Heartbeats and Other Lessons: Short Stories Paperback – August 29, 2025

Heartbeats and Other Lessons is a collection of interwoven stories set in a small Bavarian town in the decades after the Second World War. Narrated through the eyes of students and teachers at the Jean Paul Gymnasium, these tales trace the tremors of adolescence against the heavy aftershocks of history.In Heartbeats, a circle of teenage girls fall helplessly in love with their dazzling teacher, only to watch their illusions dissolve at his wedding. O’ Mice an’ Men contrasts the staid rhythms of provincial English lessons with the vibrant arrival of a Scottish expatriate whose fate is undone by cultural misunderstandings. Sartre in Prague follows a school trip into the shadow of Soviet tanks, where philosophical debates mingle with adolescent bravado and disillusionment.Beyond the classroom, Doing Good reveals how ordinary boarding house residents discover that evil has lived quietly among them, while Mephistopheles Resurrexit confronts the persistence of fascist remnants within education itself. Finally, The Pendulum stretches from wartime brutality to the fragile hopes of the 1950s, as a teacher’s private wounds are forced into the light through the life of her son, born with Down syndrome.Together, these stories create a polyphonic portrait of a generation caught between the innocence of youth and the burden of a haunted past. By turns tender, satirical, and haunting, the collection illuminates how history lingers in classrooms, in families, and in the quiet corners of everyday life. Read more