Urban Short Stories

In the labyrinth of narrow alleyways, amidst the symphony of distant sirens and nearby laughter, there lies a pulsating heart that many know, but few truly understand: the hood. A place as infamous for its challenges as it is for its unyielding spirit, the hood isn't just a geographical location; it's a tapestry of stories, dreams, and struggles woven together by its denizens. "Short Tales: Straight From The Hood" is an exploration of these stories—some tragic, some triumphant, all authentic.

Sally Edwards didn't have many friends at Gravendale High School. Whenever Sally tried out for sports she would be picked on by her classmates because she was a tomboy. Sally had buck teeth and matted hair and slurred her speech. She also wore the same clothes to school every day. Sally was poor and was being raised by her alcoholic grandfather who didn't have long to live, maybe weeks at best. When her classmates got wind of the passing of her grandfather the following week they started picking on her pretty hard.

From Folk Tales to Seductive Aristocrats. The best, most complete compilation of Vampire stories from the 18th century to early 20th century.

Book 10, The Unlikely Heroes: It’s a race to find the Mortal Seven—mortals who had always been able to see magic—before they're murdered. Meanwhile, there’s another crime that needs Liv’s attention. Book 11, The Creative Strategist: The guardian of the underworld has been awoken, and he’s coming after someone very important—but not if Liv can do something about it. Book 12, The Born Leader: The most important magical creature has gone missing, and it’s up to Warrior Liv Beaufont to find him. Liv will die before she allows the God Magician to ruin the world she loves so much.

Mary is a gas-station attendant with an epileptic son who can barely make ends meet, when she makes them meet at all. She has dreams of a forbidden love but can’t focus on those dreams when she can’t even buy her son’s medicine. She has a real knack for staying calm under pressure and steadfastly does what she needs to, in order to keep food on their table and a roof over their heads.

Anya and her sister, Dawn, grew up with their parents teaching them how to use magic. Unbeknownst to her sister, Anya is a nephadin, the offspring of an angel and a demon. Anya, being the more powerful of the two, is envied and secretly hated by Dawn. In young adulthood, their rivalry comes to a head when they both fall in love with Seth, the prince. Anya’s accident in the woods brings the prince right to their door and into their hearts.

Test Tube Frankenstein, a short horror story by Wayne Robbins appeared in the May 1940 issue of Terror Tales. It is interesting to draw connections between this pulp story and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Both stories involve a mad genius creating a creature that deceives and kills those around them. However, in this short story, the creature takes on the form and demeanor of its creator, Chester Vermis, which differentiates it from Frankenstein.

Geschichten machen die Welt zu einem besseren Ort. New York im April 2020. Während des ersten Lockdowns wird das Dach ihres Mietshauses für die Bewohner zur überraschenden Zuflucht vor der Isolation. Jeden Abend treffen sie sich dort und erzählen einander ihre ungewöhnlichen, spannenden, komischen und bewegenden Geschichten. Jeder Mieter und jede Mieterin steuert eine bei (wahr oder zumindest gut erfunden), und ein neues Decamerone für unsere Zeit nimmt seinen Anfang. Allmählich findet die Runde zu einer unerwarteten Gemeinschaft und Anteilnahme füreinander.

Damballah, Hiding Place, and Sent for You Yesterday provide a stunning introduction to the uncompromising work of John Edgar Wideman, whose literary achievements have inspired The New York Times to name him “one of America’s premier writers of fiction”. Damballah’s narratives examine the vexed history of Homewood, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, neighborhood whose origins are rooted in a time when slavery was still legal in the United States of America.

Short stories foraged from the heart of the city. When your existence threatens to implode with the struggle of urban domesticity; the pointlessness of switching, swopping and up-grading - taste some feral freedom. Set in cafes, streets, supermarkets and pubs; these tales drag the debris of messy lives out from their familiar urban locations. Why is Irene clinging to a drainpipe outside the hospital? Will David be trapped forever stirring the stick in his latte? And is your local boozer worse than Raoul's Saturday night watering hole? Abridged short stories.

Within this collection of short stories you will find a variety of monsters - a whole consternation of them, to use the collective noun. In these tales, a creature of make-believe proves difficult to disbelieve, a trickster-god takes an unkindly interest in witnesses, eldritch horrors can be summoned with a quilt, frustrated wolves face dangerous prey, the angel of death wears a plaid sport coat, wise old women are to be feared and heeded, and where one of the most powerful and potentially dangerous objects in the world is a fork.

Clint Lukas' kompromissloser Held geht malochen, obwohl er Arbeit scheiße findet, macht Filme, obwohl er Filmleute nicht ertragen kann, hält sich für einen Frauenversteher und hat trotzdem immer Streit mit ihnen. Woran das liegt, dass immer alles so kompliziert sein muss? An ihm wohl kaum. Findet er jedenfalls. Clint Lukas lebt seit seinem zwanzigsten Lebensjahr in Berlin. Er hat nichts studiert und keinen Beruf gelernt.

Bevor Charles Dickens mit "Oliver Twist" berühmt wurde, schrieb er Kurzgeschichten. 1836 veröffentlichte er die "Londoner Skizzen". Es sind Beobachtungen, Fantasien und Fiktionen, in denen Dickens das alltägliche Leben humorvoll beschreibt und gleichzeitig die sozialen Missstände im England des 19. Jahrhunderts kritisiert. Sie alle zeigen das London, das er so gut kannte, im Guten wie im Schlechten – seine Straßen, Theater, Gasthäuser, Pfandhäuser und Gefängnisse. Mit seiner eindringlichen Stimme erweckt Tom Vogt Dickens’ Alltagsszenen zum Leben.

In Beyond the Veil, is a collection of six short stories. "The Devil Inside" - A story of a psychopathic killer with extraordinary powers, who like his father before him finds joy in stalking, marrying, and torturing his victim. "The Tower" - Sensitive Amanda has moved way too many times to escape her stalker. She has changed her identity multiple times, left family and friends behind, all the while hiding her paranormal abilities. It appears that her stalker may have found her again. What will she do?

"The Departed" by Clive Barker: On All Hallows' Eve, a dead and disembodied mother yearns to touch her young son one last time. But will making contact destroy them both? "Creature Feature" by Heather Graham: What could be better publicity for a horror convention than an honest-to-goodness curse? It's only after lights out that the hype - and the Jack the Ripper mannequin - starts to feel a little too real.

Thirteen hundred years ago, the conquering wizard, Nasoj, cast three great spells on the people of Metamor Keep. Fueled by the power of the dark gods, these spells would irrevocably change the castle's defenders in body and soul, rendering them helpless against his advancing armies. Things did not work out as he hoped. The spells were countered, but only partially. They wove together with the castle's own magic, becoming a curse that blanketed the entire valley.

David Bain brings you five stories from the dark side of town. Horror doesn't just happen in a creaking haunted house; the paranormal and occult can creep into every corner of the United States' urban landscape. These short stories of dark fantasy bring the metaphysical mystery of everything from demons to serial killers to your back door....

There is a haunted house up there that squats like a huge wooden toad behind a thick grove of pine trees on the end of a dead end road. Maybe once it was painted, but now it has a gray cadaver-like complexion, and its siding is sagged and splintered as if the devil had been poking at it with his pitchfork. Its windows are streaked and stained, and trying to see through them from the outside is like trying to look a skull in the eye.

Dan and Brenda Stevens finally planned a night out without the kids, and were able to find a babysitter at the last minute. Brenda's friend Karen's daughter Susan happened to be free for the evening because her boyfriend was sick, so instead of being stuck home all night with nothing to do her mother suggested she babysit her friend Brenda's kids, and make a little extra money. Susan was happy to earn some easy money for a couple hours.

Jay is a typical 12-year-old boy. The story of the Man with the White Face has made the rounds in his neighborhood, and he never buys in to the legend until the day he's abducted. That's when Jay learns the horrifying truth about the Man with the White Face.