Eric Hoffer Award, 1st Runner-Up, Short Story/Anthology category

The Amazing Mr. Morality features tenacious men and women whose determination to buck middle-class social convention draws them toward unforeseen challenges. A failed television producer insists upon having a woodchuck relocated from his lawn, only to receive desperate letters in which the woodchuck begs to return. An overconfident ne’er-do-well obtains a lucrative lecture invitation intended for a renowned ornithologist and decides to deliver the speech himself. An innocuous dispute over whether to rename a local street opens up racial fault lines that prove deadly. 

The collection concludes with the title novella in which two unscrupulous ethicists, writing rival newspaper columns, seek to unseat each other by addressing questions such as: If you’re going to commit a murder, is it worse to kill when the victim is sleeping or awake? 

Jacob M. Appel is a physician, attorney, and bioethicist in New York City, where he teaches at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. His publications include four novels and seven collections of short fiction. He is the winner of numerous awards, including the Hudson Prize, the Dundee International Book Prize, the Robert Watson Literary Prize, and the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award. Learn more at jacobmappel.com.