30 Favorite Short Stories by John Boden

I shall now without the aid of a net or any type of safety device, craft a list of thirty of my favorite short stories. Presented in a stunningly built list of no particular ranking or order.

I will not include many stories by authors/writers who are biggies: King, Lansdale, McCammon, etc. We all know their names and have no doubt read many of their stories.

I want to hip you to stuff you might not know about.

I will instead choose to focus on more out of mainstream offerings or older stories that maybe you have never heard of. Which isn't to say there aren't some very familiar names in here. I mean, a few stories are damn near must-haves, right?

Also, being lazy, I will not include anything outside of the story title and the author's name. In this the age of Google...that's all you really need.

Shall we get on with it?

1. "The Young One" by Jerome Bixby
2. "Miss Gentilbelle" by Charles Beaumont
3. "The Snail Watcher" by Patricia Highsmith
4. "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" by Margaret St. Clair (published under the name, Idris Seabright)
5. "The Sea Was Wet As Wet Can Be" by Gahan Wilson
6. "A Coat That Fell" by Michael Wehunt
7. "Peekers" by Kealan Patrick Burke
8. "The Box" by Jack Ketchum
9. "The Emissary" by Ray Bradbury
10. "Toxic Wastrels" by Poppy Z. Brite
11. "Complicity" by Christopher Ropes
12. "Need" by Gary A. Braunbeck
13. "The Last Stand Of The Elephant Man" by Jennifer Pelland
14. "Carbon" by Stephen Graham Jones
15. "Vigil" by Chad Lutzke
16. "The Enormous Radio" by John Cheever
17. "The Ascent" by Ron Rash
18. "Spell" by Kelli Owen
19. "Web Of Glass" by Rennie Sparks
20. "The Cancer Cowboy Rides" by John Connolly
21. "The Thyme Fiend" by Jeffery Ford
22. "Racing The Milk by Bob Ford
23. "Shadow, Shadow On The Wall" by Theodore Sturgeon
24. "Lodgers" by Joan Aiken
25.  "Clay" by George A. Romero
26. "Tangerine" by Laura Lee Bahr
27. "Broken" by Mercedes M. Yardley
28. "The Music Box" by T.L. Morganfield
29. "The Rat Burner" by Richard Bare
30. "Jam" by Mark Allan Gunnells

John Boden lives a stone's throw from Three Mile Island with his wonderful wife and sons. A baker by day, he spends his off time writing or watching old television shows. He likes Diet Pepsi and sports ferocious sideburns. He loves heavy metal and old country music, shoofly pie and westerns.

He’s a pretty nice fella, honest.

His work has appeared in Borderlands 6, Shock Totem, Splatterpunk, Lamplight, and the John Skipp edited Psychos and others. His not-really-for-children children’s book, Dominoes has been called a pretty cool thing. His other books, Jedi Summer With the Magnetic Kid and Detritus In Love are out and about. He recently released a novella with fellow author Chad Lutzke called Out Behind the Barn.

He has a slew of things on the horizon, some of which are coming very soon.