The Confocal Compromise
Ambrose checks the hygrometer for the fourth time in ten minutes.
Best Dry and wry Stories of 2026
The most-read dry and wry stories right now, in a short top ten and then picks by how you want to read. Dry and wry stories, from quick reads to long series. Most dry and wry stories here sit in exhibitionist & voyeur and erotic couplings. Reads run 15 to 24 minutes. Writers to know: Thread of Thorn, Meridian Harbor and Tangent of Ridge. Some are free to read in full; the rest open with a free preview.
The top dry and wry stories
01 02 Mulberry and Midnight
I wiped the dust off the champagne tap with my sleeve.
03 Sourdough Starter
The night shift at the Nelson veterinary clinic is mostly me and a radio turned down low, walking the ward at two in the morning to check…
04 Wrong Porch, Right Now
My name is Gerald, I am fifty-four years old, and until eight months ago I lived a life of quiet dignity in a suburb where the only thing…
05 The Tide Table Test
Thelma had been compiling tide tables at the coastal post office for six years, thirty-two years old and unmarried and mostly content, and…
06 River Song, Late Takes
The barge sat low in the water at the mooring outside Villeneuve-sur-Seine, and Marshall Sanford stood on the plank ramp with a clipboard…
07 Stranded at Midnight
Silas Rogers was forty-four years old and he was crouched behind a vending machine in a half-empty airport terminal in the middle of…
08 Tamale Surprise
The dry spell had hit three months.
09 The Currant Mite Letter
The cracked bird feeder has been sitting on my porch rail for six months now and I still haven't thrown it away.
10 The Scale and the Bonfire
Kelly Sander was forty-three years old, a veterinarian, and by nine that night she had already apologized to her GPS twice for calling it…
Longer dry and wry reads
The Bottle and the Market
Isabelle Fulton had been a nurse for twenty-nine years, and she could count on one hand the number of times she had voluntarily gotten up…
Thursday Night Distraction
I want to start by saying I'm twenty-eight years old, I've been married for five years, and I spend my weekdays telling other couples how…
Jealous Janitor Gets Trapped
I been a janitor for eleven years and I never once thought the job would follow me home like this.
The Jam Vendor
Debra figured the market would be dead on a Thursday, so she left her van in the gravel lot behind the grange hall and gave herself twenty…
The Accordion Wake
I'm Douglas Sanders, thirty-seven years old, and I plan events for a living.