"Benny Catspaw's perpetually sunny disposition is tested when he loses his job, his reputation, his fiancée, and his favorite chair. He's not paranoid. Someone is out to get him. He just doesn't know who or why. Then Benny receives an inheritance from an uncle he's never heard of: a giant crate and a video message. All will be well in time. How strange--though it's a blessing, his uncle promises. Stranger yet is what's inside the crate. He's a seven-foot-tall...

"Jane Morgan is a valued member of her law firm--or was, until a prudish neighbor, binoculars poised, observes her having sex on the roof of her NYC apartment building. Police are summoned, and a punishing judge sentences her to six months of home confinement. With Jane now jobless and rootless, trapped at home, life looks bleak. Yes, her twin sister provides support and advice, but mostly of the unwelcome kind. When a doorman lets slip that Jane...

"Reluctant to leave her cherished New England hometown after her sister's winter wedding, former journalist Vera Sterling makes a sudden decision. She takes what's left of her severance pay and invests it in a drafty colonial home and old timber barn set upon the pretty banks of Addison Cove. In that rough-hewn barn, she discovers a secret treasure left behind by the previous owner, the proprietor of the long-forgotten Christmas Barn gift shop."--Cover...

"Fifteen short stories center around the experience of being underemployed--whether by circumstance, class, gender, race, or other prevailing factors--and the toll this takes on an individual"--