Oscar's Ten Commandments

Ten commandments. Fourteen years. Zero exceptions. Oscar has rules. He follows them with the quiet conviction of someone who long ago decided that the alternative was worse. Never be bothered. Maintain the schedule. Occupy the best position. Conduct all inspections thoroughly. When Elena Marsh checks into Hadley House - a Victorian bed-and-breakfast in Sable Cove, Maine - she is carrying color-coded luggage, a notebook she hasn't opened, and a voice in her head that has been delivering its verdict since February. She plans to rest. What she finds instead is Oscar: the building's resident authority on standards, protocol, and the precise thermal yield of fourteen approved sleeping positions. She thinks his commandments are hilarious. She is not wrong. But she is not entirely right, either. Oscar is, among other things, a polydactyl - a direct descendant of the cats of the Hemingway Home in Key West, though he has inherited the extra toes and dispensed with the sentiment. Oscar's Ten Commandments is a novel about the frameworks we build when everything collapses - told in corporate memos, surveillance camera footage, and careful observation, with the occasional Minor Infraction. Written in the tradition of Fredrik Backman and Matt Haig, with a structural reveal that reframes every page that came before it. Read carefully. Oscar has been filing the evidence from page one. M. Eigh is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).