Washington DC is the setting of the Continental Library Association Annual Conference and Ally Derringer is anticipating a magnificent event to cap off her year as president. Many new members have recently joined the association, although it is unclear why. After a rousing keynote speech by a major political figure, the festive atmosphere is interrupted as an unsolved murder threatens to wreck the conference. Strangely, few conventioneers seem sad that the librarian is dead. Is the killer an angry ex-flame? Someone hiding criminal behavior? A political opponent? Or was it an act of terrorism...

This collection of short stories focuses on the game of chess as a symbol of an incomprehensible world, a means of communication beyond language, an unreachable ideal, a trap, a disease, a salvation. The stories in this baker's dozen are literary, hallucinatory, and mystifying, resisting easy conclusions or explanations. Lovers of writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, and Jorge Luis Borges may find something of interest in this collection.