Historical & Western

A single old Roman iron key on a worn workbench beside bronze files and a blank, lit by one oil lamp, an iron-bound strongbox blurred in shadow behind.I have cut nine hundred keys in my life and kept the copy of not one of them, and for thirty years no man in this colony could tell me why a thing so foolish should be holy. Then Caelius Rufus died in his bed with the box still shut, and they came to me, three times, for the key I had sworn I did not have.

The Empty Ward

Mature

Ancient-world historical22 min

Silver organ facade pipes from below, gloved hands lifting one pipe from its rack, a caliper and ledger on the gallery rail in cold light.They did not send a soldier to take the organ. They sent me, because I was the only man in the province who could tell them, to the gram, what it was worth.

The Front Pipes

Teen

World War fiction16 min

More Historical & Western voices coming soon: Medieval historical · Renaissance / Tudor historical · 19th-century social fiction · Frontier / pioneer saga · Age-of-sail maritime · 20th-century immigrant saga · Classic western