~ A man finds the mother who abandoned him and discovers the truth behind her reasons weren't what he'd been told.~ It's 1976, and a group of black gay men go out for a night on the town and encounter more than they had anticipated.~ A woman discovers that the most sacred of trusts has been broken, and searches herself to understand how it came to be and how to go forward.~ A marriage takes a different turn by circumstance, leaving the couple to ask the question: what happens to love, when life goes wrong?~ The summer of 1963 was a milestone in the Civil Rights Movement, just as it is for a boy growing up black and gay.~ Once a 'good citizen', now a criminal, a man searches for a way out of his lifestyle while trying to hold onto life itself.~ Life in the magazines and on tv are alluring- - but at what cost for a woman and her twin brother? ... These are just some of the stories in 'Gather the Bones', a collection of short stories by Doug Cooper-Spencer. 'Gather the Bones' is Doug Cooper-Spencer's sixth book. His previous books are: 'This Place of Men', 'People Like Us' and 'Leaving Gomorrah'- which are books of a trilogy; and 'A Letter to a Friend' and 'Ella Pruitt', which was noted as one of the best works of fiction of 2016, by the Phillis Wheatley Book Awards.