Nicolas Z Porter: 27 books

This is a short story. A young couple arrive in a bus terminal. Both are nervous at their impending separation. We assume it's a sad time for both, but is it? Are they running from a problem, or merely solving it in a different way?

A stranger visits a peaceful village and is welcomed. Why is he there? Is it a test? Only time will tell....

A weary man sits in his recliner in his living room. He's waited all week for his special TV show, and it's on. It's the first episode of a new season. Then someone starts knocking at his door. We can forgive him for not answering immediately, can't we? Well, can't we?

An interplanetary hunter storms into a tavern on a mining outpost on Andula. He's looking for a beast, or a man... or maybe a spirit. He isn't quite sure.

This is a short story. An elderly woman is last seen on a soggy, dreary day by two of her neighbors who are playing checkers on a porch. Neither of the men ostensibly know her all that well. But maybe one knows her better than he lets on. A young family comes to town a few days later looking for the woman, and they're even less familiar with her than the men are.

In this intense SF short story, Wesley Smithfield-Rush III, PhD, came aboard a shuttle as part of a space archaeology team to conduct an archaeological survey and inventory of an abandoned transport before it was recovered. It was an easy, routine way to keep his hand in and show off how much he knows. What harm could it do?

A homeless veteran wanders the streets, struggling with his ghosts as he vascillates between The World and his own reality, reliving the day he watched his best friend die.

After the Inter-Arab War of 2139, the world community began a second Holocaust, attempting to cleanse itself of the Jewish race once and for all with The Purge. With the assistance of sympathetic non-Jewish people, some children of Jewish families were spirited away. One, Jonathan Kirski, grew up...

Wes Crowley, a former Texas Ranger and US marshal from Santa Fe, has at long last given up his search to find a turncoat... and then he does.

Ellyn Cochran comes to find that everything is not always as it seems, even in the liberal fairytale world she hoped for.

Two men are on a camping trip in their favorite remote spot. Nearby is an ancient pueblocito in a crevice in a cliff above the Gila River. Was the pueblocito home to a shaman? It's a great place to explore, theorize and slather philosopy across the desert. Especially after the shaman makes an appearance.

In the waiting room of a psychologist's office, a man engages a woman in a conversation about personal responsibility and the mores of society.

This is an intense short story, a tale of war. Along with your companions, you're entering a village to the sounds of fireworks, or maybe bullets. You feel tired, fatigued, decide to rest for a bit, as it turns out, alongside an old woman who reminds you of your mother.