Greetings dear reader, and welcome to my collection of short stories. I hope you will find them entertaining enough-although the thought of you reading a collection of O. Henry's or Rudyard Kipling's short stories might impress your literate friends more. My work should, however, prove at least suitable for reading while on a trip or be something that you might carry to the beach or bathroom and read at your leisure without running too much risk of developing a severe case of sunburn or in the case of the bathroom3/4hemorrhoids-before you finished one of these stories. I must also state, that some of these stories are not for family reading-unless your family is dysfunctional. Of course, now-a-days, family dysfunctionality might be drifting toward the norm. The people contained herein demonstrate how people3/4not all of which are the most stellar representatives of their species (Kind of like the person next to you on the bus, or who you work with on a daily basis.) who sometimes make decisions that do not always turn out to produce what they had hoped for. And, what happens to them when fate or fortune sticks its fickle finger in the mix. As Sophocles said more than two thousand four hundred years ago, "Man is born to fate a prey." Also, I might add that some are distinctly period or ethnic pieces written in the vocabulary of the time or culture. If you need help with some of the words, I have included some glossaries with a few of the stories. If even this proves a problem-Lo siento mucho. I might add that, even Dorothy Parker or, for that matter, Edgar Allen Poe might find some of the stories a bit dark. Also, some are beyond Kurt Vonnegut cynical. You may, however, rest assured that the mention of O. Henry, Rudyard Kipling, Dorothy Parker, Kurt Vonnegut, and Edgar Allen Poe, in this introduction, is as close to real literature as you will get in this work. In any case, I would like to thank you if you would at least give them a try. Pax vobiscum, James Long