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The Machinery of Fate
Paperback
Series: The Screw Turns, Book 9
Science FictionGeneral Fiction
Publisher: Humphrey Archer
Published: Mar 18 2026
Pages: 202
Weight: 0.53
Height: 0.46 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
When fate comes calling, it doesn't knock-it turns the screw.
From the macabre imagination of Humphrey Archer comes the ninth and darkest-yet installment in the acclaimed Screw Turns series, a collection of tragicomic tales where hubris is fatal, justice is ironic, and doom arrives with the slow, irresistible certainty of a tightening bolt.
Blending the wicked inevitability of Final Destination with the moral bite of The Monkey's Paw, these stories follow deeply flawed-and often deeply deserving-protagonists as they tumble headlong into the consequences of their own choices. Here are corporate tyrants laid low by their inventions, predators undone by their prey, scammers scorched by their own greed, and everyday rotters whose worst impulses leave them fatally exposed.
Every story is rooted in disturbingly real dangers-drawn from OSHA reports, medical case studies, and the everyday horrors of bureaucratic indifference-yet told with a darkly humorous edge reminiscent of Roald Dahl, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edward Gorey. There's no gratuitous gore, no shock for its own sake-only the exquisite, inexorable machinery of fate closing in.
Inside, you'll encounter:
- A hospital executive whose revolutionary wellness device delivers far more than red light.
- A psychopathic metal sculptor who gives a misogynist one last chance to choose wisely.
- A potter seduced and destroyed by predatory finance-and the banker who picked the wrong artisan to ruin.
- A mortician, a kidnapped saleswoman, and a cybersecurity expert who together redefine customer service.
- A fracking crewman, a sacred landscape, and a woman who speaks for the earth in the old, old ways.
- A catastrophic car crash, an impossible survival, and a twist of poetic justice sharper than any scalpel.
Each tale stands alone, yet together they form a gallery of human folly, systemic failure, and the grimly satisfying spectacle of cosmic payback. If you crave stories where the guilty fall, the innocent endure, and fate has a wicked sense of humor, this anthology will feel like coming home.
Smart. Savage. Darkly funny. Entirely unforgettable.
THE SCREW TURNS, VOL. 9 proves once again that destiny doesn't need monsters to kill us-just our own bad decisions.
Turn the page, and let the screw tighten.
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