Theodore Allenby Marsters is a sociology professor facing imposed retirement. His dismissal will move him aside in favor of younger academics. Recently, he has spent his research time delving into bias, a broad topic which touches everyone, and one which he, himself, now greatly feels. Somewhat in protest, for his final course he gives a short lecture series on a wide array of biases, including those targeting elders.The novel presents Marsters's life to date in broad strokes, then...

Alex Bailey narrates his typical life: from directionless teenager to married young man, college graduate, well-respected English teacher, and father of two. A success by any measure. But… he begins to wane. His students, supervisor, children, and wife all notice his memory is gradually failing. How does he – how do they – cope? Alex sets out to document his seminal experiences and those of the people he's closest to. As degeneration creeps in, the past recedes, and, he, his life elapsed, ...

Put a gun in a man's life, what does he do? Like stashing a hundred-dollar bill or hiding a chocolate bar, a gun adds temptation. He struggles with the urge. He fights it, mulls it, considers it. It weighs on him. Eventually, he spends the cash, he eats the candy. He shoots the gun. He finds a need or one finds him, and he concedes, gives in, bows. Who's better for it? At best, unclear.Leave the gun out. Now what? No secret money, no hidden sweets. No temptation. What does he do? H...

How far will a man go for the perfect woman – dreams, fantasies, conversations, actions? What's perfect? That depends on the man, depends on when. Just met? One night stand? Two weeks, two months? Two years? Living together? Married? Perfection has many facets.Conversations I will Never Have puts these questions, those of Richard Franklin, an introspective accountant, and of Gary Buchanan, an outgoing corporate consultant, with a few from a supporting cast of associates and girlfri...

How do circumstances alter decisions or lives? In the prior volume, The Would-be Lives of Adam Back, we saw Adam, his decisions and his life under two sets of broadly different conditions. In the first, status quo, Adam was the man he was born and raised to be. He turned out as he was always going to, given the individual he was. In the second, after governmental upheaval and subsequent war, Adam had to adapt or perish. A nascent individual emerged, one he, himself, likely did not...

Medina Brown is the daughter of an American man and a Turkish woman. Born in her namesake city, she grows up in the fictional town of Joseph, Illinois, an hour east of St. Louis, two west of Indianapolis. She meets Kevin Foster in kindergarten. Immediately best friends, they grow up together. He lives two blocks down. They're part of each other's families. He becomes her biographer.Kevin records: She was extraordinary, superior, and I was... an adjunct, a plus one? No, that's n...

Mark Buchignani, a forty-year video game industry veteran (twenty-five as a hiring manager), explains how to put your best foot forward in landing that first game job and what to expect after you do.

Ultimately, the vaccine failed.In the U.S., the population grew increasingly restive and sharply divided. Two factions spontaneously formed. One believed in strict physical prevention – distancing, layers of masking, quarantine, isolation. They relentlessly screened and tested, resulting in a disease-free population that once established could live well behind ramparts, entirely divorced from the outside world.A second insisted individualism was paramount. They threw off th...

Emmett Taylor – what can you say? He's a guy. He works a lot. Way too much. He wants a girl – he has a girl, or he thinks he does. Sometimes. When she's not seeing someone else. So, he writes to her. He writes to a lot of people, usually late at night – the only time he has free. He works *a lot*. He started a blog – Overworkers. That's where he exhorts everyone to get a life, but doesn't get one himself. He meets lots of people through the blog – and writes to them. They're mostl...

A nine-hundred-year-old man, a long-dead mentor, a series of riddles. Ahern, the High Omit, Ooon's most powerful wizard, narrates the final century of his life, a period of a growing three-way conflict between himself, the edicts of the Old Ways, and the Jaze, who would destroy him. Externally, Ahern's task is to find an apprentice and train him to be the next High Omit, before his life ends. The magic granting him a millennium will ultimately expire, and he will die. He knows the exact mo...

Eddie is a player, playing the field, chasing the skirts, looking to score, whatever you want to call it. His cute, crooked grin, his smooth, smooth patter, and his rake's eye for just the right detail are all on display as he chats, flirts, and seduces his way through life, trying to find the perfect woman, and bedding them all along the way. On display, because now the last half dozen of his conquests are comparing notes, sharing their exposure to and their horror stories of their short-...