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I have been a Patrick Welch fan for a long time. I have read several of his books already but it didn't prepare me for Westchester Station. When I read certain authors, I have some clue as to what to expect. With Patrick Welch, each new work comes as a complete surprise. Nothing I'd read prior to Westchester Station set the stage for this wholly remarkable book.

I don't consider Westchester Station a novel. It's more a series of related vignettes or short stories, all interrelated. Robert Winstead, the main character who links it all together through a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances, finds himself in Westchester Station, an inter-dimensional train station.

While waiting for a train he's not sure will ever arrive, he runs into a number of invariably unforgettable characters, including a graffiti artist that paints natural disasters, a panhandler asking for a most unusual kind of donation, an inventor who doesn't realize his inventions can't work, mental acrobats, a man who watches ghost trains and much much more.

Why has Robert Winstead been brought to this place that is not a place? Will he ever find his way out? Will his train ever arrive? Will he survive long enough to board it? Each new answer raises more questions, propelling your mind down ever stranger paths.

If you haven't guessed it already, I really enjoyed Westchester Station. I enjoy any book that takes my mind on a joyride, the less predictable the better. There is nothing predictable about it, yet there is an internal logic that is most compelling. It is precisely that logic that makes it such a fun read. I could almost see it coming, yet when it arrives, it's not what I'd expected. The pleasant surprises continued to stack up, right up to the very end.

Another thing I liked about the book is the length of each segment, which is short enough to read in a sitting, even if you don't have much time to read. With books getting longer and longer, it's nice to be able to sit down, read a few pages, then move on to other things. Not that I wanted to stop reading, but the nature of some segments was so bizarre, I actually had to lean back and think about them before continuing on.

Available in both ebook and print versions, Westchester Station is a book that pushes the envelope, tasks the imagination and twists reality in completely unexpected ways.

Steve Lazarowitz is a speculative fiction writer, an editor, a father, a husband, an animal lover and a heck of a nice guy (not necessarily in that order). Steve lives in Moonah, Tasmania with his family and four giant spiny leaf insects. You can check out his work at http://www.dream-sequence.net.