Roger McAllister has always been a sensible person living a sensible life, but after his globe-trotting wife is killed in a plane crash in 1984, he wants to get away from his job as an accountant for a while, and agrees to participate in a walk from Los Angeles to Denver as a marketing gimmick for Zeus Shoes.

Roger doesn't realize that the other participants and the walking conditions (from beach to desert to mountains) will take him out of his comfort zone, and that the walk will produce dizzying highs and sub-basement lows in both altitude and his personal feelings.

The other walkers include a struggling female writer, an under-dressed model who corrects people's grammar, someone from Roger's distant past, a lady's man with a part-time English accent, and a triathlete who appears to have lowered himself to come on the walk.

Then there is their support crew: an alcoholic ex-car-racing mechanic who lives by the stopwatch, and his wife, an overweight but good-hearted nurse who can do everything from bus-driving to cooking to medical care.

The Zeus employees who drop in and out of their lives are an Asian-American marketeer with similarities to Roger's dead wife, and an African-American photographer who is equally comfortable shooting on the beach or while walking backward on a mountain road in the rain.

Roger will face temptation, hardship, and even peril along the way, but he has been comforted and somewhat conflicted by the difficult-to-explain fact that his dead wife seems to be keeping an eye on him.

In any case, win or lose, finish or fail, there's no doubt that Roger's life won't be the same after this adventure.

After spending more than a quarter of a century as a pioneer in the computer industry, Alan Cook is well into his second career as a writer.

ROCKY ROAD TO DENVER

The death of Roger McAllister's wife in 1984 prompts him to take a break from his accounting firm and join a walk from Los Angeles to Denver, sponsored by Zeus Shoes. The people he encounters will shake him out of his comfort zone, providing comedy, peril and sexual temptation. In addition, his dead wife appears to be keeping an eye on him. Roger's life will never be the same.

DEATH AT MONKSREST--Charlie and Liz No. 3

Liz Reid flies to England in the 1960s because of a poem about an ancient curse that her coworker, Charlie Ebersole, has sent her, which may have led to the murder of the sister of Charlie's English friend, Reggie, whose father is the owner of the hereditary estate of Monksrest. Liz works with Lord Wheatley to find clues in spite of the risks involved.

EAST OF THE WALL--Charlie and Liz No. 2

Charlie Ebersole and Liz Reid are recruited by the CIA to go into East Germany in June 1963, to attempt to obtain intelligence about a secret project of the Germans during World War II, about which information has been lost. The Berlin Wall and the Stasi (East German secret police) make this a perilous mission, but the two suspect that they are the most appropriate people for the job.

TRUST ME IF YOU DARE--Charlie and Liz No. 1

Charlie Ebersole is good at his job as a securities analyst for International Industries in Los Angeles in the year 1962, but he is also somewhat bored at being tied to a desk most of the time. He jumps at the chance to join the fraud section of II, and is immediately put on a case that will take him and another employee, Elizabeth Reid, to Buffalo, Fort Lauderdale, and possibly to Fidel Castro's Cuba, although the Bay of Pigs fiasco is a recent memory, and relations between Cuba and the United States are not good. Charlie and Liz find out that uncovering a Ponzi scheme isn't all just fun and games, but it can be dangerous too, especially when somebody is intent on them not discovering the truth. Before they are through they may wish they were back at their nice safe desks in Los Angeles.

YOUR MOVE--CAROL GOLDEN NO. 7

Carol looks for a serial killer who likes to play games. As she attempts to figure out the game and its significance for the killer she realizes that events oc...