Recommended by Greg Mandryk

I love the premise of this piece: A radio play where the antagonists are completely silent and all of the action is communicated through a few sound effects and the tortured protagonist’s monologue! Equal parts creepy and hilarious, Mimes (A Radio Play) is well worth a read!

Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn has taken a prompt and spun gold out of it. What a sweet testament to the love left behind by those who’ve passed on.

I'm a sucker for a good, spooky story rooted in folklore and Walker's Shapeshifter delivers. Beware the Kushtaka!

What starts as a simple blue-collar drama takes a sharp turn for the Orwellian in Vince Gatton's Better. Gatton creates four unassuming, working-class characters and drops them into world where the price of self-preservation is complicity with a system that manufactures nonstop atrocities.

In these troubled times, we could all use a little more Boone, the colorful bumpkin who may not be so uppity in his book-learnin', but he's seen a thing or two. If Busser ever cobbles together an evening of short science fiction plays, I'd love to see this blue-collared, salt-of-the-earth good ol' boy act as the master of ceremonies.

Anyone who has attempted to kick a bad habit will find this quirky, enjoyable play from Kris Thompson highly relatable.

Well, I do love me some dark humor. There's a terrible family tragedy at the center of Vince Gatton's Protocols, but it's nicely buoyed by plenty of outlandishness, both from the world the two characters are existing in and their reaction to the difficult situation in which they find themselves. But underneath the zaniness of this play that's not about COVID yet is totally about COVID, there lies a nice bit of family drama that elevates the material above being a mere comedy sketch. Well done!

Dark and twisted, but possibly with a healthy dose of social commentary, Special Peppermint is an excellent holiday-themed short play! Its premise may seem ridiculous at first, but there are plenty of real-world parallels concerning first world comfort being fed by third world suffering to give Evan Baughfman's short play some serious teeth.

Conventionally, when a horror story is narrated retrospectively by the protagonist, one may assume that they have survived their ordeal intact and are now sound enough in mind and body to relate their horrific encounter. Burdick brilliantly defies this trope with TATTOO: A Tale of Terror. Tense, atmospheric, and creepy, this would make an excellent addition to any evening of horror radio plays!

Mike Brannon makes a nifty little addition to zombie lore in Let the Dead Bury the Dead. Throw in a protagonist whose methods are as morally appalling as they are understandable and a gritty last stand, and you have a delightful horror gem that will haunt you. And yes, the Gather by the Ghost Light podcast does an excellent job bringing this one to life ("undeath"?).