I'm looking for a company based in India, cited in a story I heard on NPR sometime in the past week or so, that handles a given number of Joe Consumer research queries per month for a flat fee. [more inside]
posted on Jul 25, 2008 - 6 answers

What was that New Yorker short story? Plot details as I remember... [more inside]
posted on Jul 23, 2008 - 3 answers

I'm looking for a story (or folk tale) my grandfather used to tell me as a child. His parents came to the US from Italy when they were in their 20's, and had him shortly thereafter. So the story may have originated in Italy. [more inside]
posted on Jul 15, 2008 - 10 answers

Can you identify a short story I read in grade school? [more inside]
posted on Apr 22, 2008 - 4 answers

So I wanna write a horror novel. God knows where I start. How can I make it scary, as opposed to a soppy middle of the road thriller?
posted on Apr 19, 2008 - 30 answers

Help me find the alternative superhero story I read online four years ago. Features a side character stuck in a time loop and a possibly unwilling superhero possibly named Bob. [more inside]
posted on Apr 12, 2008 - 4 answers

Need help remembering an old story. I think Joseph Conrad wrote it, but I'm not finding anything with the searches. Here are my dreamlike recollections: gist of the story is about a bottle or a box full of money (?). Each owner of the box/bottle has their wishes granted, but has to pass the box to someone else. The last person with the box/bottle goes to hell (or something?). I think I remember one of the characters in the story building a house on a hill in a tropical location. Help?
posted on Apr 5, 2008 - 6 answers

When a writing contest puts a maximum of "500 words" for story length, should the count include "a" "an" or "the"? [more inside]
posted on Mar 27, 2008 - 24 answers

Find me some new songs - Evaluating personal music preference I'm attracted to a particular subset of music, slow, single male singer, single instrument, telling a story, sometimes it's a little mysterious what's going on... [more inside]
posted on Mar 27, 2008 - 47 answers

I'm trying to track down something I remembered watching on television a long time ago. The only thing I can really remember is the climax of the story, which I vaguely recall was about these parents or caretakers (babysitters, perhaps) telling two young children about some kind of bogeyman. At the end, a giant arm reaches through the front door and grabs them while the children watch. I have a feeling it could have been an episode of an Outer Limits type show, or maybe a Trilogy of Terror type thing.
posted on Mar 18, 2008 - 10 answers

I'm trying to rember a quote from a science or public radio show (maybe even TED) and where it came from "X is a story we tell ourselves." Where X is what the story is about. I think X might have been memory, but I'm not sure.
posted on Mar 7, 2008 - 15 answers

Short-story filter: contemporary American story with a scene of a baby boy whose father cruelly dangles a pocketwatch just out of reach so as to get the boy used to disappointment. [more inside]
posted on Mar 5, 2008 - 3 answers

ShortStoryFilter: A bachelor gradually finds out he has a wife? It's hard to explain it in one sentence. [more inside]
posted on Feb 21, 2008 - 8 answers

Please help me find the name and author of a short story I read in The New Yorker within the last five years or so. The premise of the story is a teacher at a prep school in Manhattan is brought home by one of his students because she has decided he's the person she is going to marry. Toward the end of the story, the girl's father punches the teacher in the stomach unexpectedly. I believe the story won some awards.
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - 25 answers

I'm looking for a story that was a twist on the proverbial one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest. The man built or had a mechanical leg and handily won the contest. I thought it was very clever. It was very short piece, just a few dozen lines, and may have actually been in rhyme. I recall a woodcut illustration that went along with the story.
posted on Feb 6, 2008 - 0 answers

I'm looking for an online story about modern warfare and lovecraftian monsters. Can you help me find it again? [more inside]
posted on Feb 6, 2008 - 10 answers

Stories about healthy, "normal" marriages? [more inside]
posted on Jan 11, 2008 - 41 answers

I'm trying to find a vaguely remembered short story. The story was about a woman whose baby was in the NICU and then passes away. What I distinctly remember is that peppered throughout the story were phrases such as "A pride of lions. A gaggle of geese. A flock of doves." Lists of names for collectives of animals started and ended the piece, I think. In between was a very sad story about a baby, including the line "unplug my baby like he's a toaster?" or something very similar. Sound familiar to anyone?
posted on Jan 10, 2008 - 5 answers

Who's written fiction within the last 5-10 years, that deals realistically with the experience of American people under 40? [more inside]
posted on Dec 14, 2007 - 26 answers

I'm looking for the title and/or author of a story I read years ago. It was about, or had in it, a description of a terrible kind of prison, a vast multilayered cylinder carved inside a mountain, that would rotate slowly around its course from the efforts of the prisoners inside. The only way to free those inside was, according to the story, to keep adding new prisoners to the vacated cells to keep pulling the thing along. [more inside]
posted on Dec 11, 2007 - 14 answers

[BookFilter] Help me find the name/author of this short story. The story is about a president and his ministers. When a minister commits a mistake he gets his head chopped off. The sign one has commited a (fatal) mistake is because the president sends you a box for your head. Depending on the status and importance of the minister is the magnificence of the boxes. [more inside]
posted on Dec 11, 2007 - 1 answers

Please help me locate a collection of Russian/Eastern Bloc short stories. I read this book when I was kid because it belonged to my parents and I want to read it again. If not the book, I'd like to find the two most memorable stories. One concerns a snowman and the other is a reflection on life while falling out of a window to one's death. Details inside... [more inside]
posted on Dec 11, 2007 - 3 answers

Can webcomics fans point me to some good online manga or graphic novel type comics? Bonus points if the story is complete and I don't have to wait for an update every week (side question - why is it so hard to find webcomics that are completed?). Sex, violence, serious, silly, whatever, as long as the story is engaging and the artwork is well done. [more inside]
posted on Dec 8, 2007 - 20 answers

Somewhere between 1991 and 1994, my father went on a business trip to Germany and visited a company called Elsentooling. For three years afterwards, they sent our family a Christmas card with one of those extra-small compact discs inside. We still listen to the first one because it's just that good. However, it's all in German, and I know not a stitch of it, though I'm half German. The second-to-last track (uploaded here) is some sort of story. Is it something an American would be familiar with if you mentioned the title? If not, I'm curious how the story goes. [more inside]
posted on Dec 4, 2007 - 5 answers

I need an extremely short suspense story. [more inside]
posted on Oct 25, 2007 - 17 answers

I am trying to find/identify a story about a customer with some problem (plumbing maybe?) and calls in an expert to fix it. The expert fixes the problem in some trivial way (turning a valve?) The customer then refuses to pay the expert's fee for such a simple fix. the punchline comes when the expert replies that his fee isn't for turning the valve, it's for knowing *which* valve to turn.
posted on Aug 9, 2007 - 10 answers

Help me identify a story, written at least 40 years ago, about a guy who dies crushed under a pile of newspapers. [more inside]
posted on Aug 7, 2007 - 10 answers

What is this joke? ('concept of an apple'?) [more inside]
posted on Aug 7, 2007 - 6 answers

The post on the one inch punch reminded me of a story I had heard, but I can't remember the source. The gist of it is this: A man goes to a Japanese temple to see a martial arts demonstration by visiting shaolin monks. The abbot tells him there is nothing magical about the martial arts, just dedication and practice, etc. Then one of the monks does something like the one inch punch against the temple's main column and the thunderous sound reverberates throughout the temple. The man says "I thought you said there was no magic" and the abbot responds "Ah, but that man is from Shaolin" I think i saw it as either a part of some zen stories, or possibly in a book relating to software or management. It's driving me crazy, can anyone help?
posted on Aug 4, 2007 - 2 answers

Help me piece together my vague recollection of a rock climbing story that I read years ago. [more inside]
posted on Jul 28, 2007 - 1 answers

Help me remember the name of a science fiction short story (possibly by asimov) [more inside]
posted on Jul 27, 2007 - 5 answers

Help me remember the name of this short story (or novel that includes this story): A housecleaner's employer tells her she can keep all the change she finds when she cleans his office. She ends up with a jar of change containing more than one hundred dollars, and the employer reneges his offer. Thanks! [more inside]
posted on Jul 14, 2007 - 6 answers

Quotefilter: Need both source and text from a historical story I once read for a sermon/homily this weekend. The story concerned a Native American who was shown a church by a missionary, and the Native American responded to the effect of "why do you keep God in a building?" That's all of the detail I have, and my Google-fu is failing me on this one ....
posted on Jul 12, 2007 - 3 answers

Looking for fascinating SF story, pretty old, 40's or 50's perhaps. Plot is of a man, while dreaming, waking up in a catatonic and fat woman's body, with a 12 hours time difference. Gradually he achieves muscle control over the woman's body, get's her/him to exercise and eventually leave the instution where she spent many years. [more inside]
posted on Jun 11, 2007 - 3 answers

Looking for a short story I read online, where technological advances eliminate middle management and then junior employees, with a fast food restaurant used as an example... [more inside]
posted on May 29, 2007 - 8 answers

I was told a story once, about an American stealing Non-obese Diabetic (NOD) mice from a Japanese lab, and smuggling them back to the States. But I can't find the story anywhere on the web. [more inside]
posted on May 25, 2007 - 4 answers

Horror short story about a couple on a road trip, end up in a small town during springtime, fight with each other, have sex, then notice the townspeople are all climbing on top of one another, crushing and killing each other to make some sort of ?. Story ends when the couple joins in (WTF?) I read it when I was like 8. I thought it was a Stephen King short story, but wiki'd all of them (I think) and couldn't find it. ...and (bonus question about La Cabina... sorry for cheatin')... [more inside]
posted on May 25, 2007 - 7 answers

What stories (short or otherwise) are begging to be adapted into a low-budget film? And, what camera should be used to film it? [more inside]
posted on May 13, 2007 - 34 answers

What is the story I've been trying to remember? It's about a future where everyone who excels is handicapped by the state. [more inside]
posted on Apr 9, 2007 - 13 answers

This past weekend, my friend's boyfriend told me a crazy thing that happened to him that can't possibly be true. I believe that it may be based on a film/book/short story. Help me figure out whether he's lying. *Story inside is long but involves Japanese brothels!* [more inside]
posted on Apr 4, 2007 - 32 answers

I've invented a complete imaginary world. Am I insane? [more inside]
posted on Mar 30, 2007 - 83 answers

Seeking a specific fetish story, published on the web in the mid 90s or earlier, that had to do with a heat fetish (being heated to extreme temperatures as sexually arousing). I know it's a long shot but this story made such an impression on me and I can't find it again. [more inside]
posted on Mar 26, 2007 - 3 answers

A friend asked my to try and find a story her grandfather used to tell her mother, possibly by Rudyard Kipling. The info is pretty slim; All she knows is it's about a beaver who keeps going back to chomp at the same tree, and the other animals all say to him "the tree will fall into the lake". They set traps for the beaver, including a pit of spikes and smearing the tree with some bitter substance. In the end, the beaver goes away. Sorry, that's all I got. Hope it rings a bell! Thanks in advance!
posted on Mar 24, 2007 - 1 answers

[StoryFilter] About a year ago, I read a piece of sci-fi on the internet. I can't remember the web address, author or title. [more inside]
posted on Mar 12, 2007 - 11 answers

Children's Story Filter: I'm trying to remember a picture book about a train conductor who had retired. He ended up building a working train that ran through a park, and he gave children tours. [more inside]
posted on Feb 19, 2007 - 3 answers

Please help me remember a science fiction short story ending with "...waiting for the light that had always come back" [more inside]
posted on Feb 9, 2007 - 5 answers

Can anyone think of a story/film/folk tale/fairy tale where someone disappeared for a long time and then suddenly came back? [more inside]
posted on Feb 4, 2007 - 52 answers

Children's Story Filter: Help me find a story about the Apple family. [more inside]
posted on Dec 11, 2006 - 3 answers

where can I find this fairytale? I read it as a kid, it features two girls and a goat, but not like that. [more inside]
posted on Nov 30, 2006 - 3 answers

I read a short story a few years ago and would really like to find it again. A boy doesn't understand the complexities of the world -- such as how cars work. Suddenly, cars stop working. [more inside]
posted on Nov 30, 2006 - 2 answers