Advertise on podcast: New Tales Told – Original Short Stories

Dr. Nathan Cole measures water for a living. It's quiet work, gauges and spreadsheets, the slow arithmetic of things that don't change much. Then a reservoir gains four inches overnight with no rain, no inflow, no explanation, and gives them back by morning. Everyone blames the sensor. The sensor is fine. What follows is the worst thing a careful man can discover, which is that he's been measuring the right thing all along. If you like short stories, there's a multiverse of them at shortstoryverses.com. And do me one favor. Hit follow. It costs you nothing, it takes a second, and it's the whole reason a show like this keeps going. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There is a job nobody warns you about. After the dying comes the paperwork, the hold music, the strangers in call centers who need proof that she is gone. For two years she was her mother’s caregiver. Now she is her mother’s administrator. She makes lists. She keeps folders. She is very good at this. Then she reaches the bottom of the last statement. An original story, written and read by Don McDonald. Explore our multiverses of short fiction at shortstoryverses.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Winter, 1906. A clerk who speaks to no one from Saturday to Monday buys a mahogany graphophone for far less than it’s worth. The widow selling it keeps her eyes on the snow. Her husband, she says, liked to keep his own voice. He carries it home and records his diary each night, and the machine hands him back to himself, the nearest thing to company he has. Then the wax starts holding something he never put there. For more short stories, visit ShortStoryverses.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nobody in New Orleans had ever made Bernard de Marigny look foolish in public. He was rich past counting, small as a foil, and very likely the most dangerous man in Louisiana with a pistol in his hand. Then a blacksmith from a far parish, seven feet of him and slow to speak, said something true on the floor of the legislature, and the whole chamber laughed. The card came to the forge two days later. The blacksmith was no duelist. He was, however, a man who had spent his life learning where something hard gives. From Short Storyverses. More at shortstoryverses.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An obituary arrives in the mail, folded in thirds, no note, no return address, and the creases are sharp enough to cut with. Roy Kittleson has not seen the man named in it since a Friday in 1986, and he has his reasons, and none of them are good. He drives up anyway. Three hours, most of it flat. He has rehearsed nothing. He is counting on grief to arrive on its own. “The Wrong Funeral,” is an original story written and read by Don McDonald from ShortStoryverses.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Season Two of New Tale's Told, a collection of my original short stories. I've spent the summer creating some unique tales for you. I hope a few of them bring you a bit of pleasure. The Garden was finished before anyone in it was born. The rain arrives on schedule, in the amount that has been decided. The manual has never been improved on. Nobody touches anybody. Children learn it early, with the short rod, because correcting is cheapest when they're small. Sela is twenty-two and has never had a low year. When the tremor takes the hands of the old man who grades pears beside her, she stands up and says, "I'll take that." Nothing forbids it. There is even a provision. Two hundred and nine times. Over twenty months. Somebody is keeping the number. “The Garden’s Wall” started with a question I couldn’t put down. What would a society look like if it decided, sincerely and on the evidence, that compassion was a defect to be bred out? Not a cruel place. A reasonable one, where the punishment is measured, the reasoning is sound, and nobody enjoys any part of it. The answer turned out to be a garden, and a wall nobody built, and a gate that opens outward, and forty-one people put through it in a single lifetime. If you enjoy these stories, please check out my many short story universes at shortstoryverses.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Enjoy a Summer Bonus Episode Before the New Season in September Nora has come up to Lake Sabbath to do one hard, practical thing — close the old family house for good, and mark what will be sold. She means to stay a single night. But a house keeps its own memory: the key still on its nail, the drawer that sticks, a boat with a name. And a long, unhurried summer evening on still water can ask more of a person than they came prepared to answer. Short Storyverses is our multiverse of audio fiction — where each show spins in its own orbit but shares one sky. Classics and originals on LitReading, suspense on FRIGHTLY!, romance on Love Lit, comedy on HumorUs, new voices on New Tales Told, and tales for the youngest listeners too. Short enough for a commute, a walk, or the quiet before sleep. Press play at shortstoryverses.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the season finale of New Tales Told. I wrote this one because of a fact I couldn't put down. The universe is expanding, and it isn't going to stop, and the stars are burning the only fuel there is. The bright ones go first. The small, dim, stubborn ones last the longest, trillions of years, and then, someday, the last of them goes out, and there is no morning after it. The lights simply go off, for good. I kept thinking about that final star, and about who, or what, might still be there to see it go. Not the science of it, really, but the loneliness of it. The last witness in a universe with nothing left to witness. That question became a watcher, and a long vigil, and this story.\ It's called Dark. I'm glad you're here for it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In August 1864, thirty thousand Union prisoners were dying behind a wall of felled pine in southern Georgia. The man in command was a Swiss-born captain with a ruined arm, a sick wife back home, and a daughter whose portrait he kept on his writing table. His name was Henry Wirz, and a year later he would be the only man executed for war crimes after the Civil War. "Man or Monster" follows him through a single day. The morning report. The short rations. The chain. The deadline. The letters to a Richmond that never wrote back. No verdict, no villain's speech, just one man doing his duty inside a horror he could name but could not stop, and the question the title leaves with you. From the world of Don McDonald's novel The Line Uncrossed. The book is available at Amazon.com, BN.com, and others booksellers or you can get a special ebook bundle that includes this and two other Civil War stories at donmcdonald.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Henry Pollard has always had a dangerous relationship with words. In 1861 Indianapolis, while the country rushes headlong toward war, Henry would prefer to remain where he is: alive, sarcastic, and safely distant from glory. But a simple errand on behalf of a worried mother places him at a recruiting table outside the statehouse, where one ordinary moment begins quietly rearranging the rest of his life. The Pen is an original short story set in the world of The Line Uncrossed, a literary Civil War novel about family, memory, survival, and the irreversible weight of seemingly small decisions. Told with wit, warmth, and the hindsight of years, it offers a deeply human glimpse into the young men who marched toward war before they understood what war truly was. The Line Uncrossed, available May 22, 2026 at Amazon.com, BN.com, and a host of other book and e-book services. Podcast listeners can get an early access to The Line Uncrossed e-book offer with bonus stories, including this one, at donmcdonald.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In April, 2026, an American F-15E Strike Eagle went down over western Iran. The weapons officer ejected into the Zagros Mountains and was eventually recovered, in an operation whose full scope remains classified, but which is understood to have involved the destruction of hundreds of millions of dollars in American aircraft on the ground rather than risk leaving them, or him, behind. The Crevice is a work of fiction built on the bones of that event. The names are invented. The mountain is invented. The man wedged into the rock is invented. But the cost was real. The promise that brought the helicopters in was real. And the men who flew through the dark to keep that promise, the special operators and aircrews who do this work in places most of us will never know about, for people whose names they will never learn, they are real, and they are the reason the story ends the way it does. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the Civil War, the military's telegraph network was run by civilians. Teenagers, some of them. Elias Murrow was nineteen, careful, and precise. He trusted the procedure because the procedure had never failed him. Then two messages arrived that couldn't both be real, and he did exactly what he was trained to do. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a parable set in a village where things run smoothly—because they always have. Problems are addressed. Responsibilities are shared. And when questions arise, there is a structure in place to handle them. Over time, that structure has grown more refined, more comprehensive… and more complete. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are things we expect from the world. Walls stay still. Rooms hold their shape. The spaces we live in behave. And when they don’t, we look for explanations. Old houses settle. Pipes shift. Light plays tricks. But sometimes the world doesn’t explain itself. When an answer can’t be seen, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. There is something. Something all too real. Something beyond frightening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every crime begins as a solution. At least to someone. This is a story about a solution. A rented room. A promise. And a man who believes he is doing what’s necessary. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.