This collection of short stories depicts characters wrestling with inner demons and usually coming to spiritual breakthroughs and redemptions.

Martin presents 13 tales accompanied by his line-art drawings. The stories sometimes wander into SF and fantasy (or at least allegory) territory. Some bid to be novella length, although none are excessively wordy. One, “The Return Flight,” focuses on the log kept by the captain of the Demeter, a spacecraft on a yearslong flight carrying an international team of astronauts out of the solar system and back. But an accident halts communication with Earth. On a return trajectory with no margin for error, the vessel is followed by a silent UFO, doubtless a curious alien ship or probe. After speculation and contradictory crew advice, the captain must judge the entity’s intent and whether to lure the stranger away (dooming the Demeter) or lead it to Earth. The tale posits an insoluble SF dilemma (like Tom Godwin’s short story “The Cold Equations”), and some readers will appreciate “The Lady, or the Tiger”–esque open ending. Trust in God (sans evangelical proselytizing) recurs throughout, as in the opener, “The False Treeing Hound,” in which the narrator, driving across the United States after a bad breakup, suffers a car mishap. A rancher’s kindness starts a chain of events that the traveler can only credit to a benevolent force governing the universe rather than random chaos. Some stories are even more introspective and essaylike, such as “The Man Who Held Court,” in which the self-doubting, self-destructive narrator tries church, pop psychology, physical fitness, sex, and intoxicants before a creative solution resolves the conflicted voices in his head. The Covid-19–inspired “The Values of a Dying Man” is just that, the mindset adopted by a pandemic victim to say farewell minus regret, pain, or fear. On the lighter side, “The Nobody Who Fought a Dragon” is a fable about a misfit in a small-minded kingdom who must battle a dragon with “large yellow teeth which were as big as knives.” The familiar material is rendered enjoyable by a comical, James Thurber–esque voice. Overall, the volume delivers healthy attitudes and moral choices in a flawed world. In an afterword, the author describes meditation exercises and mystic coincidences that helped inspire the collection.

A set of engaging, succinct morality tales centered on inner change rather than the superficial.