Kitewizard Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Coronavirus Chronicles, a collection of eight short stories by Edward A. Novak III, which explore the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on everyday lives, the frustrations that lovers and friends navigate in their searches for fairytale endings, and the impact of time and memory on our perceptions of happiness.

“I wrote these stories while on lockdown between March 2020 and February 2021, when more than half a million Americans died from Covid-19,” says Novak. “Through these stories, I tried to capture eight rays of light bursting through the darkness that enveloped all of us.”

Set at the outset of a pandemic, “The Coronavirus Sister Rules” charts the courses of action that the four, far-flung Andersen sisters take upon learning the eldest sister has been hospitalized with the novel coronavirus in Tokyo. The three friends in “The Argentinian Restaurant” have formed a decades-long, celibate love triangle challenged by thinly disguised passions and unspeakable tragedies. In “Man Wakes Up, Discovers There is No Such Thing as Time,” Cillian Lynch awakens after a mysterious twelve-year coma in the midst of a global contagion to discover via Zoom that he has only one friend left.

Five more stories will allow readers to join a road trip to Florida out of the “Twilight Zone,” three people discussing loss on a midnight swim in Long Island Sound, two lovers reuniting after forty years spent apart, one woman’s struggles to balance romance and mental health, and two best friends who question each other’s every motive over a monthly lunch at a restaurant where they will not be seen together.

Novak is the author of the novel Confessions of a Lapsed Altar Boy. He has worked in book publishing, consulting, higher education, the arts, and government regulatory oversight. He earned history degrees at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago. He currently resides in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Tucson, Arizona.

How to Order “The Coronavirus Chronicles” here.

Ed Novak reads excerpts from “The Coronavirus Chronicles” here.