10 min read
The Piano Tuner’s Ear
He has tuned this piano twice a year for twenty-six years. This is the first time the family has been in the room.
Moods: Heartfelt Twist ending
Short stories you can read in 5 to 10 minutes
15 stories at this length. Every one shows its reading time up front.
8 min read
Seven Minutes of Sun
After sixty-five days of darkness, the sun comes back over the ridge at 11:47. The whole town stops. Even the ones who say they won't.
Moods: Heartfelt
9 min read
Night Shift at the Observatory
Four hours of cloud, one thermos, and a colleague who has been dead for six years and still leaves notes in the log.
Moods: Cozy Dark
6 min read
Grandmother’s Recipe, Version Fourteen
Fourteen index cards, fifty years apart, one dish. What changes between them is not the recipe.
Moods: Cozy Heartfelt
7 min read
The Complaints Department
Desk 4 handles complaints about things the council does not administer. It is the busiest desk in the building.
Moods: Cozy Funny
10 min read
Salt
The village preserves everything. Fish, memory, grudges. Especially grudges.
Moods: Dark
6 min read
Weather for Ducks
Thirty-one years of forecasting. One catastrophic Tuesday. A nation that has never, ever let it go.
Moods: Funny
8 min read
The Understudy
Two hundred and forty performances. She has never once gone on. Tonight is not going to be different, and she has made her peace with that.
Moods: Heartfelt
9 min read
Inheritance
Her uncle left her a locksmith's shop, four hundred keys, and no explanation of what any of them opened.
Moods: Twist ending
7 min read
The Bus That Waits
The 6:14 leaves at 6:14. Except on Thursdays, and except for one passenger, and nobody has ever asked why.
Moods: Cozy Heartfelt
6 min read
My Neighbour Is Definitely a Wizard
Exhibit A: the parking space. Nobody gets that parking space. Nobody.
Moods: Funny
8 min read
The Inventory
The job was simple: list everything in the house. The house had other ideas about what counted as everything.
Moods: Dark
6 min read
The Bread Man of Alder Street
Nobody on Alder Street orders bread. It simply arrives, and it is always exactly what you needed.
Moods: Cozy
7 min read
Thirty-Two Seconds
The recording is thirty-two seconds long. She has listened to it four thousand times.
Moods: Twist ending
9 min read
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Last Winter
Forty-one years of keeping the light, and nobody had ever told him what to do on the last night.
Moods: Heartfelt