1984: Bernie Boyle, his novel unpublished, stumbles onto a minor fortune and runs to Asia. He’s having amorous adventures in Manila when his book becomes a controversial bestseller and he becomes a target of the narrow-minded. Bernie, oblivious, finds love on a small, faraway island. An earthquake and tsunami backdrop a tumultuous climax to this eye-opening, unusual story.

TBoaTYO lifts the covers off the 1980s “father and son” scene in the Philippines, with a cast of bumbling expats, lovable boys, and a few opposing forces. Breezily written with nods to Burroughs and Proust, TBoaTYO is, finally, a love story.

Set in California in the early 1980s, A Natural Lizard Activity is narrated by 13-year-old Kim, a sexually awakening boy, who tells his tale with a sharp eye and deadpan humor. Kim moves in with the level-headed Bernie. Their easy life and deepening love is strained when Kim’s loony father trips out on his “Golden Road.” Kim enlists Bernie in his search for the old man – and something more.

Set in the 1990s, What I Live For finds an older but still viable Bernie wasting his life in an obscure outpost on the island of Borneo. He’s inherited a rundown hotel on the edge of a jungle. He trades stories and more with a motley clientele of visiting scientists looking for undiscovered species and the occasional intergenrational affair. As political upheaval and the madness of the outside world begin to intrude, Bernie is forced to make a choice.