About

Everything here is free to read and needs no account. Each story is published complete, on one page at its own address, so there is never a next part to wait for.

What we publish

Character-driven stories with a clear shape: family drama, small-town conflict, second-act revenge, cozy mystery. The kind of plot where the tension comes from people who cannot simply walk away from each other — a supper club whose owner is found dead at his desk, a heating company a husband is quietly signing away, a woman who bought a ruined cottage on the Maine coast and found out why someone wanted it back.

A story runs from 2,000 to 3,000 words, ten to fifteen minutes of reading. Each one is planned to its ending before a word of it is written, and it goes up whole, never in parts.

How to read it

Start anywhere. Every story stands on its own, so there is no order to read them in and nothing you need to have read first.

The site remembers where you stopped, in your own browser, with no account and nothing sent to us. The header then offers to continue from there. You can change the theme, the text size and the reading font, and those stay too.

An account is optional: it carries your place across devices and keeps the stories you save.

How the stories are made

They are planned and drafted by AI, inside a set of rules we set, and every draft has to clear a sequence of automated checks before it can be published. A draft that fails one is rewritten or held back, never shown to a reader.

There is no editor reading each story before it goes up. We state that rather than implying a review that does not happen — a claim like that is worth nothing the moment anyone examines it. What stands in its place, check by check, is set out on the editorial process page, which is worth reading if how this site works matters to you.

When something is wrong

Published stories get corrected. If a story contradicts itself, or a name or a date is wrong, tell us — the story's title and the sentence are enough. Continuity reports are genuinely useful and we act on them. See contact.

How it is paid for

Advertising. There is no subscription, nothing sits behind a paywall, and no part of a story is locked or delayed for payment.

Who publishes it

Talehour is independently published. One address reaches the people who run it: contact@talehour.com. We read it.