Hey bookworm friends, Happy Saturday! I am not typically a short story reader but I read The Six Deaths of the Saint this year. Surprisingly, I loved it so much that it inspired me to give more short fiction a chance. I’ve started squirrelling away links to short stories or novelettes whenever I find one I enjoy and I’ll be sharing them occasionally on my blog. I don’t read enough to merit making these posts very often but welcome to my first round of ‘Short Story Inventory‘! I’ll divide the stories into two categories: standalone short stories, and ones that take place in pre-established worlds such as those that are part of series for example.
Click on the links to read them online for free.
Standalone Short Stories
Also, The Cat │by Rachel Swirsky, On Reactor
Read if you like: Family squabbles and sassy old lady ghosts.
Yo, Rapunzel │by Kyle Kirrin, On Podcastle
Read if you like: Modern Fairytale retellings drizzled in curse words and irreverence.
Waiting Out The End of the World In Patty’s Place Cafe │by Naomi Kritzer, On Clarkesworld
Read if you like: Weirdly hopeful apocalypse stories & found family.
Goblins and Greatcoats │by Travis Baldree, On Subterranean Press (You’ll have to add to cart for $0 and once ‘purchased’ you’ll receive the file in your email).
Read if you like: Cozy Fantasy Mysteries
Stories in Pre-established Worlds
Juice Like Wounds (Wayward Children 4.5)│by Seanan McGuire, On Reactor
Read if you like: In An Absent Dream. We get to spend more time with Lundy in a side-quest.
In Mercy, Rain (Wayward Children 7.5)│by Seanan McGuire, On Reactor
Read if you like: Jack, the Moors, and Come Tumbling Down. More Mad Scientist…madness!
Skeleton Song (Wayward Children 7.7)│ by Seanan McGuire, On Reactor
Read if you like: Christopher and Skeletons, and want to learn more about Mariposa.
Gerard DeMille and Helen Meet (Innkeeper Chronicles 0.1) │by Ilona Andrews on Ilona Andrews’ website
Read if you: are hungry for any crumbs of information about Dina’s parents.
The Best Ever Cosplay of Whistle and Midnight (set in The Terraformers world)│Annalee Newitz on Uncanny Magazine
Read if you: like big-ideas sci-fi and want to read about worms cosplaying. You read that right. Literal worms. Cosplay.
Let’s chat in the comments!
Do you like short fiction? If so, where is your go-to place to access short stories?
I didn’t know Seanan McGuire was writing Wayward Children short stories. Very cool, I will have to check them out😁
Oh yeah, the only reason I know about them is because they’re listed in GR and I love the series enough that I felt like I wanted to read everything! They’re worth it for sure but Juice Like Wounds is my fav of the three . I hope you enjoy them if you do check them out 🙂
Aww what a lovely way to share the free short stories that you enjoy. I didn’t know that there were also shorts within the Wayward Children world but I’ll definitely be checking them out if I enjoy the main series. I’ll have to check some of the standalones out and see how I find them. Although I’ve saved the post for when I finally get to some of the series too. Mostly I read shorts in collections although I think some of the Morganville ones were online. I was going to say that I remembered seeing some on Tor, then not getting around to reading them but I think that’s what Reactor is now as when I tried to look it up I was redirected there.
Thank you! I find these types of posts will give me a place to put short stories I enjoyed and share them with people 🙂 Yes, that’s a good idea. What’s Morganville? Yes, Reactor is a like a Tor online magazine, exactly!
It’s a lovely idea and definitely helpful as you don’t always know where to find certain short stories. It’s a vampire series by Rachel Caine. I really enjoyed it. Ah right, that makes sense then.
Yeah I often don’t even know where to start looking for them, I typically read them as I stumble into them while I’m looking for other things lol 🙂
Oh cool okay I’ll have to look that up, I’m always down for vampire series!
I’m not sure if I’d know where to find them either 🤔 I find a lot of books with Goodreads lists but I don’t know if they have any for short stories like that.
If you read it let me know. I’m hoping to reread it myself one day.
that’s a good point. I tried and it looks like the lists are kind of all over the place, they are mostly anthologies or short story collections or sometimes novellas or sometimes just themed lists that contain short stories within them. Could be helpful but doesn’t seem like the best place to search for specifically that.
https://www.goodreads.com/genres/short-stories
& Ok if I do I’ll let you know 🙂
Ah right that’s a pain, although the focus on anthologies doesn’t particularly surprise me. I think a lot of the ones I’ve found, although I generally still need to read them, I’ve stumbled across whilst looking at authors Goodreads pages as they’re within their published works. But then that only works for authors you know of. That pages good for new ones though at least.
Yeah true it does work to at least maybe find new authors. As I already know how to find the ones I like, you’re right 🙂