He had filled out the online form twice because the first one timed out. Some pop-up told him his password wasn’t strong enough, so he’d added an exclamation point, like shouting would make a difference. The job wasn’t much, just a “content coordinator” position for a mid-sized marketing firm. But he needed something, anything to…

The phone rang at 7:18 this morning. I knew what it was before I answered it. You don’t help a man put his life in order without eventually being called to witness the end of it. Still, knowing doesn’t soften the sound. It just makes it heavier. Jim passed away quietly, the way he lived…

The fire crackled low, throwing sparks into the chill Sierra night. The sky above was so thick with stars it looked like it might spill light into the forest. I’d hiked all day, pitched my tent in a clearing, and now sat alone with the kind of stillness that only mountains can make. Then I…

I couldn’t give a damn about the new East Room ballroom of the Capitol, no matter who paid for what. They said it was “a symbol,” but all I saw was a chandelier worth more than a working man’s lifetime. Meanwhile, we were circling a national debt north of $38 billion and counting, like a…

Harold Friends wrote about murder the way some men wrote about love, slowly, obsessively, and with the faint smell of whiskey and ash clinging to every sentence. He’d been publishing for twenty years, a dozen novels centered around the same man: Detective Claude Ryman, a brilliant, haunted investigator forever circling the mind of a killer…

A papercut. Nothing dramatic, no cinematic blood spurt, just that tiny slice across the edge of my thumb when I was opening the damn gas bill. One of those quiet, invisible hurts that seems to whisper: this is the beginning of something bad. I sucked the thumb, tasted a bit of iron, then went to…

It began with the smell of sulfur and smoke, faint but sharp, like something burning behind the walls. I checked the stove. Cold. Checked the outlets. Fine. Still, it lingered, a match just struck, not quite blown out. That smell reminded me of my old man. He’d light matches to chase out the stench of…

The bell above the door gave a nervous jingle when the kids came in, five, maybe six of them, all loud and laughing, smelling of sweat and heat and teenage defiance. They spread through the aisles like smoke, their sneakers squeaking against the cracked tile, hands brushing bags of chips, energy drinks, and candy bars.…

The wind along Highway 17 always smelled of rot. Not the clean, dry scent of desert decay, but something wet, like a landfill left to ferment. That was the smell that hung in the ditch outside Silver City the night Clay Brenner’s life came apart at the seams. He’d been driving back from Dayton, headlights…

The red planet was never silent. Beneath the thin whisper of atmosphere, Mars hummed with a secret life no sensor could detect, at least, not until humanity listened closely enough to regret it. Dr. Elias Mercer was not the first to set foot on the rim of Chryse Planitia, but he was the first to…