computers, cell phones, and postal service communication systems of World Aid organizations. Albert, a simple, honest accountant, exposed the truth behind the illusion of freedom for all the world to see. The day the world stopped being a secure place began like any normal day. Albert Bach enjoyed his job and loved the thought of providing a needed service. He viewed himself as a loyal citizen. He believed in the country's policies until he saw ...

If only I’d ignored that letter, I wouldn’t have had to have done the things I did on this dark night. But I didn’t ignore it; how could I? A hand-written letter dressed in a stamped, plain-white envelope from a stranger requesting a meeting. Her name was Andrea, and she had information that could be crucial to my well-being. So many reasons not to go. But how could I not? I wished I’d thrown that letter away.

Are you a Law & Order or CSI crime junkie? In these You Solve It mini mysteries, you get to be the lead detective who takes on the case. You will read the case file, collect the evidence and solve the crime. Become an iDetective.

Heads are rolling, and they're being tossed in drainways and ditches all over the city. Cain Cullen should be helping his daughter and son find the serial killer stalking San Diego's homeless, but he's too preoccupied fighting demons of his own in another country. When one of his children becomes the next to go missing, Cain returns, and all hell breaks loose. This is a different kind of twist to an already twisted series of short stories. Consider Demon Stone as a stepping on point to an all new series set to launch just before Halloween! Warning! This story contains graphic scenes and ...

Twisted Tales returns with a second volume of psychological mayhem and disturbing supernatural encounters. If you're into screaming trains, vengeful clowns, the terror of online dating, remorseful ghouls, pandemic-spreading ghosts, murderous mansions, and seriously sick restaurants, then these Twisted Tales are the short stories begging to be read.

Clea McAllister returns to the Newport haven of her childhood, a gilded mansion by the sea once owned by her beloved grandmother. Now she is a paying guest at her own ancestral home, and Clea’s vacation hides a darker intention: to confront the estate lawyer who stole her rightful inheritance. But wicked games are still being played at Belle Mer, and Clea uncovers more than she ever intended.

Between life and death lies obsession. Some nurses hold more than just medicine in their hands. Jillian walks the sterile corridors of the ER with a secret in her scrubs pocket—a laminated photograph of Jason, her first love, forever frozen at twenty-two. Perfect. Unchanging. And buried somewhere on the property at 1001 Magnolia. Through three failed marriages and a nursing career where the chaos of trauma medicine helps mask her own internal turmoil, Jillian wields the subtle power that comes with deciding who receives care, and how quickly. Every relationship is measured against the ...

In the title story, a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin's doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins to collect "found dolls" from the surrounding neighborhoods and stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family's estate. But just what kind of dolls are they?In The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Joyce Carol Oates evokes the “fascination of the abomination” that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling, and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction.

Colter Shaw is a career ‘reward-seeker’, making his living travelling the country and locating missing persons. So when a woman disappears, he quickly takes the case. As he investigates, he suspects that she was fleeing a bad marriage, and he follows her trail to a secret retreat in Indiana. As events take one surprising turn after another, Shaw begins to wonder if there's more to this mysterious woman than meets the eye.

A short novel. A good choice for those who want a quick and entertaining read. The source that unleashes pleasure always comes from within the human being, but is nourished from the outside. We access the world through our senses and sometimes one of them predominates, being the architect of our desire. We can express this desire towards a person, but it may also be that a thing is the recipient of our most convoluted instincts, or that perhaps, the mixture of these produces total ecstasy. In Duval's case, he enjoyed the pleasure that a woman's body gives him, however, flowers were an ...

The brand new Jack Reacher short story, published as a digital exclusive. The tiny town of Naismith has nothing going for it - except the start of a wilderness trail through Maine's ancient forests. But one day the trail is suddenly closed by county police. No reason is given. Rumours start - is there something in the woods that no one must see? That no one must even know about? Then Jack Reacher drifts into town. What does he make of the Do Not Enter tape strung between the trees?

Lust. Revenge. Greed. Hunger. Desire doesn’t care if you’re at the bottom of the ladder or the top of your game. Six masters of psychological suspense craft tales about people crossing moral lines in pursuit of their deepest desires. In these short stories, even the most mild-mannered characters can spin out of control when passion is at play. Hold on tight—there’s no turning back.

Horror! Suspense! Halloween haunts! Everything that goes bump in the night is here, waiting to be read... if you dare. This collection of Twisted Tales contains Volumes 13-16 in all their gory, gruesome short story goodness.