Award-winning author Amra Pajalic showcases her gritty, poignant and sometimes bruising voice in this eclectic short story book of previously published and prize-winning stories. Featuring powerful and moving stories of family dissolution, deprivation of war, tenderness of family and the heart-rending experiences of mental illness. Thriller stories with a twist of vindictiveness and retribution, and love stories that make the heart sing, this collection will delight and entertain.

The Cuckoo's Song?Francesca is ten when a gypsy fortune-teller told her the day and the hour of her death and she has been waiting since.

Fragments?Seka and her brother forage for books in a bombed-out school in Srebrenica during the Balkan war.

Friends Forever?Two lifelong friends share a room at a nursing home, as well as a secret or two.

School of Hardknocks?Amina is a new high school student after migrating from Bosnia and struggles to acclimate to the Aussie way of life.

Woman on Fire?A young girl lives with her mother's boyfriend when her mentally ill mother is admitted into hospital.