A Stranger Knocks
Novelette 7,617 words Recommended by 6 award/anthology sources
"1926 Washington, D.C. Shaw District “There’s a man on the front stoop.” The words spilled from her in a much more mundane way than Judy had expected, considering how her neck was fluttering with her excited pulse. Alvin looked up from the new Langston Hughes poetry collection he was reading under the lamp in Professor Garrett’s parlor."
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
Quasar links out; the story lives on Uncanny, where the author gets the click.