This is a book of short stories for those who have little time to read and who wish to get the most enjoyment from the time available. The stories are written with the ingenuity and humor of a pixie and they run the gamut to make you think, laugh or cry. If you make the time, you are bound to experience all of them. Treat yourself. Take a few minutes and enjoy this most pleasant array of short stories.

Please don't ask me what the stories are about. Honestly, I really don't know. It's not like I don't wanna tell you or anything, I just can't explain it. I mean, I guess the stories are about being a human being and everything that comes with that. Like growing up and all the memories and feelings and all that shit. And how living is basically a constant struggle or something like that? Or maybe let me rephrase it: I think my main topic is life and living includes having emotions and changing and falling in love and experiencing heartbreak and anxiety and depression and wishing for things and dreaming about things and regretting things and having interactions with other people and, I mean, obviously so much more. And I guess all of these things, and the writing and thinking and talking about it ... that's what the stories are about. Happy?

What can you do when the world is pushing you over the edge? More than you think. For some of us, it's the automated voice that answers the phone when we'd rather talk to a real person. For others, it's the fact that Starbucks insists on calling its smallest-sized coffee "tall." Or perhaps it's those pesky subscription cards that fall out of magazines. Whatever it is, each of us finds some aspect of everyday life to be particularly maddening, and we often long to lash out at these stubborn irritants of modern life. In Life's Little Annoyances, Ian Urbina chronicles the lengths to which some people will go when they have endured their pet peeves long enough and are not going to take it any more. It is a compendium of human inventiveness, by turns juvenile and petty, but in other ways inspired and deeply satisfying. We meet the junk-mail recipient who sends back unwanted "business reply" envelopes weighted down with sheet metal, so the mailers will have to pay the postage. We commiserate with the woman who was fed up with the colleague who kept helping himself to her lunch cookies, so she replaced them with dog biscuits that looked like biscotti. And we revel in the seemingly endless number of tactics people use to vent their anger at telemarketers, loud cellphone talkers, spammers, and others who impose themselves on us. A celebration of the endless variety of passive aggressive behavior, Life's Little Annoyances will provide comfort and inspiration to everyone who has ever gritted his teeth and dreamed of sweet retribution against the slings and arrows of outrageous people.

Until My Heart's Content is a brilliant collection of poetry that speaks to the generation of today as well as those yet to come. Each poem is as riveting and intoxicatingly thought provoking as the next. This diverse collection of poems ranges from topics of love and romance, faith and self discovery, to profound and philosophical ideals. All arranged in amazingly vivid, imaginative, powerful, and engaging verse. This inspiring book of poetry has all the essentials you will ever need to keep both your mind and heart content.

How the experience of war impacted on the town, from the initial enthusiasm for sorting out the German Kaiser in time for Christmas 1914, to the gradual realization of the enormity of human sacrifice the families of Birmingham were committed to as the war stretched out over the next four years. A record of the growing disillusion of the people, their tragedies and hardships and a determination to see it through. Birmingham’s part in the Great War is well documented from the production of Rifles and Lewis Guns at the B.S.A. to the mind boggling 25 million rifle cartridges produced weekly at Kynochs. Airplanes, tanks, armored cars, military trucks, shell fuses, shell cases, Mills bombs and hundreds of other intricate parts needed to make military hardware. “The country, the empire and the world owe to the skill, the ingenuity, the industry and the resource of Birmingham a deep debt of gratitude,” to quote Prime Minister Lloyd George and former Minister of Munitions. But that is only part of the story. Around 150,000 Birmingham men enlisted and sadly approximately 14,000 did not return. No story of Birmingham’s war effort can be told without mentioning the wives, moms, sisters and girlfriends who toiled away night and day working in munitions. Four years of local war time newspapers have been trawled through unearthing personal experiences of Brummagem folk in the Great War.

Growing up in an Italian household, I frequently heard the word Giambott. It is an Italian vegetable stew made with potatoes and zucchini. The actual pronunciation is Ciamotta. The Irish also make claims on this dish (They use cabbage of course) but no one takes the Irish seriously when it comes to food. It sometimes referred to as a summer stew, also known as Poverty Stew. We weren’t poor but we ate it year round. It became much more than just a stew. It grew into a fine meal when family time at meals were special and meant something. This mixture was often referred to as a hodgepodge or a mishmash. The correct word today is medley. This sounds more pleasant and almost musical. It was a really just a collection of whatever was in the refrigerator at the end of the week. Everyone knew it was a sin to throw food away because there were children starving in some far off land. We never saw them but we knew they were there. The threat was significant enough to clean our plates. Our leftovers became our delicious banquet. This book is like that collection of random leftovers (Some may have gone bad). There are some short stories based upon life’s observations or experiences, short pieces of fiction and marriage advise. Please do not follow any advise from me. I haven’t figured out anything yet. The book also contains at least one actual song. You can try singing the other parts but it won’t make any sense. I have intermingled my favorite recipes throughout the stories to be savored and enjoyed, preferably with a glass of wine or a case of beer, whatever it takes to make it more palatable or help you choke it down. Please do not eat while reading this book because it may lead to actual choking. My Heimlich skills do not work over the phone and 911 operators can’t understand muffled grunts. You have been warned.