"Ben isn't like most people. Unable to control his racing thoughts, he's a man consumed by his obsessions: movies, motorcycles, presidential trivia-and Diana Hotchkiss, a beautiful woman Ben knows he can never have. When Diana is found dead outside her apartment, Ben's infatuation drives him on a hunt to find out what happened to the love of his life. Ben soon discovers that the woman he pined for was hiding a shocking double life. And now someone...

It's 1969, and sixteen-year-old Lucy is about to run away with a much older man to live off the grid in rural Pennsylvania, a rash act that will have vicious repercussions for both her and her older sister, Charlotte. As Lucy's default caretaker for most of their lives, Charlotte's youth has been marked by the burden of responsibility, but never more so than when Lucy's dream of a rural paradise turns into nightmare.

"If you got a mysterious box that said, Do Not Open, would you open it? If your fingers revolted and wanted a different job, would you agree? If you came from a race of giants, or thought about becoming Death's lover, or couldn't get rid of a lover no matter how hard you tried, what would you do? These stories contain unusual problems, like finding your world growing dark after eating a piece of cake-and maybe wanting more cake. It's not hard to...

"Twenty years ago, Rachel Gaston accidentally shot and killed her brother in a teenage game that went horribly wrong. Today, Rachel is moving on and trying to put the guilt of what happened behind her. But then she receives a text on the anniversary of her brother's death: I forgive you. This text is the first of many, all seemingly from the beyond the grave, and at the same time she is receiving midnight phone calls from a blocked number. Are these...

"When a single mother hears a rumor outside her son's school, she never intends to pass it on. But one casual comment leads to another . . . and now there's no going back. Rumor has it that a notorious killer, a woman who has been released from prison years after her brutal crime, is living under a new identity in Joanna's seaside town. So who is the supposedly reformed murderer now living in their neighborhood? Suspicion falls on everyone. As Joanna...

"'The world is this house', says Clara while she is trying to protect her beloved ones from the world - yes, that one outside their house walls - which seems to threaten them more and more. Clara entrenches herself with her father and her daughter Flor in a dark apartment that inevitably crumbles on them. The roof becomes their last recess of freedom. A caged bird is the only witness of Clara's fear and resistance against those she thinks are trying...

In Jac Jemc's dislocating second story collection, False Bingo, we watch as sinister forces-some supernatural, some of this earth, some real and some not-work their ways into the mundanity of everyday life. In "Strange Loop," an outcast attempting to escape an unnamed mistake spends his days taxiderming animals, while in "Delivery," a family watches as their dementia-addled, basement-dwelling father succumbs to an online shopping addiction. "Don't...

"In the aftermath of a deadly outbreak bearing similarities to the Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic, a city at the tip of Africa is losing its mind-complete with hallucinations, paranoia, and good old-fashioned ghost sightings. Is it the result of secret government experiments, an episode of mass hysteria, the effects of trauma, a sign of the end times? In a quarantined city in which the inexplicable has already occurred, rumors, superstitions, and conspiracy...

"When Robert Walter, popular mayor of Amsterdam, sees his wife toss her head back with laughter while chatting to one of his aldermen at a New Year's reception, he immediately suspects the worst. Despite their long and happy marriage, Robert is convinced that Sylvia is cheating on him--with the respectable alderman who is dedicated to the environment, no less. The man who wants to spoil the capital's skyline with wind turbines. The New Year's reception...

"Meet Enid: a lesbian who's a serial dater and deaf in one ear. She works at The Space Agency as an information architect, and when she's not obsessing over true crime podcasts, she's managing her crippling phobia of bald people. While she tries not think about her teenage years, she can't seem to stop obsessively watching her childhood YouTube channel. But as Enid fumbles her way through her first serious relationship and navigates a new family life...