mystery and crime short fiction

  • The Least of These by BV Lawson

    Listen to this story on the podcast. “Diplomacy is to do and say / the nastiest thing in the nicest way.”—Isaac Goldberg She was a single mother from a micro-town in southwest Virginia who’d never had a single lucky break until she landed a job as secretary at the French Embassy in D.C. At least, she…

  • How Green Was My Valet by John H. Dromey

    Listen to this story on the podcast. It’s the familiar things you never notice that sometimes matter most. Although perhaps not young enough or tall enough to become a top model, and decidedly not svelte enough to squeeze her ample charms into the impossibly-small confines of size zero haute couture gowns, the smartly-dressed woman nonetheless…

  • Volume IV Anthology Now Available

    The latest Plan B anthology is now available for purchase in epub, mobi and pdf formats. All the stories in this, the fourth collection of tales from Plan B Magazine, touch on what happens when people put their will above that of others. Sometimes it’s amusing, other times heartbreaking, but it no matter what, someone’s…

  • Slice by Tom Barlow

    Listen to this story on the podcast. Golf sometimes spoils more than just a good walk. He was seated on the floor, snoring softly, outside my office door when I arrived that morning. He had no appointment. The man appeared to have at least a decade on me, mid-50’s, built like a stump with a…

  • Loveable Alan Atcliffe by S.R. Mastrantone

    Some people are so nice, it just seems too good to be true. Loveable Alan Atcliffe: that’s what they call him. Like Mrs. Montgomery, who waited for the breakdown people for nearly an hour in the dark of winter 2001, before Alan pulled over in his taxi and changed her tyre in just five minutes….

  • Congratulations to Plan B Author Stephen D. Rogers on his Derringer Award Win

    We are thrilled to congratulate Stephen D. Rogers on winning the 2014 Derringer Award for his story “Luck is What You Make” (Crime Factory, May 2013). You can read Stephen’s story “Inured” in the Plan B Volume II anthology, or online here.

  • Um Piexe Grande by Patti Abbott

    Listen to this story on the podcast. “Lie thou there; for here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling.” — William Shakespeare Though his eyes were squeezed tight, Gas could hear Loretta standing in their bedroom doorway, his lunch bag crinkling in her hand. He also knew from a variety of signs and smells…

  • Doing God’s Work by Wayne Scheer

    Listen to this story on the podcast. “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform;” — William Cowper Eli and Vernon Browbridge rolled The Fat Man’s bloated body from the trunk of their 1987 Pontiac Grand Prix into the hole in the ground they had just dug. Eli spoke first. “I wonder if…

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