Everybody has a wish. Everybody has a dream. Sometimes those dreams and wishes can come true, but there is always a price to pay. The stories of people who have paid this price are recorded in The Book of Reasons.

This new collection from the author of the Missing Beat trilogy contains some of those stories. Read about an author’s toxic relationship with his own creation, a gardener who wages war on snails, a policeman who is haunted by his last case, what happens when pupils begin to disappear from a school photograph, and, in the title story, you will learn the identity of The Custodian of Stories and what his job entails.

These are stories of the bizarre and of the macabre, but all must be read with the lights on.