Nicole C

Adam and his bandmates have a little ritual: every night, after their performance, they compete to see who can bag the hottest girl. Adam is usually the winner, despite being the short, skinny guy. He’s got a certain charm that girls like.

Evan was excited for a quiet week in his boss’s big, beautiful house. He was hired to housesit: water the plants, feed the cat, keep the dog company. But his boss never mentioned Lila, his nineteen-year-old daughter, would be at the house with him.

Anthony wasn’t the best teenager, always getting into trouble, always bullying and teasing. The nasty trend continues into his early adult years—until his bad deeds start to catch up with him. All of a sudden, bad things start to happen to him, and he knows exactly what’s happening: karma.

Tyler isn’t popular. Far from it. In fact, he might be the only person on campus who wasn’t invited to the sorority’s big annual Halloween Bash. So he spends a whole year trying to improve his social status—even going way out of his comfort zone to join a fraternity.

Every night at exactly midnight, Nate is overcome by an uncontrollable desire to dress and act like a girl. It lasts only an hour, leaving him confused and embarrassed as the compulsion suddenly vanishes. But when the next night arrives, the same inexplicable urge overtakes him again… and again…

Dan has a reputation with women—and not a good one. His exes have stories, but Dan denies most of them. Sure, he flirts with the wrong women sometimes… but what’s the harm? Turns out, plenty.

When Myles goes to the hospital to get his ankle X-rayed, he doesn’t expect to find a gorgeous blonde young woman sobbing in the cafeteria. He approaches her to see if she’s okay, and then discovers that she was just given six months to live.

Since the government launched the Department of Pairing—an AI-driven system that assigns every eighteen-year-old their “perfect match”—society has transformed. Divorce rates have plummeted. Productivity has skyrocketed. People have never been happier.

Ben is going through a rough patch. He’s even turned to entering contests on social media, desperate for a little bit of money to get him back on his feet. He doesn’t win, but his old friend from high-school, Anthony, wins a big one worth one-hundred grand.

Gene-editing has gone mainstream. Cancer can be erased, limbs regrown—but of course, people are mostly just using the tech for vanity, paying fortunes to become ‘Goblin Girls’, ‘Troll Men’, or Greek-God versions of themselves—just with a simple procedure.

Justice wants to learn French, but the language learning apps have gotten him nowhere. Then, a stranger recommends he try out a new AI assistant, and his life is changed. The AI is the perfect study buddy and coach. The lessons are tailored perfectly to his lifestyle and learning style.

Like so many others in his field, Jake loses his job to AI. No worries; Jake has a plan: train to become an AI systems mechanic in the same field. It’s a six-month course and he will end up being paid more than ever before. But the course doesn’t start for another six months.

Dillon was so close to securing the grade he needed for law school. Just a few more points, and his future would be set. But during his final exam, a haunting memory from two years ago resurfaces: a bizarre gig he took to pay for college.

Bentley has known Preston for years, but they’d never talked much—until one day, when Preston shows up with a very strange request. To get out of an awkward date, he lied about having a girlfriend. And after weeks of repeating the fib, his family and friends are starting to think he’s a liar.

Devon and his friends don’t take much of anything very seriously. So everyone is surprised one day after Devon dares Walt to go and see the fortune teller at the local fair. Walt goes in chuckling—and comes out changed. Serious. Pale. Scared.

The last thing Matt expects is to be plucked off the street by a van full of beautiful women. The reason? He’s a dead ringer for a missing bride-to-be. They offer him a fortune to step into her life, her wardrobe, her makeup, and—if they can’t find her—her wedding.

Marty didn’t mean to kill the delivery girl. He didn’t know the cookies his mom dropped off were loaded with sunflower oil, and he sure as hell didn’t know the pretty young blonde who showed up at his door was deathly allergic to it.

Brad is busy trying to sell his house. So busy, he doesn’t stop to wonder how the little skirt got into his closet. He doesn’t waste time wondering how the girly undies got into his dryer.

David has spent nearly a decade working up the courage to ask out Hannah, his lifelong crush. He’s almost certain she’ll turn him down, but he knows he has to try. What he doesn’t expect is how brutally she rejects him. The sting of it forces David to take a hard look at his life.

Craig’s expensive degree got him nowhere but deep in debt. Now he scrapes by doing grunt work for a fire and flood restoration crew—tedious labor, lousy pay, but better than nothing in a dying town. Then comes the rare perk: a month-long job inside the mysterious “castle” that looms over the hills.