Top Stories
Stories in Fiction that you'll love, handpicked by our team.
Summer Snow. Honorable Mention in Out of Season Challenge. Top Story - September 2026.
The first snowflake landed in my champagne. For a second, I thought it was ash. It was Christmas Day in Queensland, the sort of day where the heat was suffocating. It sat on your shoulders and pressed against your skin until everything stuck – hair to neck, dress to spine, thighs to chairs. The tiles around the pool were almost too hot to walk on, the air above the barbecue shimmered, and the cicadas screamed from the gums beyond the back fence.
By Emilie Turnerabout a month ago in Fiction
Perfectly Ripe. Top Story - September 2026. Content Warning.
Dust is dancing in the cracks of dawn light from the drawn curtains. Fine, cornflour dust. Airy and mischievous, and seeming to spread on every breath of air like spores. Spider dust that spins, and smears, and chokes, and stains. Endless dust, cruel as age. Dust mocking. Dust on every memory. Dust in my fingernail beds and in my eyes, dust in my throat. Dust down to my lungs.
By Lauren Everdellabout a month ago in Fiction
Final Service: Samhain. Top Story - September 2026.
The All Hallows Supply Co. appeared between the payday-loan office and a vape shop on the first Thursday in June. It caught Rhea's eye because she had become the kind of person to scope out empty storefronts. For months, she had driven the same commercial strip to stare longingly at the unit she had finally signed the lease on a week prior. It wouldn't be long before the old abandoned sandwich shop had a new name and life. Cinnamon buns the size of a wrestler's fist would be displayed in the front window, and the smell of sourdough would enchant the small town. Lemon squares and salted caramel cakes would sit behind the glass, and become responsible for at least five pounds of carb-related weight gain for the people of Blackford.
By Autumn Stewabout a month ago in Fiction
Football Friday Night. Top Story - September 2026. Content Warning.
It was one of those magical southern nights in October, and all of the teenagers in town were drunk on autumn and youth. There would be a party after the football game, and youthful concupiscence would be satisfied before the moon set in the morning sky. In anticipation of this, the boys were dousing themselves in Polo and Drakkar Noir while the girls teased their bangs into ski slopes and lacquered them above their heavily mascaraed eyes lined with kohl and painted hot pink stripes on their cheekbones. Def Leppard and Whitesnake blasted from boomboxes perched on dressers and lingerie chests. Pliers were used to zip jeans, and Marlboro Lights were smuggled out of sock drawers and into handbags while condoms pressed their circular imprint into dollar bills in wallets in back pockets.
By Harper Lewis about a month ago in Fiction
The perfect sunrise. Top Story - September 2026.
The summer had finally arrived and everyone was looking forward to the usual warm weather and sunny days that lay ahead. Long days of sitting out on the beach while watching the sunset, late night strolls through the park, cicadas buzzing off somewhere in the darkness...just to name a few expected scenes.
By Jeff Paitchellabout a month ago in Fiction
Aurelius Ascends. Top Story - September 2026.
Aurelius Ascends had spent the best part of fifteen years shifting from a single figment of a dream to a glossy digital image on a one-hundred-inch computer screen, eventually realized by SpaceCorp's head designer, Lisa Scanlon, and put on the drawing board.
By Jonathan Townendabout a month ago in Fiction
She Flew Away. Top Story - September 2026.
Every spring there I have a visitor. She has a long slim neck, sharp facial features decorated with the softest edges you'll ever see, and she's a terrible singer. Though each summer, once she's gone, I do ache in the silence. For the most part she wanders the back edge of my too-large for me property, every now and then I take my morning walk a little too close and she lectures me and moves back farther.
By K.L. Graceabout a month ago in Fiction
The Rotting Wreaths of Winterveil. Top Story - September 2026.
It was a truly tacit place, Winterveil —with unpredictable, looping weather and calendars that barely rang true. You would think students had grown accustomed to living such a life, but most of them had no idea, no clue of what world they had been born into.
By K.H. Obergfollabout a month ago in Fiction
