Richard Seltzer Boeken

Breeze, a young woman in present-day Connecticut, goes into a medically inexplicable coma. Her boyfriend, Yannie, a senior at Yale, has to get her the help she needs to survive while trying to solve the mystery of this goddess-like free spirit who appeared out of nowhere two months before.In part two, Breeze awakens in a different body in a different place and time. She is at Troy in the body of Briseis, love-slave of Achilles. She fears she’ll be taken for a demon. She knows the story she is trapped in, and she learns that she can make changes in what the story leaves unsaid, so long as she doesn't alter the direction of the narrative.In part three, Breeze finds herself in still another body. It's the fourth century AD and she’s at the temple of the Eleusinian Mysteries, near Athens. A young woman lies down on the altar next to the corpse of another young woman. In the ritual, she expects her soul will move to the body of the dead woman. Instead, the dead woman comes to life with the soul of Breeze. That glitch leads to humorous complications as well insights into the ironies of everyday life and love.Breeze and Richard's three previous novels (Parallel Lives, Beyond the 4th Door, and Nevermind) can be read in any order. They are independent stories, with overlapping themes and styles. Each novel presents a different view of reality, a different way of trying to understand the mysteries of life.

This bittersweet comedy and romance has touches of tragedy and magic. Writing during the pandemic and feeling nostalgia for what has been lost, the narrator, Abe, recounts stories told around the dinner table on a Caribbean cruise two years before. Abe explains the title: "I'm writing from the midst of this crisis, not with the wisdom of hindsight. Even if it gets no worse than it is right now, much has been lost. "I'm hoping that we can gether. That's a word that isn't in the dictionary. "To gether is to find new ways to be together, new ways to meet, to bond, to love. "Even when physically isolated, we can come together in spirit, to share experiences and emotions to the point that we are intimately connected." "In any case, may we always treasure our normal life, knowing, as we now know, that it is fragile and should never be taken for granted."

Shakespeare's twin sister wakes up in the body of a 99-year-old woman in a nursing home in 1987. She has quite a tale to tell: -- her coming-of-age story, posing as a boy to get an education, -- twins separated at birth sorting out the mystery of their otherworldly connection to one another, -- a lifelong three-way love story, -- soul projection and transference linking individuals to one another and connecting past to present, -- and the story of a young reporter who falls in love with the soul he finds in the body of an old and dying woman. As a cross-dressing sword-fighting teenager, Kate beats Mercutio, captain of the King's Musketeers, in a duel in Paris. As Will's double and writing partner, Kate enables him to do the work of two geniuses. This outlandish view of Shakespeare's life and times stays true to the facts, while presenting explanations that are intriguingly plausible

The lives of Ruth and Mark are transformed by nevermind magic that Ruth learned from her mother-magic that can undo what has been done and alter the shape of reality. They fall in love and marry in their early 20s during WWII. They split up, then meet forty years later and fall in love again. When they first meet, their on-again-off-again romance and the challenges of wartime America force them to grow up quickly. Their marriage falls apart when they lose their four-month-old son, Davey, during a transcontinental train trip. They blame one another and divorce. Then, separately, each of them invokes nevermind, finds Davey, and raises him. When they meet and fall in love for the second time, they realize they've been living in parallel worlds and need to bring those worlds together into a new reality.

First of a trilogy of historical novels based on the life of Alexander Bulatovich, a Ukrainian/Russian explorer in Ethiopia, a cavalry officer during Russia's conquest of Manchuria, and later a monk at Mount Athos and a religious leader.

Dive into the world of the Trojan War as lived by Helen. Paris, and Menelaus; Polyxena and Achilles; Ktimene (Odysseus' sister) and Eumaeus the swineherd. What should they do? Do they have a choice?

Without knowing why or how, two college students wake up 50 years older than they were when they went to sleep and with no memory of what has happened in between. Trying to figure this all out, they read a novel that Frank wrote about them and his family before the missing years. This novel within the novel is a coming-of-age family saga with Charlie, an amateur movie maker; Sarah, his insightful bible-believing mother; Irene, his creative and uninhibited wife; Frank, his nephew, the author of the novel; and Marge, who loves and hates both Frank and Charlie. Can they sort truth from fiction when perception and action are often shaped by lies? Frank and Marge bond with one another as they find ways to slip through cracks in time and space. Cracks that are doors to their past, present, and future. The first door is birth. The second is death. Finally, Frank and Marge go through the fourth door.