A handkerchief left on a table. A young boy at an Indian circus. A Spaniard spinning on the dance floor. A pianist returning home to her first and true love. Four Doors and Other Stories sparkles with unique characters and startling images, each one walking the line between dream and reality. The twelve stories in this collection travel from the magical doors in a French teacher's hallway to a hidden copse in a gypsy camp, to a small town where a postman who delivers love letters is always losing his cap. Four Doors and Other Stories explores the nature and the breadth of love, not only in its most recognizable forms-sacrifice, forgiveness, and longing-but in its strangest: in distance, infidelity, jealousy, and isolation. Through surprising characters and varied storytelling, A.G. Billig blurs the line between dreams and the magic of reality to paint a portrait of love in all its forms.

Paul Castle loves his son Jack and hates being a Burger Bar Dad. Seeing his son only on Wednesdays and Saturdays pulls him apart. His ex-wife is a thrusting ambitious banker and he is a middling, not very ambitious Birmingham journalist with hopes of being a playwright. The divorce gave her the house, and he got the guilt. He's just about keeping it together, but after a disastrous parents evening, Paul discovers that Jack's mother is planning to move to London and put Jack in a private boarding school. Paul must quickly sort his priorities and his life as he embarks on a hilarious campaign to frustrate his ex-wife's plan. However, his life is just about to get even more complicated, when he meets Gillian and begins to remember the joys of being in love. All too soon, he is confronted with the reality that in order to maintain even his inadequate Burger Bar relationship with Jack, he will have to move down South. As he falls quickly in love with Gillian, he is then offered the chance to be a playwright in Birmingham. How can he choose between being with Gillian or being with Jack?