A collection of nine short stories includes "The Champion of Forgetting," in which a young girl is kidnapped by a group of organ thieves and is brainwashed into helping them with their scheme.

"Forever was a simple promise before it became a difficult task" Your first love is always the hardest to let go of, which is why Melina and Austin had promised each other that after college they'd make it work. Unfortunately for them both, their forever had an expiration date. Now it's four years later and they're strangers again. But these strangers have a past, and that past is determined to find its way back to them. When a weekend home causes their paths to cross for the first time in years, they're reminded of just how much they've missed out on. So when a tragedy strikes that forces Austin back to their hometown at the same time Melina is doing her clinical hours for PA school, their lives are once again intertwined. Will they make it through this time? Or will the past pressure be too much of a reminder that they couldn't make it work?

From award-winning novelist Patrick Somerville comes this genre-busting novel-in-stories that leaps between small-town suburbs and the outer reaches of outer-space. A cast of outcasts—including the world's angriest mercenary, a sad surrealist, and a messianic alcoholic lawyer—bind together in this surprisingly warm exploration of love and identity in the post-millennial world.