Margaret Joyce Baker

Tragedy dogs the Hunnicutt family in the woods and hills of an East Texas village.

"Of the stories in this collection, thirteen were written before 1961, when Catch-22 was published; of those, five have never before been published. After Catch-22, Heller forsook the short story form. Though five stories were published after 1961, one - "World Full of Great Cities" - was actually written in 1949, three of the other four are spin-offs of Catch-22, and one is a preview of Closing Time.". "Rounding out this collection of the complete published short writings of Joseph Heller are a short play and several nonfiction pieces, mostly related to Catch-22."--BOOK JACKET.

An unusually large and intelligent cat with a dominating and talkative personality brings problems to a dentist and his family.

At a jumble sale, three children buy an unusual sand-filled glass swan that makes wishes come true.

Business and excitement at the shoe shop increase sharply after the arrival of Hi-Jinks, the new toy bear purchased to help the other four toy animals entertain customers.

Three teddy bears who feel their lives are too dull find adventures with other toys as mascots on various city and business vehicles.

Four corpses, all members of the same family, are discovered by a retired academic visiting his old childhood haunts. The police investigation focuses upon the one surviving family member but as the police pursue their enquiries they learn that the family fell from grace years ago and has links to a remote Yorkshire village. "Hennessey and Yellich find that blue blood marks the spot There was a time when Simon Knapp wouldn't have dared go near Edgefield House - as a teenager, he'd only had the nerve to snoop around the grounds. But now, returning fifty years on, he marches straight up to the derelict eighteenth-century stately home and pushes open its front door. Curiosity killed the cat and Knapp then faces something that makes his mature nonchalance seem decidedly ill-placed."