KN Magazine: Short Stories

Elizabeth Primamore Shane McKnight Elizabeth Primamore Shane McKnight

Sisters

Set in an Italian immigrant household in 1920s Newark, “Sisters” explores the volatile bond between two adolescent sisters shaped by beauty, jealousy, longing, and survival. As desire, shame, and power collide during a single summer day, the family’s fragile equilibrium fractures, revealing how love and rivalry can turn irrevocably destructive within the confines of tradition, patriarchy, and poverty.

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Luke Duvergey Shane McKnight Luke Duvergey Shane McKnight

Penalty Kick

When a celebrated college soccer star is found murdered in her dorm room days before a championship match, Detective Megan Hall uncovers a web of academic fraud, booster corruption, and moral compromise beneath the surface of a tight-knit Southern university. As pressure mounts from the media, the community, and powerful interests invested in winning at any cost, Hall must follow the evidence to a truth that exposes how integrity can become dangerous when money, reputation, and ambition collide.

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Victor Kreuiter Shane McKnight Victor Kreuiter Shane McKnight

The Canaries

A pharmaceutical CEO is abducted, blindfolded, buried alive, and forced to listen. His captors are not seeking ransom or revenge—they want accountability. As the night unfolds, a chilling moral reckoning emerges, transforming a kidnapping into a meditation on power, profit, illness, and the cost of being unheard.

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Brittany Hague Shane McKnight Brittany Hague Shane McKnight

Oh, Susanna

When a long-lost accomplice strolls back into town, elderly Susanna finally gets her chance at revenge. But in this darkly funny, sharply drawn tale of aging, resentment, and poetic justice, nothing is quite what it seems—and Susanna’s methods are far older, quieter, and deadlier than anyone guesses.

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Ryan Bausch Shane McKnight Ryan Bausch Shane McKnight

The Corner Booth

A man waits in a rundown diner for the woman he once loved, their shared past flickering between memory and ruin as they sign the papers that will end their marriage. In the sticky booth where everything began, he confronts love, loss, and the cracks—literal and emotional—that have slowly spread between them.

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Samantha Oakley Shane McKnight Samantha Oakley Shane McKnight

CONFESSION

A haunting epistolary short story in which a woman finally reveals the truth about the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake, the child she lost, and the new identity she forged to survive. A confession of grief, reinvention, and the fragile boundary between the past we flee and the past that shapes us.

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Skip Senneka Shane McKnight Skip Senneka Shane McKnight

THOSE HE KILLS

A tense noir thriller in which Jim Wyman discovers he’s being hunted by a legendary, unseen hitman—until a twist puts the predator and prey in shocking reversal.

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Molly Wilcox Shane McKnight Molly Wilcox Shane McKnight

Loretta Wakes Up

In Loretta Wakes Up, Molly Wilcox delivers a raw, redemptive story about a mother haunted by her past and a daughter who turned pain into art. Set against the shimmering backdrop of early 2000s Los Angeles, this haunting excerpt from Wilcox’s upcoming novel Off the Record explores guilt, love, and the thin line between redemption and ruin.

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