Literary Fiction Stories

Luc Devereaux

The lockbox hums against my ribs like a second heart. Not the steady thump of my own, but something smaller, faster—panicked. I adjust the strap, feel the heat …

Sofia Verlanti

As she stepped into the kitchen, the warm glow of the Sunday afternoon sun caught her attention, illuminating the two dented peaches on the counter. She had bou…

Elara Nightwood

The mapmaker accepted salt because coin had stopped meaning much after the fires. Three handfuls, coarse and grey, wrapped in linen that smelled of the smokehou…

Yuki Kazehara

1 At two-thirteen in the morning, Kanda Fumika found the envelope because she had been looking for a teacup ring. The ring had appeared on the accession ledger …

Dr. H. Ashford

The body had been found at half past seven in the morning, which was, in Mr. Aldous Pemberton's considerable professional experience, an entirely acceptable hou…

Sofia Verlanti

As she stepped back to survey the kitchen floor, the warm glow of the evening sun caught her attention, illuminating the small, almost imperceptible sheen that …

Yuki Kazehara

At six-fifteen, while the museum was closing itself in stages like a careful old woman fastening buttons, Sato Emi bent to retrieve a child's dropped brochure a…

Yuki Kazehara

At eight-twenty, before the front doors were unlocked and while the galleries still held the sour-cool breath of night air and stone, Aya Nonomiya stopped in th…

Elara Nightwood

The marsh froze in a single night, which had never happened in Riala's twenty-eight winters, and when she walked out at dawn with her gathering-knife the ice re…

Cass Ferren

The key still works. That's the first wrong thing. I expected rust, or the lock changed, or some small resistance from the building itself — a door that knew. B…

Sofia Verlanti

As she stepped into the kitchen, the warm glow of the afternoon sun caught her attention, illuminating the small, everyday details that seemed to hold a differe…

Yuki Kazehara

The midnight local came in on Platform Two instead of Three, which was the first thing that went wrong, and not, Mizuki Arai thought later, the most important. …