A second helping of podcast fiction from 'One Among the Sleepless' author, Mike Bennett. 'Hall of Mirrors' is a short story collection featuring tales of horror, the grotesque and people in... 'unusual' circumstances.

Delivered in a style that pays homage to Night Gallery, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the old British horror anthology movies of the 1960s, this is a collection of modern gothic tales with a nail of dark humour hammered through its heart. So roll up, ladies and gentlemen, and enter the Hall of Mirrors – if you dare.

What if the cataclysmic Tunguska explosion of 1908 was caused, not by a meteor or a comet, but by a microscopic black hole?

What if that fantastic object - smaller than an atom, older than the stars, heavier than a mountain - is still down there, orbiting deep inside the earth, slowly consuming the planet?

What if only a rookie government agent and an uncannily-insightful consultant stand between a renegade Russian billionaire and his plans to use the black hole to change history - or end it?

What if it's all true?

For an alternative view of the Tunguska event and to explore the...[more]

Throughout the 1920s the Common University provided a free and ready source of education to the working classes of England through various lecture series and the distribution of educative pamphlets in the East End. At the time it renowned as a philanthropic exercise noted more for its good intentions than its practice of asking for lecturers' credentials. In the mid 1930s it shut down amid a small furore over the nonsense it was teaching. It was assumed by all involved that that would be the end of it.

Then, toward the end of the 1990s the English poet A.F. Harrold discovered a box of papers in the attic of an elderly stranger. After exhaustive investigations, leads followed and clues uncovered he discovered that what he held in his hands were lecture notes, reports of speeches, lessons and seminars from the Common University long thought lost by educational historians. "Gosh," he thought, "This stuff's...[more]

"The Best Laid Plans" is a satirical novel of Canadian politics written by Terry Fallis. It recounts the unlikely and amusing alliance between a 30-something burnt out, jaded political staffer, and an older, cantankerous, engineering professor. Driven by a federal election and the life of the resulting minority conservative government, the novel moves between the small town of Cumberland, Ontario on the shores of the Ottawa River, and the nation's capital. While the characters and their exploits are often comical, serious ideas on politics and democracy underlie the fun. For more information on the novel and author, visit www.terryfallis.com.

Detective Jonny C. Speed’s life can’t get much better. He’s booked into the French Quarter’s most luxurious guesthouse, and his day job as convenience store manager is 104 miles behind him in Catherine, Mississippi. He’s already taken care of one pro-bono missing persons job since he’s been in New Orleans, and his paying client’s cheating wife is a beautiful and very accommodating exhibitionist. Are things too good to be true? Of course they are. Jonny starts to worry when his client turns up dead, but when the suspects start dropping, Jonny and his crack team of beauty queens, recovering addicts, professional athletes, computer hackers, and pampered dogs find themselves caught in a twisted scheme of revenge that threatens to turn the town of Catherine inside out.

Art is an up-and-coming interface designer, working on the management of data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. He's doing the best work of his career and can guarantee that the system will be, without question, the most counterintuitive, user-hostile piece of software ever pushed forth into the world.

Why? Because Art is an industrial saboteur. He may live in London and work for an EU telecommunications megacorp, but Art's real home is the Eastern Standard Tribe.

The comm -- instant wireless communication -- puts everyone in touch with everyone else, twenty-four hours a day. But one thing hasn't changed: the need for sleep. The world is slowly splintering into Tribes held together by common time zones, less than families and more than nations. And Art is working to humiliate the Greenwich Mean Tribe to the benefit of his own people.

The world of next week is...[more]

Far from home...

Rosemary Halpern, a mild-mannered librarian from Boston, found herself trapped hundreds of years in the future. A future that faced a new Ice Age. A future where ghouls walked the Earth, ravenous for human flesh.

A world where she was drawn to a man who was already dead...

You may think you know about small towns.

You may think you know about high school principals.

You may think you know about high society poodles.

If you've done some reading about the world, you may know think you know about superheroes.

If you're very imaginative, you may think you know a thing or two about trolls.

And if you hang out with undesirable crowds, you may even know a thing or two about belching.

But none of that will prepare you for The Trolls of Lake Maebiewahnapoopie.