Genre: Contemporary Comedy

The 32-year-old protagonist of this tale is a single man who enjoys his world of casual dating and bachelorhood.

Life starts to take a downward turn at a family gathering, when his lovable, hard-of-hearing, dying grandmother thinks she hears him say 'I'm going to get married in June' when in fact, what he actually says is, 'I'm going to get Marisse and June', his step-sister and her girlfriend, who are too cheap to buy their own car.

Before he can explain, the delighted dowager has announced the news to the hundred plus relatives gathered, and pledges to give him and his 'fiancée' her five bedroom house in Montauk as a wedding gift. Things get worse as people try to help out.

In the chapter before this, Doug, his best friend, casually announces that he's signed him up with Romantica Express, an exclusive speed-dating outfit that operates in and around Manhattan.

We join him there.

Genre: Fantasy Comedy

Rodney had a tree soul, an elm tree to be precise.

It was a slip-up, of course. People are not supposed to have elm tree souls. But mistakes are bound to happen on the overburdened Celestial production line when demand to replenish the world's population has jumped from one to six billion people in the last two hundred years. Ask any production line manager and they'll tell you straight: 'You can't increase productivity without substantial investment in technology and manpower otherwise quality simply cannot be assured.'

Or something along those lines.

Genre: Dark Comedy

Where life in modern cities surges like a swollen river, in Maudlingham it merely trickles.

Everywhere the village exudes well-ordered charm, from the freshly painted clock tower in the town centre, rising from plump, regimented flowerbeds, to orderly rows of picture book Elizabethan shop fronts, striped black and white, their upper storeys craning into the narrow road. Somehow Maudlingham has managed to deflect the speculative gaze of property developers and fast food franchises, and clings with matriarchal steadfastness to its anachronistic English green-belt heritage.

Somehow.

Except the people - or to be more precise, the ladies - of Maudlingham don't believe in leaving things to fate and like one of the black swans that glides gracefully across Maudlingham Park lake, somewhere hidden beneath the surface legs are pumping furiously to maintain the tranquil illusion.

Genre: Fantasy

Every five hundred cycles harvest world champions, one planter (male) and one picker (female), are carefully chosen and plucked from the harvest world. According to tradition they shall be honoured and revered as high royalty by all tribes of the third kingdom before commencing their procession to the valley of Khazurn on the first moon. There on the onyx redemption thrones on the night of the third moon the rebirth ritual shall be performed when the planter and picker shall meld and restore equilibrium and order to the union of worlds. So it is written.

Except that five hundred and thirty eight cycles have now passed since the last ritual and the laws that rule the elements are beginning to fail. The Lore of Invocation, the lore to bring champions from the harvest world, has been lost when the assembly of summoning, an academy of the finest sorcerer minds in the land, was disbanded over two hundred cycles ago, disbanded and exiled. So a collective of the best available magicians is hastily assembled from all corners of the kingdom, some of them fledgling apprentices to aged inept tutors, some little more than daughters of woodland witches, some from dark corners considered dangerous by the old assembly where old animosities are not forgotten. But in any world desperate times call for desperate measures.

And out of the six and a half billion people currently populating earth, the harvest world, Simon Banner is not one of the chosen. He is nevertheless drawn to the kingdom through a series of seemingly unconnected events.

In the meantime, the hastily chosen Jessica and Daniel may not have been as carefully chosen as tradition might otherwise have dictated. She is a disillusioned valium-popping housewife and he is a gay depressive teacher. Not exactly the ideal partnership for a melding.