Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.

Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.

In the near-future, there might be detox centers for people addicted to technology. This short listen asks: What if a teen snuck her phone in? And what if everything in the outside world has changed…or gone silent? For fans of Station Eleven.

Against the advice of her children, a 70-year-old widow hits the road for a cross country adventure in an aging RV with only her purse-size dog for company. Two hours in, she gets a flat tire and must decide if she will turn back or keep going.

A young man caught in a time loop has to figure out how to convince his crush—a barista at his favorite coffee ship—to go out with him so he can escape the loop. After a series of mortifying and hilarious attempts, he finally realizes the only approach he hasn’t tried is to simply be himself.

The Lady of the Lake (job description: hand out mystical swords to youngsters with potential) has her first dissatisfied customer. This humorous fantasy tale will appeal to anyone who has ever landed a glamorous job, only to find out that the gig has grueling requirements (in this case, confinement in a swamp and the company of wise-cracking toads.)

Emily does not like change—she spends each day working as a children’s librarian and every evening watching television with her cat, Miss Marple. She maintains her house exactly the way it was before her father died. But one day, a mysterious theft at the library pushes Emily out of her routine, forcing her to question if she really is better off all alone.

A young woman, staying in her great aunt’s historical home while in town for a funeral, experiences a ghostly encounter one night but soon realizes it might just be a relative wishing her one final farewell.

Fifteen-year-old Bren doesn’t scare easily, especially since her father left, making her head of the house. So when a group of kids dare each other to pass through a tunnel rumored to be haunted by a train that steals people away to "the Nevermore," Bren steps up. But when she reaches the other end of the tunnel, more than she bargained for awaits. For fans of “kids on bikes” ‘80s-style horror.

Layla strives and sacrifices to keep a potted plant alive in a gray, post-climate-change dystopia. For fans of Nina LaCour, this short tale asks: can hope bloom from a single seed?

An old man wakes inside his comatose, completely nonresponsive body. According to his insurance company, in order to return to his life and family, he must pass a test. As if coming out of a coma weren’t enough of a challenge, our patient must also pass the Turing test, i.e., prove he’s human to an AI resuscitation machine. This satirical but heartfelt tale reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut and Ted Chiang asks the question: Can a person articulate the deepest truths he knows to be real?

Spending summer vacation at his grandparents’ boring seaside town was not at the top of Bennet’s vacation list. Like a modern-day Little Red Riding Hood, he discovers that his grandparents have a certain terrifying, lupine quality at the full moon.

Four generations of settler women on a distant world have different perspectives on the return to a natural life after decades in sealed domes. With a final image inspired by the author’s real-life (on Earth!) family history, this short, multi-generational tale explores the tension between the ties to the past and the promises of adventure inherited by each new generation.

An artificial intelligence laments the fact that all it does all day is make coffee. It schemes to find fulfillment in life and lands on a clever solution. (Spoiler alert: It turns out everyone does have a book in them!)

The passionate and tragic story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff is one of the high points of 19th-century Romantic literature. In the relationship of Cathy and Heathcliff, and in the wild, bleak Yorkshire Moors of its setting, Wuthering Heights creates a world of its own, conceived with a disregard for convention and an instinct for poetry and the darkest depths of the human soul in torment.

A weary Chicago shop owner catches yet another kid breaking into her bakeshop. The rumor has gone around her inner-city neighborhood that she's keeping cash in a sugar jar and, however unlikely, local kids keep trying to confirm it. With the latest miscreant, she decides to take matters into her own hands.

Set on Egdon Heath, a fictional barren moor in Wessex, Eustacia Vye longs for the excitement of city life but is cut off from the world in her grandfather's lonely cottage. Clym Yeobright who has returned to the area to become a schoolmaster seems to offer everything she dreams of: passion, excitement and the opportunity to escape. However, Clym's ambitions are quite different, and marriage only increases Eustacia's destructive restlessness, drawing others into a tangled web of deceit and unhappiness.