Today on the CCLaP Podcast, it’s episode 1 of A Podcast Dreadful, the center’s 12-part serial-fiction audiobook anthology taking place every Monday this autumn. Today’s episode includes:

“Steamhouse,” part 1 of 12, by Davis Schneiderman: In which a post-apocalyptic society is formed in the former Chicago suburb of Highland Park, but with a secret among the village elders that may kill them all;

“The Gothickers,” part 1 of 12, by Keith McCleary and Sophia G. Starmack: In which our Victorian detective hero and his jelly-devouring, monkey-owning sister are dragged into a new mystery;

“The Sharpened Spears of the Huaorani!,” part 1 of 3, by Jason Riley: In which our young Irish narrator attends a dinner party hosted by his new girlfriend’s family, and everything goes to hell;

“Dr. Lazarus Faust and the Anarchist Masquerade,” part 1 of 12, by Karl Wolff: In which our famed alchemist and libertine investigates the murder of a Viennese aristocrat;

and “Bad Penny,” part 1 of 12, by Jacob S. Knabb: In which a murder is committed in early 20th-century rural West Virginia, and a Yankee detective comes to town to solve it.