Missed Connection: A recent divorcee strikes up a steamy romance with a human rights lawyer turned Zen Buddhist practitioner when he sells his grandfather’s mahogany armoire over Craigslist in an attempt to rid himself of earthly constraints. They must struggle to balance their love against the demands of her newly-opened bakery and his duties running a Northern California Zen monastery. Soul-searching trips to wine country abound until he is killed in a helicopter accident.
Mystery Fax: A harried travel agent and single mother starts receiving strange faxes at her Cape Cod office. At first she believes they are solicitations or a wrong number, but then discovers they are desperate dispatches from a brave handsome journalist held captive by FARC guerillas in Colombia. They continue to exchange messages through this rapidly-disappearing form of communication; non-platonic feelings erupt. Finally, with the help of her ex-husband David Morse, she goes to South America to attempt to rescue him. He is tragically killed after eating a poisonous jungle plant but not before giving our heroine the courage she needs to open the tearoom of which she had always dreamed.
Texts from Ocracoke: A 40-something CPA and recent divorcee is taking some time to herself on the Outer Banks when she meets and falls in love with a ruggedly handsome pediatrician who had his larynx torn out by a leopard while working in Namibia for Doctors Without Borders. Since he has lost the ability to speak, they communicate with each other largely through text messages. She must overcome her long-standing technophobia (“I never use anything fancier than an adding machine,” she admits at one point) so that love can blossom in this coastal paradise, and so they can open a rare book shop together, thus fulfilling her lifelong dream. Tragically, though, he is killed when a really heavy book falls on him.
Coo-Coo for You: A young American doughboy fighting in World War I meets a beautiful French village girl while AWOL from this horrible, pointless fighting that is tearing this world apart. He is eventually found and brought back to the line, but continues to send poetry and communiqués to her via passenger pigeon. Cruel fate conspires to make it impossible for them to reunite after the war, but they meet again in Paris when they are both 120 years old and he happens to walk into her granddaughter’s créperie. They live happily ever after but passenger pigeons go extinct because of their overuse in wars.
