A creative bookseller on the edge of a large university copes bravely with mid-life challenges – a marriage on hold, a lingering scandal at the school, and assaults from demons.
Guy Ridley runs a second-hand bookstore on the edge of a large university. Several difficulties beset him:
1. He and the wife he still loves have been separated for many years. He would like them to get back together.
2. He also wants to resolve an old scandal that precipitated his wife's departure from the university's biology department while others stayed behind and are still working mischief.
3. He suffers from intermittent fits of mental freakishness during which he believes that demons assault him. an admirer of Cervantes "Don Quixote", he imagines that Quixote and his sidekick Sancho will rescue him.
Some aspects of his life go well. He likes the way a collection of stories he's written about university life -- included in the novel -- have turned out. Moreover, several people he's taken under his wing benefit from his friendship and his generosity.
The question is -- will he flourish for the first time since the early days of his marriage or will the challenges he confronts bring him down?
My second book is about a boy who has Asperger's Syndrome and is bullied to the point to where he shoots up his school. I have divided the excerpts from it into three parts: Before, during and after the shooting.
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