A ship adrift, all hands dead. A lighthouse keeper murdered in the night. The Crown needs man to find the truth. Doctor Mungo Lyon, his reputation tarnished by the Burke & Hare scandal, and forbidden to practise as a surgeon, is the wrong man. That's exactly why the Crown chose him.

A ship adrift, all hands dead. A lighthouse keeper murdered in the night. The Crown needs man to find the truth. Doctor Mungo Lyon, his reputation tarnished by the Burke & Hare scandal, and forbidden to practise as a surgeon, is the wrong man. That’s exactly why the Crown chose him.

15 short stories inspired by the literature of Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges and the radio plays of Arch Oboler. Meet the psychiatrist who has too much in common with his patient; the two strangers whose paths were meant to cross repeatedly; the detective hired to find a missing writer who then finds himself in a world of fiction; the stuffed human being possessing a consciousness no one perceives; the professor and the student who exchange roles on a psychic level; the Florida retiree who suspects his wife and friends to be products of his imagination; the director who realizes he is trapped in the nightmarish reality of his latest film, and the short story writer whose life is threatened by the characters he has invented. Pieces & Stems is a surrealistic journey from which your mind may never recover.

Pieces & Stems: Stories By Stephen O'Rourke has been named a finalist in the Short Story - Fiction category of the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.