The 24 previously unpublished short stories in this collection explore love, illness, medicine, aging, parenthood, childhood, education, literate animals, and combinations thereof. A hungry romantic connects with his waitress despite a possible case of food poisoning. Two medical tourists choose sex over surgery. A lab rat ponders the experiment in which he participates and those conducting it. An old timer is cynical about everything except his granddaughter and Sandy Koufax. A well-meaning father shows lapses in judgment. A modern-day physician weighs in on the case of a Tolstoy protagonist. A nose job is more than it seems. What starts as a date turns into an evaluation for Alzheimer's disease. A young boy falls in love with his older downstairs neighbor. A hypersomniac's dreams spill out into the real world. The laws of physics trump the laws of man. A premedical student takes things too far. An old man's memory fails him, but not his libido. A dog thwarts his master's unethical research. A man hires an escort for a meeting about his taxes. Good intentions sabotage a retirement. A medical clinic features a proprietary death machine. A boy impresses his girlfriend by turning into a bird. Nobody lives in a noisy building. A doctor doubles as a private eye. Mistaken identity disrupts a funeral. A university selects for students with good luck. A bully dies during a CPR class. A book review becomes way too personal.