The mystery of life is front and center in the wildly inventive new novel, Prophet and Loss, by Burt Shepp. A mysterious stranger offers an ordinary man on the street a gift. The man, Herbert (Loss) Lossinsky, thinks the stranger and gift are a joke, but accepts, and soon learns he's been given a new Vision of Reality. His bumpy road from midlife crisis to an epiphany is captivating as the story wraps the stranger's odd gift into a tale that is filled with humor, hope, and promises of what can be achieved. It begins in New York, travels to Philadelphia, and ends with a sudden, life altering...