It's happened to anyone who drives: a person honks a horn at you; or maybe someone extends a middle finger in your direction. Your reaction, however, can have enormous consequences.

Just as the road can be a place of unpredictability, the search for love can also yield unexpected results. The unanticipated-and how we deal with it-is central to the provocative stories and poems in "Montage."

In "The Rush Home," a husband speeding to be with his wife causes an accident that forever changes his life. And in a series of stories, two college writers, Jack and Leslie, become best friends. But when Jack tells Leslie that he's smitten with another girl, he has no idea that his confession will result in his best friend revealing a secret of her own.

The poems in "Montage" explore the raw beauty of love and friendship. In "Lina," Alland writes: "She was a flower, taken by the next season.

Her color was vivid beyond any reason.

Her scent was soothing; it could put you to sleep.

Her petals were perfect; you'd want them to keep.

" Open yourself to a glorious "Montage" of stories and poems that will expose life's uncanny unpredictability.

In this new collection of short stories, the imaginary residents of a particularly colourful region of Victoria in Australia lead lives of such sheer oddness that their stores had to be told. Most of them work without great enthusiasm for apparently harmless businesses. They ignore that, the companies are secretly involved in illegal activities run by one of the most feared criminal bosses in Melbourne. In this rollicking collection of short stories set in this eccentric little community, successful immigrants, hen-pecked husbands, terrified schoolboys, and bickering sisters have to figure out what to do when unpleasant deaths, delightful love affairs, and hungry crocodiles settle in. And whatever may happen, the secret hidden at the bottom of the lake will remain a secret-and laughter will survive A Teaspoon of Giggles offers an example of the wicked humour of a man who likes to observe, tease, and mock the lovely people who live around him.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - It was Lady Windermere's last reception before Easter, and Bentinck House was even more crowded than usual. Six Cabinet Ministers had come on from the Speaker's Levee in their stars and ribands, all the pretty women wore their smartest dresses, and at the end of the picture-gallery stood the Princess Sophia of Carlsruhe, a heavy Tartar-looking lady, with tiny black eyes and wonderful emeralds, talking bad French at the top of her voice, and laughing immoderately at everything that was said to her. It was certainly a wonderful medley of people. Gorgeous peeresses chatted affably to violent Radicals, popular preachers brushed coat-tails with eminent sceptics, a perfect bevy of bishops kept following a stout prima-donna from room to room, on the staircase stood several Royal Academicians, disguised as artists, and it was said that at one time the supper-room was absolutely crammed with geniuses. In fact, it was one of Lady Windermere's best nights, and the Princess stayed till nearly half-past eleven.

ODDS AND ENDS consists of three sections, covering poetry, short stories and one part written by a cantankerous cat named Wilma, who tells the dirt on the household and holds nothing back.

Take your senses on a wild ride!!! Feel the terror as Allison slowly drifts "Out To Sea" or the horror as Duke has only"Twenty-Fours Hours" to live. In the story "Touched and Forgiven" Mike experiences Gods touch in a powerful way. Smell the bread rising in "Mutsie's Kitchen" or wonder if Ellen's husband is finally going to leave her. See how satan temps Rosie in "Cursed" or how Amy is rewarded by giving to a mission in "The Blessing." Feel the happiness rising as Dr. Joe realizes that the world is not ending but merely taking "A Short Pause." You will even chuckle a bit when you experience "The 1,234.56 Dollar Winner." So your emotions will have a "jolly good time" as they travel through life's trials and you will enjoy a good short story.

SWAN is an acronym for Serious: THE CROIX DE GUERRE OF JACQUES LA CLAIR, a soldier in WWII; Weird: THE DERELICT, a missing space ship, And Not: NIGHT AND DAY, a divorcee seeks a new love, and seven other tales.

Eleven short stories are united by the common theme of a woman's journey. Her voyage begins with a repressive childhood in an authoritarian, war-torn society and continues through periods of awakening and self-discovery in which she finds the hidden strength to support herself in new worlds and raise a family.

Although the stories are quite different in time and place, in mood and color, there is a thread that connects the main character with each happening, each new encounter, each mishap and each joy.

The tales show a woman enamored with the ideal of love yet unable to understand and enjoy sex. It is a woman who adores men but is afraid of their physical power, their superior muscular strength, a woman who had many lovers, not to mention two husbands, but was unable or unwilling to hold on to them.

In these seven stories set in Alaska and New Mexico, Detroit and Chicago, Andre Miftaraj gives us characters who encounter situations in the physical world, and sometimes beyond the physical world, that through danger and heartbreak deliver them to someplace strange. "There Were Bears and Rumors of Bears" explores spiritual injury and recovery through stories that are both haunting and frightening and that depict the profane and sacred, the mundane and non-ordinary aspects of experience, and find the bass note, the truth that hums beneath it all.