“Behind the Wheel”
2018
A contemporary Christian Young Adult short story.
An unlicensed driver. His dad’s truck. What could possibly go wrong?
Sean Porter needs a ride to meet a girl. Two things stand in his way: a driver and his younger brother, Paul.
“Behind the Wheel” first appeared in Secrets: Visible & Invisible, a collection of short stories by eight CatholicTeenBooks.com authors, all with a secret or two. It features the Porter brothers, Sean and Paul, who readers meet several years later in the full-length novel Rightfully Ours.
“A Perfect Christmas”
2019
A contemporary Christian Young Adult short story.
No tree, no cookies, no gifts. Not a single flake of snow. With sick siblings, Dad stranded, and Mom overwhelmed, will Christmas come at all to Marigold’s topsy-turvy home?
“A Perfect Christmas” first appeared in Gifts: Visible & Invisible, a collection of Christmas-themed short stories by eight CatholicTeenBooks.com authors.
“A Token of Thanks”
2021
A historical Christian Young Adult short story.
William’s weekend job is a little gift from heaven, but now his family needs a real miracle.
This Christian historical short story appears in the Catholic Teen Books Treasures: Visible & Invisible anthology under the title “Danke.”
“A Big Ask”
2023
A contemporary Christian Young Adult short story.
Could God be asking Paul to sacrifice a piece of himself for Lent—literally?
“A Big Ask” first appeared in Ashes: Visible & Invisible, a Lenten-themed collection of short stories by CatholicTeenBooks.com authors. It features the Porter brothers, Sean and Paul, whom readers meet a year earlier in the full-length novel Rightfully Ours.
“Bogey in the Belfry”
2024
A historical Christian Young Adult short story.
A storm drives William and his friends inside the dark church for shelter. Are animals making noises in the loft or is it something more sinister?
This story originally appeared in Catholic Teen Books’ Hallowtide anthology, Shadows: Visible & Invisible. Shadows included seven mildly spooky stories set during Hallowtide and written with Catholic teens in mind.
Catholic Teen Books Collaborative Christmas Collection
Catholic Teen Books is a collaborative website of authors who all write faith-based fiction for middle school and high school teens. In December of 2020, many of the Catholic Teen Books authors wrote a collaborative story, “The Christmas Lights,” for Christmas that was read on Jedlie’s Reading with Your Kids Podcast, on Christmas Eve.
In each subsequent year, Catholic Teen Books authors have collaborated on another Christmas story. Jed gives us a prompt, and one by one each of us write a section as the story passes from author to author. Only the final author knows the entire story until we read it for the podcast.
This series includes the print versions of each of these collaborative-style stories, sometimes referred to as “exquisite corpses.”