Winner of the 2025 International Impact Book Award for Short Story Collection.

Love can heal, haunt, tempt, forgive, and ask us to begin again.

Scarlet Yearnings: Stories of Love and Desire brings together twelve emotionally rich short stories about the many ways people long to be chosen, understood, forgiven, and loved.

Across Trinidadian homes, Harlem apartments, crowded New York subway platforms, futuristic worlds, and unexpected reunions, these characters face complicated family bonds, marital doubts, grief, attraction, missed chances, and the courage to choose a different path.

These are not simple happily-ever-afters. They are intimate, relatable stories about love in its romantic, familial, spiritual, and deeply personal forms. Some will warm you. Some will surprise you. Others may make you reconsider the choices you have made and the desires you have yet to name.

Narrator Jasmin L. Kirkwood brings warmth, intimacy, and emotional depth to every story. Each self-contained tale offers a satisfying listening experience, ideal for a commute, an evening at home, or any moment when you want meaningful fiction without committing to a full-length novel.

For listeners who enjoy culturally rich contemporary fiction, mature emotional storytelling, Caribbean and New York settings, and flawed characters who feel recognizably human, press play and enter Scarlet Yearnings.