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Teen Tales #2
Fading Away
Young Adult short fiction
"Life Along the Okie-Dokie Highway" A girl goes on a horrifying road trip with her dysfunctional family.
"Sound Travels" Two childhood friends spend the last weekend of summer at a lake side cottage.
"Tiny Voices" A girl tries to cope with the boredom of the small town in which she lives, as well as with the voices only she can hear.
"Cold,Cold Water" A depressed teen passes judgment on people, which begins a murder spree.
"The Great Squirrel Hunt of 1977" A squirrel causes havoc in a small Texas town
"Fading Away" A girl has a disturbing dieting episode.
Kindle edition also includes Vanished (Freaky Jules #1) A girl mysteriously disappears at school, and the cops are baffled. Julia (Jules) Dundee, the school freak, is compelled to use her paranormal abilities to recover the missing girl. With the aid her new-found friend, boyfriend wannabe, Jack Kilgore, she starts on a journey that ends up out of this universe.
"Life Along the Okie-Dokie Highway" A girl goes on a horrifying road trip with her dysfunctional family.
"Sound Travels" Two childhood friends spend the last weekend of summer at a lake side cottage.
"Tiny Voices" A girl tries to cope with the boredom of the small town in which she lives, as well as with the voices only she can hear.
"Cold,Cold Water" A depressed teen passes judgment on people, which begins a murder spree.
"The Great Squirrel Hunt of 1977" A squirrel causes havoc in a small Texas town
"Fading Away" A girl has a disturbing dieting episode.
Kindle edition also includes Vanished (Freaky Jules #1) A girl mysteriously disappears at school, and the cops are baffled. Julia (Jules) Dundee, the school freak, is compelled to use her paranormal abilities to recover the missing girl. With the aid her new-found friend, boyfriend wannabe, Jack Kilgore, she starts on a journey that ends up out of this universe.
128 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 14, 2010
98 people are currently reading
166 people want to read
About the author
Tom Upton
22 books179 followersBorn in Chicago.Studied advanced writing at Columbia College.
Hopeless Romantic most of the time.
Hopeless Romantic most of the time.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 1, 2011
Short diverse young adults stories, ranging from the disturbing to the hilarious. I enjoyed every one of them. Upton certainly has the ability to make you laugh, or cry, or just make you wonder about life.
November 6, 2016
I enjoyed this collection of short stories and without going into each story I will say they are well written and will make readers think about a few things they may not of before. The author does a great job and I found all the stories interesting. Included are a couple of interesting tales of Freaky Jules and I am looking forward to reading more about Jules and have another book by this author I will be reading soon. Readers can find a couple of sneak peaks at the end of this collection.
April 14, 2019
The author writes well and the stories actually sucked me in easily - the beginning and middle of each fascinated, but my issue is the ENDINGS. The stories would abruptly cut off without a proper ending, it was odd. Some didn't seem to have endings at all. Each story was very short but flowed well.
December 9, 2023
This was a really strange little book of stories. Most of the stories sounded interesting as they begin but then just kind of fizzled out. They just left you feeling like...WTH. At least it was a relatively quick read and there were a couple of stories that I enjoyed...but not enough to recommend the book. Now that I think about it...maybe that's what the title is implying...instead of a nice, explanatory ending, the stories just faded away.
June 28, 2016
I'm going to review the short stories that I read before I abandoned the book:
Cold Cold Water-A boy's older brother decides for no reason to kill a Greek shopkeeper and is now threatening to kill teachers and their great grandfather. The boy says nothing and his brother rants. The end. WTF was the point in this story? Did anyone else die? Did he get caught? Stopping there made the whole thing pointless.
Life along the Okie Dokie Highway-A girl on a family trip writes letters to her friend about it. Car breaks down, family argue about money. The end. This was such a boring story. It had no horror or thriller element and I didn't see much point to it at all.
Sound Travels-Two boys hear a scream and one swims off to investigate. When he finally comes back he won't say what happens. The end. WTF??? What is the point in setting up a story, building up the tension and then keeping the result a secret? Up until the lack of ending it had been a better story.
Tiny Voices-A girl hears voices in her head telling her to plan a prank-which her best friend uses instead to get attention. Girl is angry. The end. This one was boring.
At this point I got tired of the anthology and gave up on it. The stories I read either had no conclusion at all which I found very frustrating or they had no interesting plot to speak of, and it made me wonder what the point was in writing them. I felt that this was a complete waste of an hour and I won't be reading anything else by this author.
Cold Cold Water-A boy's older brother decides for no reason to kill a Greek shopkeeper and is now threatening to kill teachers and their great grandfather. The boy says nothing and his brother rants. The end. WTF was the point in this story? Did anyone else die? Did he get caught? Stopping there made the whole thing pointless.
Life along the Okie Dokie Highway-A girl on a family trip writes letters to her friend about it. Car breaks down, family argue about money. The end. This was such a boring story. It had no horror or thriller element and I didn't see much point to it at all.
Sound Travels-Two boys hear a scream and one swims off to investigate. When he finally comes back he won't say what happens. The end. WTF??? What is the point in setting up a story, building up the tension and then keeping the result a secret? Up until the lack of ending it had been a better story.
Tiny Voices-A girl hears voices in her head telling her to plan a prank-which her best friend uses instead to get attention. Girl is angry. The end. This one was boring.
At this point I got tired of the anthology and gave up on it. The stories I read either had no conclusion at all which I found very frustrating or they had no interesting plot to speak of, and it made me wonder what the point was in writing them. I felt that this was a complete waste of an hour and I won't be reading anything else by this author.
March 3, 2016
A book of short stories
A lot of them were weird or depressing
The only one I did enjoy was "The Great Squirrel Hunt of 1977"
A lot of them were weird or depressing
The only one I did enjoy was "The Great Squirrel Hunt of 1977"
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July 16, 2018goood
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews