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Heroism takes many forms. Some are spontaneous. Some, like justice delayed but delivered at long last by unconventional means, take planning.

Some are open so all may see. Others require artful artifice and subterfuge, so all is hidden from view--especially the heroism.

Some are driven by idealism. All demand sacrifice and risk, for the outcome is never certain. Few are tidy. All need indominable spirit.

All depend on luck. Many depend on quick-wittedness. Some depend on love. A few depend on foolish love. Some need a bit of each, at just the right time, against long odds.

But none of this is visible at first, for as Miss Christine observed at their first meeting: "Girls have secrets."

On the eve of a wedding, what to do when the groom mysteriously disappears? When the police and private investigators come up empty, what's a desperate bride to do?

Call in the man with no qualifications: Caverlock Victor Oliver -- the world's only Consulting Philosopher.

Will he prove there's no mystery that can withstand his prodigious powers of Applied Philosophy?

Will he succeed in reuniting sweet Victorine with her lover?

The answers to these questions (and many more you would have never thought to ask) are all found in The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher.

Read the first section for free(PDF format)

Crossing swords on the cyber-battlefield of online auctions, curmudgeons Alexia and Ross each win rare collectibles the other needs to escape financial doom. Each recruits a young neighbor (Kylie and Robin) to coax the key collectible from the other. Their schemes go awry and the resulting complications push all four to the brink of financial and romantic ruin.

The shelving in the dining nook was reserved for his unequivocally masterful collection of old kitchen appliances: gleaming KitchenAid bowl mixers, sinuously curved-chrome toasters, sturdy round Osterizer blenders shaped like jellied ziggurats, cast-iron waffle irons from Scandinavia, and even a vintage popcorn popper.

But the toasters took pride of place, and even the most ignorant, oafish visitor inevitably paused to gape in admiration at the beautifully proportioned curvaceous Sunbeam T-9. Should the visitor show even the faintest touch of curiosity or worldly savoir faire, Ross would modestly point out his Sunbeam Toastwitch, Toastmaster 1B5, and his treasured Toast-o-Later model.

Sixteen-year old Claire, overprotected her entire life by a hardworking worry-wart Mom, must now find the father she never knew in Paris, France, and soon, or she'll never have the chance: he'll be dead.

What starts out as a simple summer visit to Paris with her best friend Camden and their guardian, Claire's spinster aunt May, quickly splinters into multiple mysteries: where is her father? What did he do to make such tenacious enemies? The silver ring he sent her--can it really protect her? What do the ring's Chinese characters mean?

Claire and her plucky friend Camden are soon up to their eyebrows in predicaments no one could possibly predict, each one more impossible to escape than the last. With the aid of a peculiarly skillful friend they make along the way, Claire and Camden end up fighting for their lives--and for Claire's wayward father's freedom--in a shadowy Shanghai and an underground Paris few ever see--or would want to see.

"That girl's in trouble," Marta announced darkly. "Wait here."

The girl was slumped against a wall, head down, her long black hair unkempt around her shoulders, her worn blue jeans and spattered white blouse speaking of poverty and perhaps worse.

Hayward sighed but dutifully followed his housemaid's instructions, stopping beneath the awning of a tony sidewalk cafe. It was summer, and sunburnt tourists were sipping frosted Margaritas and crunching tortilla chips doused with a salsa so heavy with cilantro that he could smell it six feet away.

So much for a quick detour, Hayward grumbled to himself; if this takes more than a few minutes, the freeway will be jammed with Friday afternoon traffic and I'll never get home.

Desperate to puncture his leaden gloom, he'd succumbed to the sweet pull of nostalgia and stopped by the Pasadena Playhouse, where his career had started; but then Marta had spotted the girl.

There was a way to stave off bankruptcy and win the woman he desired, but it required a marriage--a marriage of many things...

At some point you're willing to take a job, any job, just to break the dispiriting cycle of looking for work: hopeful application, positive interview, anxious wait, polite rejection, numbing disappointment. Getting tipsy and wandering onto the Golden Gate Bridge in a deep fog was an optional step six, and then it was back to step one again.

Six months of this Sisyphus routine had been especially frustrating to a software security guy like myself. Despite the sour economy, Silicon Valley recruiters were practically accosting security programmers like me as they walked to their cars in the Safeway parking lot, chips and salsa in hand; yet here I was with thirteen years experience and sterling recommendations, getting one great interview after another--and having the door slammed in my face each time.

I'd sunk through Foolish Paranoia--had an unknown enemy put a voodoo curse on me?--all the way down to the rock bottom of Grand Doubts: Was this just an extended run of bad luck, or had something gone irrevocably wrong in my life?

That evening I gathered up the newspapers and tossed them into the recycling bin by the front door. The help-wanted section was on top of the pile, and my eyes were drawn to a dried coffee ring from my mug in the upper-right corner. Inside the muddy round stain was a listing that I'd somehow missed that morning.

STRIKE OUT ON YOUR OWN. Lucrative and unusual position. Computer and psi experience a must. Apply in person Monday, May 3 only, 9 am to noon, 24 Bridgehead Road, San Francisco.

Garrett Trask would soon be focusing on two letters: AI -- and one word: death.

Power comes in many forms: youth, desire, wealth, guilt, secrets and surprises. Verona Uyeki will experience them all.

She hated when he was late especially today. It's his pattern, Verona thought wearily; I can t change it. But I expect him to come when he says he will, and I can't change that, either.

Impatiently twisting the curtain's white silk tassels around her forefinger, she stood at her bedroom window, watching the empty street below. A frustration made fierce by waiting flared up in her and she thought, I'm running out of time for this. After three sleepless nights, I need to talk to him today.

Not completely sleepless, she reminded herself no need to over-dramatize the urgency. But Tobias always came on Monday; he'd never missed even once, and now it's Wednesday. Did he somehow sense the ultimatum awaiting him?

"A line from Mimi's last letter came to her "how did such a smart girl like you get in such a pickle?" and she thought, you don't know the half of it.

The Genet quote which she'd buried in her journal came to her, and its sweet-sour taste of exalted imprisonment struck her anew: "Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all."

But now I realize that it isn't the honest recounting of my war experiences which will separate us, but your ignorance of those experiences. For if you don't ever see the war and its aftermath through my eyes, then what can there be between us but unbridgeable distance?

Kindle edition $9.95

"Alex says it s me, but it s him. It s got to be him, because this kind of weird griff never happens when I m alone.

Take our bus ride from Kansas City. It should have been the snooziest cruise in the Universe to get to Alex s uncle s farm in Liberty. But no, everybody else on the bus makes it to Iowa except us. Why? Alex."

The first chapter.

Excerpted stories from the book:
Adventures of Daz and Alex.

How I Fell in Love with a Homeless Woman

"I can faithfully report that one falls in love with a homeless woman in the same manner as one falls in love with any other woman: your eyes meet, and some spark passes between you which is beyond easy description."

A Secret Life

"I discovered my mother s secret life some years ago. But only recently have I come to understand the sense of duty that unified her parallel lives. As my own have fallen apart, I have a renewed sense of respect for her during the years my father served overseas...."

A listing of all short stories/excerpts: Forbidden Stories