One night, I woke to the sound of my mother’s voice, as I did when I was a child. The words were familiar to my ear, they matched the voice that formed them, but it was not until I had opened my eyes to the dark of my room and my husband’s snoring that I remembered the words were calling me away from my warm bed and the steady breathing of my children, both asleep in their own rooms across the hall. “Because I could not stop for death,” my mother used to tell me, “he kindly stopped for me.” Narrated by Gabrielle De Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you seen those houses on Oroño Boulevard, especially the ones that face east, those dry, cold, serious, heavy houses, with grilles but without gardens, maybe at the most a tile patio paved like the sidewalk? In one of those houses lives Ciro Vázquez Leiva, Cirito. Narrated by Roxanne Hernandez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Default hadn’t been down in the nocturns for some time, probably half an orbit, but he had just dissolved the geneshare contract with his now-ex-lover and needed to get completely fucking perforated to take his mind off things. His lift was full of revelers all laughing and widecasting the same synthesized whalesong from Old Old Earth. Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“There are one thousand eight hundred bolts total,” the old man said. “You’ll work every night until sunrise. Always go in order. Never skip a bolt.” Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One day Lily decided to be someone else. Someone with a past. It was an affliction of hers, wanting this. The desire was seldom triggered by any actual incident or complaint but seemed instead to be related to the act or prospect of lateral movement. She felt it every time a train passed. Narrated by Kimberly Farr. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A loon called this morning, loud and clear in the cold hours before dawn, but it was not that which woke me from my sleep. As I opened my eyes, the bay and the beach were wrapped in heavy blackness, invisible clouds shutting out any hint of starlight above. For a moment, I lay in my lean-to, breathing heavily under the shaggy bison skin blanket. Narrated by Adam Paul. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Harry looked out the window and thought: At least I saw Paris one more time before it was destroyed in the bombardment. Narrated by Gabrielle De Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With minimal fanfare and next to no audience, Invasion of a Small World debuted in the summer of 2016, and after a brief and disappointing run, the series was deservedly shelved. Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Perhaps you’ve heard an anecdote about a child named Cresencio who was skipping barefoot between hills of corn when a shallow bowl in the field, long turbulent with mutterings, broke into pieces. Cresencio spied a tongue of smoke, like the mockings of a demon; he bent, staring into the jagged mouth that was about to spatter the nearby trees with sparks and set his childhood on fire. Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My feet are scraped and bleeding, my slippers shredded and almost useless. The dress hangs in tatters around me. No longer white, it still bears the pearls along the bodice, and I hope I can keep them close and sell them in whatever town I find myself in. Provided I find a town. Provided I ever leave these woods. I have traveled for two days, surviving on puddle water and berries, hoping that the sounds I hear behind me aren’t my father, Roland, and the dogs. Narrated by Susan Hanfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices