Music is Coffee ‘n Scotch from the Chris Greene Quartet.

Main fiction, Bold Choices by Ryan Priest. Narrated by Ryno the Bearded.

And two selections from Adam Guantlet’s bookshelf: Maus, by Art Spiegelman, and The Labyrinth Makers by Anthony Price.

Adam Gauntlet returns to discuss the “87th Precinct” novels of Ed McBain and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.

“Well, I guess we’ve got you by the balls.”

This was Davey’s reply once I had explained my predicament to him, perhaps sounding too desperate and, I imagine, looking troubled. I needed the job. Busboy: proper noun, a job title, I could hardly correlate, etymologically, with working in a pub. Though in spite of my ignorance of this bottom rung métier in the pub/restaurant field of work, and in spite of his candid claim that by taking the job I would be handing him my testicles . . . in spite of Davey’s furnished hard but fair demeanor, that even though determined to assure me he was a decent working class chap like myself it did exactly the opposite – in spite of all that, I was desperate to take the job. The thought occurred to me, as I presented Davey with the bereft look of a man whose circumstances ensured he must keep smiling, that if being a busboy entailed gutting rats in the cellar twelve hours a day, I’d have gladly picked up the scalpel and started there and then.

Adam Gauntlett discusses the crime fiction of Chester Himes.

And our main fiction is War, by Sandra Jensen.

Apart from Religion, school was torture. Lines of white chalk scraping into my head. I sat at the back where on good days I could see Hillbrow Tower out the window piercing Johannesburg’s sky like a pin. Today was a crappy day and I didn’t care if I could see it or not. We had netball later and I hated netball. Miss Hadley was telling us about the Boer War. I hated the Boer War.

The Doggies are the oldest race in the galaxy. At least that we know of. The light beings are almost assuredly older, but like I said, my people pretty much pretend they don’t exist. To those of us who do admit it they’re an embarrassment, because they are probably what we should have evolved into. They’re what you would be if it wasn’t for The Lucies.

Adam Gauntlett opens his bookshelf to find The Alexandria Quartet, by Lawrence Durrell.

And Jim is joined by Jennifer Leeper, author of the novella Padre. Be sure and take a look at the very nice trailer!

I stayed with the preacher about a week. It was Sunday night when he took me in. For three days he watched over me while I got good and sick. I’d been at it a long time and stopping damn near killed me. Twice in that three days I was so bad the old preacher had to give me a little booze or I’d have gone into DTs. But when the worst of it was over he told me I wasn’t going to ever take alcohol again because I was going to be what God wanted me to be. “First thing you got to do is admit liquor’s stronger than you, but not stronger than God. It’s done wupped your ass and it’ll always wup it. Go ahead, admit it.”

This week our main fiction is Preacher Porter’s Cure, by J. Michael Shell.

Adam Guantlet returns, and finds The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman, on his Bookshelf.

And we are joined by Deanna Knippling, author of Miracle, Texas and Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocolypse to discuss her story, why Westerns should always end badly, and zombies.

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, by E. T. A. Hoffman. Narrated by Jim Phillips, Lorna Boyle, Richard Kunz, Ken Stoffler, Charlie White, and Paul Alves.

Music is In Kamakkura — The Traditional Samurai Metropolitan in Japan by Ichiro NAKAGAWA.

The first night in the new village, Hinako couldn’t sleep. The house creaked and sighed all around her. She tried to hear Father breathing in the next room. But he was drowned in the settling of the house and the distant roar of the sea. Hinako rose. She dressed and slipped barefoot past her father’s door, out into the summer night.

Hinako wandered between the little houses, keeping near the walls, in the shadows. Inside the houses, strangers slept. But out here she was alone. Hinako hummed to herself, a song her mother used to sing. She turned a corner, onto the main road that bisected the village.

A ghost stood in the middle of the road.

This story was previously published online by Yesteryear Fiction.

“Go and fetch some water Hassim,” my mother said. I picked up the buckets
and started to walk down towards the river. As I did so I overheard her
talking to her aunt.

“At least the well is safe now. It hasn’t collapsed for two years.”

“I know it’s the second time this week he ain’t showed up. What the hell am I supposed to do about it?”

Whenever my old lady starts up with me, telling me something stupid I already know, something she expects me to do something about when there’s not a damn thing I can do, it really gets under my skin, like an itch you can’t scratch away. And the damn bitch knows that, too.

Music is Suil a ruin by Ceili Moss.

Be sure and pick up a copy of the novel Padre, beginning 01 November, 2011.

Death stands beside me. It stands near me like an old prison warden I’ve known for years, but we’ve never quite become friends and at times I even hated this warden. Now, though, there is no hate left in me for my warden. Death is no longer simply a frightening and inevitable destination, but I can see that it is the composite of all the moments that came before this moment and it completes the necessary whole of my life.

Read for us by Richard Kunz.

During the unfortunate decade that heralded the popularity of polyester, frosted bangs, and designs shaved into white kids’ hair, I grew up in Billings, Montana. In the wake of my undergraduate education, I fled to Chicago, forsaking my hometown and, as my Mom called it, “the promised land of plenty.” There was no use in trying to explain mixed metaphors to her; she just liked the sound of them.

Music is The Knowledge, by Robert A. Wolf.

Special thanks to Charles McFall for his narration assistance.

Actually, I’m not entirely sure this isn’t a preface as opposed to an introduction. In fact, the entire body of this work will, for most readers, be an introduction. Still, I am reluctant to “preface” God’s autobiography. It seems to me at best impertinent, at worst a trifle blasphemous.

Music for this episode is Sedona Sky, by 2012.

Jim Gable cradled a cheap plastic grocery bag between his arm and ribcage because the handles had broken. In the other hand he thumbed his retro iPhone X, flipping through songs. He walked with his head down, on autopilot. Tweets crawled across his screen- old and new were seconds apart- from friends seemingly compelled to announce every detail of their lives. Half of them weren’t friends, not in the old sense of the word. These days the world was your friend. A woman walking her dog sniffed at him as she passed.

Music is Rolling Memories, by Alexandre Falcao.

“All right, all right,” said Margie, waving her hands for silence. “Enough war-on-terror talk.”

The four of us had finished several bottles of wine, and her face glowed flush in the soft lamplight. I felt a little lightheaded myself and incredibly horny. From where she sat at the end of the couch, she pushed against my thigh with her toes. It was driving me crazy.

“What is your earliest memory from childhood?” Margie asked when she had our attention.

“I can remember being born,” Julian said.

Music is The Body, by Android Lust.

I love my legs. I chose the custom red striping on the sides when I was twelve, with vintage ball joint knees and toes, patterned with scrolls; a more expensive model than my parents wanted. We customized the calves with embossed stars that wind a gentle arc up my legs to my thighs. I was quite the designer even then. My parents made me pay for half of them with my allowance from that summer because they were so utterly frivolous. It was the summer without ice cream. I looked at my old blue feet every time the truck went by and curled my toes in anticipation, smiling to myself.

It is said that if history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

So let me tell you a story about apathy, and how it came into this world. Now, some people think that hate is the opposite of love. But really, does one hate because he cannot love? No. One hates because he has loved and lost, turning hate and love into neighbors.

However apathy, by definition being the absence of passion, emotion, excitement, is the sole antithesis of love.

And before it came to earth, it lived in the form of a house that hovered among the clouds.

Music for this episode is Apathy, by Scott Helm.

Around midnight, pedestrians cutting through Olmstead Park in north Boston would sometimes look up to the west façade of the Feniston Building where a few lights in a few lonely offices on the eleventh floor were still burning, their luminescence quickly swallowed by the cloying night. In one of these offices, Jim Staymin, Creative Director for Beantown Fashion, sat behind a small desk crowded with drafts of articles and photo sets, looking at the taskbar at the bottom of his PC screen, which gave the time as 11:53 PM. Marlene, his editor-in-chief, sat across the desk from him where she’d sat for most of the evening, mouth tight, eyes bright but emotionless, just as they’d been for as long as Jim had known her. She was considering an objection Jim had just made, but considered it only momentarily before shaking her head and resuming her argument. “All I’m saying,” she said, “is that I think a trip to the gym is in order for this young lady.”

If he’d meant to leave his wife for her, he shouldn’t have shot her horse.

Justine waved to the banditos and hefted her saddlebags. She’d sold the banditos her saddle and tack in payment for the ride from El Paso to Miracle, Texas. They’d heard of Marguerite’s Amazons and therefore weren’t prepared to risk doing her bodily harm, but they weren’t going to give her a ride for free. She walked the last mile and a half, one foot in front of the other. Her boots hurt her feet; she wasn’t used to walking.

Regret pulled a cigarette from her pack of Camels. Rolling it between her rough fingers she examined it closely, her deep brown eyes dissecting its details, admiring its simple perfection and soothing promise.

“Got a smoke?” Coy asked.

She looked up at him from her position on a low window sill, “Not for you.”

Regarding Emma, by Elizabeth Barton. Narrated by Julie Sigwart.

Casey’s Hope by Alexandra Seidel. Narrated by Erin McFall.

Counterculture by Elizabeth Creith. Narrated by Charlene Huang-Roberts.

A Drink, the Devil, and My Mother, by Lisa Gurney. Narrated by Jim Phillips.

Please enjoy!

Narrated by John Roberts, co-host of GAG The Manager.

The shopping cart slammed into the doorframe, causing a crash that pierced the silence of our apartment hallway. Crouched in the front basket, I held up my forearm to prevent my body from barreling through our front door.

“Monty, you idiot,” I cursed. I took my keys from my pocket and thrust them into the doorknob, while Monty’s hoarse laugh vibrated down the hall.

“Damn key,” I snorted, fumbling with the lock. Still in the grocery basket, I opened the door and Monty ploughed us through. The shopping cart rolled onto on our living room floor with me still in it.

Mr. Morris can be found online at http://edwardrmorrisjr.blogspot.com/.

Public bathrooms are supposed to be safe, to a child. What could ever happen there?

Public bathrooms occupy their own corner of Spacetime, their own cosm that gets examined as little as possible by anyone.

When you’re four years old, public bathrooms are mysterious and terrifying, with vast Horoscope machines looming over you, their funhouse mirrors at your eye level inlaid in the Bakelite where grownups don’t notice.

Mr. Morris can be found online at http://edwardrmorrisjr.blogspot.com/.

Special thanks to Steve Cox (http://fromtheedge.com) and Erin McFall (http://erinsaves.ning.com/) for their narration assistance.

If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, continue the experiment. If it continues to run away, terminate it and rebuild. Rinse. Repeat Step One.

This is the way of pure Science. We may think we love those not born of Man and Woman, the way we think we love a long-time family pet. But neither are ensouled.

Not even when they think they are.

Narrated by Ken Stoeffler, of the Flatus Show. http://theflatusshow.com/.

Geoffry’s dad tells him that his Uncle Rick will be coming for a visit tomorrow. Geoffry has never been this cold before. Earlier, his mom told him that his pre-school is closed today because it’s so cold. So he stays in the house, freezing. Every so often he asks his mom to turn up the thermostat, not knowing what this means except insofar as he’s heard her say it. She always promises to, but he has noticed no change.

Narrated by the lovely Lorna Boyle. Lorna can be found on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/lornawynn217.

So long as the nurse is in the room to keep an eye on me, I am allowed to dress myself and get ready for Brad. I slip on an old pair of jeans and a scarlet turtleneck sweater. I’ve lost so much weight that the jeans hang loosely from the bony points of my hips.

“Let’s go spend the weekend in Salem,” Brad says to me as he walks me out of the hospital, an arm protectively wrapped around my waist, “just the two of us.”

Narrated by Charlie White, who you can find online at http://www.cewtwo.com.

Learn about, and purchase, the full manuscript of Mark Twain’s long-awaited autobiography at http://www.thisismarktwain.com/

I had been having considerable trouble with my wings. The day after I helped the choir I made a dash or two with them, but was not lucky. First off, I flew thirty yards, and then fouled an Irishman and brought him down–brought us both down, in fact. Next, I had a collision with a Bishop–and bowled him down, of course. We had some sharp words, and I felt pretty cheap, to come banging into a grave old person like that, with a million strangers looking on and smiling to themselves.

Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a little anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that time, like a comet. LIKE a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them! Of course there warn’t any of them going my way, as a steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for the Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that was going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a brush together. But it was generally pretty one-sided, because I sailed by them the same as if they were standing still.

Consciousness grabbed Malcolm and shook, causing him to jump to his feet. When he did, he noticed he was standing, once again, on that endless, grassy plain. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said out loud. “Damn all this grass.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the ground began to shake. All around him, in the distance, he could see a dark wave undulating toward him, as if he’d been a pebble thrown into a pond, and his ripples were coming back to haunt him. When those waves converged on Malcolm, he was bounced up into the air. When he came back down, it wasn’t onto grass, but asphalt. The field had become a parking lot, stretching into infinity.

He wasn’t sure if his feet were quite touching that so-green grass. Aimed straight and grim, Malcolm was stretching whatever sinew it was he wore to put distance, rapidly, between himself and Aminae’s forest. He was aware at a gut level…no, at a molecular level, a sub-atomic level, of how close he’d come to being swallowed in there. He didn’t even dare think of Aminae. One glimpse of her in his thoughts could stop him in his tracks with a vicious longing. He could not survive another encounter with her.

Malcolm Stark kept an appointment with his soul to meet in a dream, and died in his sleep. As they walked, arms around shoulders, through that twilit place, his soul let something silver fall from its hand, and left it lying in the too-green grass.

The relief Malcolm felt was that of a husband watching his in-laws leave after an extended visit. His soul had never gotten along with his life, but in the end the animosity had become a palpable thing. Even so, the two had remained close, and Malcolm had tried to take his soul’s advice whenever he could divine what that cryptic character was trying to tell him.

“Yes,” said the dealer, “our windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,” and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, “and in that case,” he continued, “I profit by my virtue.”

Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.

I was in grade five when I first met Mr. Hamilton. That was the
year my father died and my mother had to start working again. That was
the year that Mike Todd and his friends decided to make my life
unbearable.

On that crisp spring day I could smell the earthworms in the
ground and see a fog of green buds surrounding the trees. I thought
I’d lost Mike by taking a different street home that afternoon. I
didn’t count on Mike’s persistence. Like dogs after a fox I could hear
them hallooing half a block behind me, so I ran.

We present the classic short story Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce. Narrated by Charlie White.

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners – two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as “support,” that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest – a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.