mystery and crime short fiction

  • Plan B Year Three – New Campaign

    Today we launched a crowdfunding campaign for Year Three of Plan B Magazine. We are aiming to raise $3000, to double our pay rate and bring you another year of great Plan B stories. If you contribute, you can pre-order the two anthologies for Year Three, catch up with a pack of all four previous Plan…

  • An Unexpected Invitation by Daniel Marshall Wood

    Listen to this story on the podcast. “You are cordially invited…” “Do you think black tie?” Delia asked her husband late Sunday afternoon. Beyond the diamond-paned library window flagstones disappeared under white powder. “What?” Adam stirred from dedicated concentration on the Times crossword, upsetting a grey tabby from her corduroy perch. “The clue is ‘Barker…

  • Write Your Epitaph by Laird Long

    Listen to this story on the podcast. It’s never too late to catch a dream. The judge was banging down hard on his gavel, but the angry hammering was lost in the babble of furious voices—shouting, swearing, screaming, howling. Someone stole a purse, busted into a store, scored some drugs, turned some tricks, fell down…

  • Old Friends by Frank Byrns

    Listen to this story on the podcast. There’s nothing quite like a friend dropping in unexpectedly. The boys looked a lot different since the last time I saw them. They should have; it’d been almost ten years. Reed was twelve now, sandy-haired, the first hint of his old man’s barrel chest beginning to show. Leo,…

  • The Farm by Kevin R. Doyle

    Listen to this story on the podcast. Sometimes a place takes on a life—or a death—of its own. From the distance, the farm looked almost invisible. Just a slightly uneven line of lighter tan against the earth tones of the mountains. Only as I approached it, my rental car bumping and lurching over the rough…

  • Alten Kameraden by Ed Ahern

    All’s fair in love and war. The water-splattered store window in front of Walter Peake held richly tooled leather desk sets and overweight filigreed pens, the kind given as retirement gifts but rarely used. The reflected image of the rain blown cobblestones behind him was empty. The sodden wind measured a few degrees above zero…

  • Stars & Stripes by Jed Power

    Listen to this story on the podcast. Sometimes with a shakedown you get more bang for your buck than expected. I’d been lucky for a change; I’d opened my little fireworks shop just at the right time—about three weeks after New Hampshire legalized the things. I was right in on the ground floor. Perfect location…

  • Miscellany by Eryk Pruitt

    Listen to this story on the podcast. Not much ever happens in those little out of the way stores. Except when it does. There’s a filling station just south of Durham, North Carolina, that raised a ruckus a while back because the owner refused to take down a Confederate flag he’d hoisted above the building. Imagine…

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