MARK EDWARDS HAS 8 HOURS TO LOSE HIS VIRGINITY . OR D I E . At 4:00 p.m. on New Year's Eve, thirty-eight-year old Mark Edwards is wearing a cheap wig, sweating profusely, and decomposing while sharing a candlelit dinner with his gluttonous, self-absorbed, and kind-hearted date, Alice Jones. Set in a four-story walk-up apartment complex of studios in Manhattan, Mark is the glue bonding five multi-generational, lonely, jealous, and eccentric tenants. Struggle, conflict, and reconciliation arise from their bruised optimism following: a failed marriage, the death of a spouse, a painful betrayal, and plain bad luck. Haunted by the reappearance of Mary Henson, Mark's teenage girlfriend who died in his arms twenty-four years earlier, he discovers the love he's spent a lifetime seeking, survives in a powerful secret revealed to him from the afterlife. Jonathan M. Schwartz was born in Miami, Florida in 1966 and moved to Boston in 1984 to attend Emerson College. In 1992, he earned a Master's degree in Speech-Language Pathology from City College of New York. Jonathan moved to Ocala, Florida in 1994 and currently provides speech therapy services through his company Empower Rehab. 8 Hours Till Ecstasy is his debut novel.