ISOLATION AND OTHER STORIES The Davies Group, Publishers Trade Paper: 2002 ISBN 1-888570-48-2 The stories collected here are stories of family and friction, race and gender, friendship and fear, discovery and despair. These stories -- set against the vast diversity of America's big cities and small towns, and mountains and plains -- are intended to shape their characters ranging from homeless people to ticket scalpers, from cowboys to youthful voyeurs on the run, from mentors and teachers to searchers and loners. Isolation is about men and women, both young and old, looking for their identities and seeking direction. Above all, these stories are about the human spirit, soaring or desperately trying to land. Included in these pages are tales of daily life, stories of love, faith, desire, disappointment, humor and luck. The characters who live within the pages of this book struggle to find meaning in their disparate, sometimes stark, and always complicated lives. Faced with the necessity of choosing, or having made a choice, they find themselves, sometimes supported by friends and sometimes alone, at one of life's decision-making junctions. Read an excerpt from one of the stories. Buy the book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Indiebound, or an independent mystery bookstore. PRAISE "Robert Greer...expands his horizon. Greer's novels are brilliant in terms of plot and character rendering, rich in detail, and written with an energy in a prose that is lively and crisp. The beauty of it all is that his [short] stories carry all these same qualities."     —Clarence Major, author of All-Night Visitors "A collection of beautifully written short stories, each one more lyrical and haunting than the last. Robert Greer is truly a magician who turns mere words into characters and landscapes and cityscapes that will live in your mind long after you've reached the last page."     —Margaret Coel, author of Wife of Moon "A short story has been compared with a flare in the sky that for a brief moment lights up one portion of the world and the lives of a few people caught in its glare. The stories in Robert Greer's Isolation and Other Stories [do] just that. Twelve stories in all, they are set in big cities, little towns, an isolated ranch. The characters are sometimes white, sometimes black. With only one exception, the recurring theme is the power of friendship, love, forgiveness and humor."     —The Denver Post