It’s Easter weekend! Even if the religious significance does nothing for you, the potential for a long weekend off is something to shout about. Because time off means time for reading stories…. and if you’ve not got anything specific in your reading queue, we’ve got your back right here with this week’s Friday Free Fiction round-up. Let’s go!

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A couple from ManyBooks:

• “Rex Ex Machina” by Frederic Max
• Beautiful Red by M Darusha Wehm

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And a few from FeedBooks:

• “The Weakling” by Everett B Cole
• “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates
• A Journey to the Interior of the Earth by Jules Verne

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Paolo Bacigalupi and Night Shade Books have made three of Paolo’s stories from his collection Pump Six – “The Calorie Man”, “Pop Squad” and “Yellow Card Man” – available as a free pdf for a reading group called Think Galactic. Bacigalupi’s one of the writers I fully expect to get very big very fast; go read these tales and find out why.

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Shadow Unit‘s latest episode is called “Sugar”

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HUB Magazine presents “Under a Bridge” by Paul Fairburn

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Apex Online has its monthly trio of fresh stories up:

• “Love, Dad” by Jeffrey D Kooistra
• “The Last Science Fiction Writer” by Jamie Todd Rubin
• “Waiting for Jakie” by Barbara Krasnoff

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COSMOS Magazine presents “Fuel” by Matthew S Rotundo

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Subterranean Online starts off its spring edition with “A Tulip for Lucretius” by Ken MacLeod

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Strange Horizons presents “Husbandry” by Eugene Fischer

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Three new pieces at Lone Star Stories:

• “People, Unnoticed” by Patricia Russo
• “Off the Path” by Nicole Kornher-Stace
• “Gone Daddy Gone” by Josh Rountree

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As always, SF Signal has round-ups of its own, and a few scattered miscellania:

• H P Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror #5 is available as a free PDF download
• The latest issue of AntipodeanSF contains fiction by S A Harris, Steve Duffy, Alan Baxter, Jamie Richter, Shaun A Saunders, Mark Farrugia, Felicity Dowker, Alan Richard, David Such, and Brendan D Carson
• Aphelion presents fiction by Patrick Welch, Jeani Rector, Coffee Anderson, Jaimie L Elliott, Richard Tornello, Gary W Feather, E W Bonadio, Lee Gimenez, Tony Coles, Matt Spencer, Dale Carothers, McCamy Taylor and Larissa March

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Most of the Friday Flash Fictioneers are at EasterCon right now (and I wish I was there also); that means just a few offerings of microfiction for this week:

• “The Unadventures of Mary Sue Flowershine” by Sarah Ellender
• “Buck” by Neil Beynon
• “The Lost Puddings of London” by Sumit Dam

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And that’s pretty much it! Don’t forget to get in touch with recommendations and tip-offs (fictional or non-fictional; in the meantime, enjoy your weekend!