A scholar's mentor reveals his secret life's work in a remote location... The details of a morbid, multimillion-dollar deal are laid out... A late-night phone call forces a man to the desert to complete an agreement... Two friends find a village in the hills that no one ever leaves... Desperate people seek miracles from a man at an abandoned motel...

Things are often more than they seem, with revelations twisting everything that came before, in this first volume of a short story collection by veteran writer Lynn Harrod.