Everybody has a wish. Everybody has a dream. Sometimes those dreams and wishes can come true, but there is always a price to pay. The stories of people who have paid this price are recorded in The Book of Reasons. This new collection from the author of the Missing Beat trilogy contains some of those stories. Read about an author’s toxic relationship with his own creation, a gardener who wages war on snails, a policeman who is haunted by his last case, what happens when pupils begin to disappear from a school photograph, and, in the title story, you will learn the identity of The Custodian of Stories and what his job entails. These are stories of the bizarre and of the macabre, but all must be read with the lights on.

"A collection of ten short stories that all take place in the same day about kids walking home from school"--

Ordinarily, no one would have imagined that Jack Rankin would vandalize a desk. But this was not an ordinary school year for Jack.... When Jack Rankin learns that he is going to spend the fifth grade in the old high school -- the building where his father works as a janitor -- he dreads the start of school. Jack manages to get through the first month without the kids catching on. Then comes the disastrous day when one of his classmates loses his lunch all over the floor. John the janitor is called in to clean up, and he does the unthinkable -- he turns to Jack with a big smile and says, "Hi, son." Jack performs an act of revenge and gets himself into a sticky situation. His punishment is to assist the janitor after school for three weeks. The work is tedious, not to mention humiliating. But there is one perk, janitors have access to keys, keys to secret places....

It's another scary day at Black Lagoon Elementary. . . . Somewhere in the dark caverns beneath the school lurks the custodian. Is he really a dark phantom figure wreaking havoc through out the school, making it boil hot all summer and freezing cold all winter? They say he's mechanically challenged too. He can't even change a light bulb with out blowing off the ceiling. The school's definitely in a fix with this custodian!