James Foster Reed: Stories

A story in the Modern Olympus Universe
A woman takes her infant son to a river. She wades into cold, moving water. What she does takes seconds. The protection it gives him will last a lifetime.

A small town laughs at the first automobile as a noisy nuisance, but over a decade the joke slowly reverses itself: blacksmiths, bankers, farmers, doctors, and even the town’s fiercest horse loyalists discover that the motorcar is not a passing toy, but the future arriving muddy, loud, useful, and inevitable.

A story in the Modern Olympus Universe
A man trades a secret about Zeus for water, outsmarts Death, talks his way out of the underworld on a technicality, and lives long enough to watch the city he built drink from the spring he bargained for. When Hermes comes for him, unhurried, he goes without a fight. In Tartarus, he accepts his punishment.

A romantic dinner, a charming entomologist, and one very enthusiastic off-menu dish. Technically Edible is a comedy of manners about the distance between good intentions and good judgment. Measured, in this case, in legs.