100 episodes

The Strange Recital is an audio forum for short fiction. We delight in perceptions of reality that twist and fold in unexpected ways.
Each podcast episode runs about 30 minutes and includes a story reading (the Recital), a musical interlude, and an author interview (the Post-Recital)... with a twist.
Subscribe to get a new episode once a month.

The Strange Recital Tom Newton and Brent Robison

    • Arts
    • 4.9 • 13 Ratings

The Strange Recital is an audio forum for short fiction. We delight in perceptions of reality that twist and fold in unexpected ways.
Each podcast episode runs about 30 minutes and includes a story reading (the Recital), a musical interlude, and an author interview (the Post-Recital)... with a twist.
Subscribe to get a new episode once a month.

    Covid-1984, The Musical

    Covid-1984, The Musical

    "Cheek to the cold floor, thick sole on my back, I began to sense my place in this moment in history. I had thought I was playing the hero, arriving just in time to save my mom, when I was put in a chokehold, thrown to the ground and tasered in the groin."
     
    A young Winston Smith faces a dramatic cultural shift: lockdowns, masks, surveillance, riots. "How did we get here?" he wonders, in a new satirical novel that looks back at the last four years. Can this story end more happily than Orwell's?

    • 32 min
    Death Watch

    Death Watch

    "'Like life, a watch provides complications to keep it interesting.' Watanabe sat cross-legged on a low stage while we sat packed around him, students at the feet of a high-art Socrates, all leaning forward to hear his surprisingly delicate voice."
     
    A luxury accessory that might, or might not, kill its owner. Does high risk mean high status? How does an ad man sell such a thing? Or is it all a hoax? A new novel explores the dark side of wealth culture.

    • 44 min
    The Woman in White

    The Woman in White

    "The heat had been painfully oppressive all day, and it was now a close and sultry night.... It was nearly midnight when the servant locked the garden-gate behind me. I walked forward a few paces on the shortest way back to London, then stopped and hesitated."
     
    Who is the mysterious woman encountered on the road so late at night? Here's an atmospheric introduction to a classic Victorian novel, followed by a discussion of its author.

    • 33 min
    A Book with No Author

    A Book with No Author

    "A.J. Campbell lowered the folded newsprint to his lap. His heart fishtailed and he struggled to breathe. This thing he had just read was an impossibility."
     
    A man discovers that private episodes from his life have been published as fiction by a stranger. Who is this story-thief? And what can be done to make it stop? Listen to this sample of a new novel called A Book with No Author.

    • 27 min
    The Bohemian Adventure

    The Bohemian Adventure

    "I have endeavoured to present the public with accounts of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, and of his singular intelligence, his vigour and his courage. He often joked with me that his great fame was due solely to my embellishments..."

    Dr. Watson at last reveals a never-before-told adventure in which Holmes faces a challenge he couldn't have imagined. What are the limits of the world's most logical mind?

    • 37 min
    The Night Crier

    The Night Crier

    "Ed Marks woke from another dream about his wife. She’d been standing in front of him, wearing a white gown that rippled in a breeze he couldn’t feel. In her arms she held a baby, too small and raw-looking to be alive." 
     
    A man can't sleep. He's alone in the night. What is that sound, forever repeating from the dark woods? It has to be silenced at all costs.

    • 35 min

Customer Reviews

4.9 out of 5
13 Ratings

13 Ratings

Ponterbee's2ndPhone ,

The Strange Recital

More a gift from the Gods than an anthology...
Words cannot do justice as to how amazing this podcast is - it’s more than surreal, a bit less than terrifying, definitely mysterious... it makes my spirit soar the production is so brilliant - and recharges the batteries of my soul...

The only other show that I can compare it to is “The Story Must Be Told” - the two are quite similar in surrealistic presentation and ominous storytelling. Strange Recital is way more underground/ less popular - but I’m sure as the months go by this too will find its audience.

I absolutely love this program and pray it’ll be with us for many days to come. Blessings, thanks, and adulations to everyone involved -

Runner in the night ,

Review of Inertia and Voodoo

The clinical recital of shared experience in different contextual frames - physics, jazz (including the physics of jazz ...), travelogue, elements of religion - builds suspense counterintuitively- and the ending is shocking because violent chaos is introduced so suddenly to the setting. Very impressed.

And I always enjoyed the Beacon-NYC ride ...

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