Thriller 2.1

Originally written for the stage, "The Weapon" is about the limitations of torture and demonstrates why Jeff is considered a master of both the modern thriller and the short story.

Tragic events unfold in a snowy, sleepy Colorado town. From the first scene of Remaking, in which a man sits alone in the cold, watching a father and son in a diner, you know something is about to go horribly wrong.

The lead characters of Iced bear a shocking resemblance to people we might know--even to ourselves--pillars of society crumbling in an avalanche of bad decisions that seemed perfectly rational at the time.

In "Justice Served," Mariah Stewart shows what might happen when a young woman does what the rest of us only think about in our darkest moments. It is a tale of vengeance that takes you to corners of the human heart better left unexplored in real life.

"The Circle" is a perfectly symmetrical tale that shatters our comfortable isolation from current events. Through the eyes of a young pregnant woman we see the world from a new perspective as a train carries her from a state of innocence into a state of fear.

"Roomful of Witnesses" clearly demonstrates that the strangest fiction always contains a kernel of truth. Based on a real place, this twisted tale could only have been written by R. L. Stine and reveals his wonderfully off-kilter look at the world.