Want to know how a young man’s mind works? Though an exponent of the short-term love affair, young cavaliering cavorter Colby Richmond finds during his quest to notch up conquests, he experiences unexpected feelings for his girlfriends, but refrains from using the L word until bewitching beauty Wendy Jones enters his life. Richmond has a penchant for gorgeous femme fateles who dress provocatively to show off their assets. Wendy becomes his ideal, his goal to make her his long-term mate. But all is not well. Outside his self-made, good times universe, Richmond comes face to face with the stark realities of the actual world. His rose-tinted glasses removed, he realizes his future plans can be derailed by circumstances beyond his control, concluding, who knows what tomorrow might bring.

Roger Fraser is convinced he is cursed by unforeseen situations constantly bringing his integrity into disrepute, especially in social situations. His family thinks he is gaff prone, but if they could see him in the business arena, they would find Roger is an unassailable trouble-shooter, trampling on Essex boy traders, and solving delicate problems with aplomb. Join the Fraser family and their assorted band of odd-ball friends and work colleagues, as our hero steers his way through some tricky situations, but nonetheless, always seems to get the rough end of the pineapple and ends up licking his wounds in the doghouse.

Roger Fraser continues to battle the vexing absurdities of modernism, his aim to stay out of the doghouse by adopting meditation as an antidote to combat his hang-ups. When it comes to neutralising uppity officials and slaying implacable harridans masquerading as mewling princesses, Roger has no equal in the world of high-finance and within his wife Charlotte’s social set. He survives a no-nonsense outward bound course instructor, boldly engages status quo doyens including an intractable hanging judge and a very persistent spook, avoids being mugged by lazoonland trailer trash, and subdues an autocratic drama teacher. On a lighter note, Roger dodges the clutches of jailbait schoolgirls, is bedeviled by an overzealous impresario and battles intransigent shrews amongst a plethora of highly contentious and hilarious incidents, but despite his new found remedy, inevitably he winds up in the doghouse, wondering where it all went wrong.

Set against the turbulence leading to the Arab Spring, Glyn Sumner and his comrades have unexpected encounters in Tunis, profoundly affecting their futures. On sojourn, Sumner and the crew of the schooner Poseidon voyage around the Med. Finding solace away from the ever-imposing regulations and sterility of Blighty, they experience transcendence and seminal life in North African ports. Tunis brings bewildering confrontations for the crew with Saleh, an Ethiopian asylum seeker suspected of crime and terrorist involvement, and Chief of Police Colonel Nassar, responsible for homeland security. Off Sicily, Poseidon’s crew witnesses an asylum seeker sea rescue by the coast guard. They wonder if Saleh is aboard, or whether he is shaking hands with Neptune. Glyn ponders if the dark side also beckons them, visions of a European dystopia on the horizon.

Pipedream meets reality along Route 66. Charged up with expectation, Henry Collins, a man with a subconscious Magnum fixation, and his band of argonauts explore the beat generation trail. Searching for the ghosts of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, they rub shoulders with next generation beats in roadhouses and speakeasies, and survivors from the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Recognising their romantic visions of beatdom are tainted with fallacy and paradox, after six weeks on Route 66 travelling from Chicago to LA and returning to the Windy City on a northerly route, they exit the world of intellectual and down and out beats, flushed with an appreciation that no counterculture, no matter how seductive, approaches perfection.

Roger Fraser, the ever optimistic but perpetually put upon investment banking stock analyst-trouble shooter and occasional rugby player has more work and domestic issues to challenge his sensibilities. He skilfully manoeuvres from one demanding situation to the next, barely managing to extinguish the callous flames of fate seeming to constantly blight his endeavours and bite at his flesh. During his excursions into shocking social scandals and battling with egotistical megalomaniacs, he endlessly verges on disaster, but somehow always manages to survive. Roger pokes irreverent fun at the new Establishment, single-handedly takes on female dragons, prevails against rampaging supermarket shoppers and trades wisecracks with a Brummy vicar, but invariably finds himself tethered to the doghouse, singing the blues.

Differing themes and voices, some classic, some contemporary, others though mysterious, planted firmly in reality. All used to depict an assortment of psychological suspense thrillers, coming of age sagas and modern satires.