The Travel Tales Collection, Food & Drink, No. 7, February 2015, is part of Michael Brein’s Collections travel tales series and contains among the best travel stories from Michael’s huge collection of travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world. Travel Tales Collections are groups of very interesting similar travel stories of a kind on a variety of very specific travel subjects, themes, or countries, such as close calls, great escapes, pickpocketing, scams, safety and security in travel, Paris, Morocco, Mexico, and so on. Eventually, several hundred Collections on all sorts of specific travel subjects, themes, and countries will be available on all the major eReaders. The Travel Tales Collection No. 7 for February 2015, Food & Drink, includes Michael's own personal travel tales plus those of others of the sorts of food and drink—dining & eating experiences—that you can have in your travels. Of course, Michael's own food and drink stories are fairly unique to him, but somewhat similar things may happen to you. To Michael, eating and drinking has been sort of a paradox: On the one hand, you want what you ingest to be safe, reliable, and fairly known; on the other hand you want to try new things, which involves taking a little bit of risk. After-all, ‘you are (sort of) what you eat,’ and you ‘get’ what you eat or drink, often. Negative food and drink experience are almost always unsettling and rare surprises that do pop up now and again in your travels. Michael hopes the bad experiences don't happen to you. But if they do, hopefully, you're all the wiser for reading about them in these pages.

The ‘Travel Tales Collection, Toilet Stories,’ No. 8, March 2015, is part of Michael Brein’s ‘Collections’ travel tales series and contains among the best travel stories from Michael’s huge collection of travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world. ‘Travel Tales Collections’ are groups of very interesting similar travel stories of a kind on a variety of very specific travel subjects, themes, or countries, such as close calls, great escapes, pickpocketing, scams, safety and security in travel, Paris, Morocco, Mexico, and so on. Eventually, several hundred ‘Collections’ on all sorts of specific travel subjects, themes, and countries will be available on all the major eReaders. In the previous issue of ‘Travel Tales Collections,’ No 7 Feb 2015, I included a selection of food and drink experiences that you can have in your travels. Therefore, it is only fitting, after covering food and drink travel stories, that we now turn our attention to what inevitably comes next or later, namely, the subject of toilets in travel. After all, toilet experiences are an unfortunate but essential aspect of living that, like it or no, we all must come to terms with, whether on the home front or in strange exotic foreign lands. Being often beset with culture shock issues almost at every turn, especially in third-world countries, the necessity of dealing with toilets: where to find them, what to do about them, and how to use them even, elicits from many travelers nothing less than abject terror. Thus, for instance, when ‘nature calls,’ and you have barely a clue as to what to do about it or where to go . . . well, for many, it is in the least, horribly anxiety-provoking, and for others nothing less than horrifying and debilitating. For, in the best of all possible worlds—namely, in your home—where you have your bathroom all set up just as you like it, with an ample supply of paper toilet tissue rolls, a great functioning sink, fresh, safe water, nearby reading matter—in a word—you have conveniently all the first-world accouterments for dealing with the art and science of defecation fit for a king or queen, no less, at least in your own private castle, on your own private throne! But what if you find yourself in a third-world outback where you are bluntly faced with nothing but a bare hole in the ground and with NO paper of any kind anywhere in sight? And what if there are piles of human feces and hordes of flies at just about nearly every turn and in every corner? You have the stark realization that you are not in Kansas anymore. Are you of the proper mindset to deal with all of this? Be it as it may, there is, of course, much humor surrounding the subject of toilets in travel and considerable disgust as well. In this issue we pull no punches and deal with the subject of toilets overseas head on! (Pun intended!) They say, that in travel, people often ask the same basic sorts of questions over and over again when they meet for the first time. “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “Where are you going?” and on and on. It should not be at all surprising, therefore, that one of the typical morning topics of conversation among travelers in the third-world often is—however disgusting and revolting this may be—and maybe the number one or number two (pun intended) things travelers talk about together during their early mornings (I swear this is true!)—whether they've had a good dump or not. Or, “Did, you have diarrhea again?” Or, “Did you drink the water?” It is about all this crap, literally and figuratively; there is no escaping it. Call it all TMI (too much information), but it's about what starts you off on a good or a bad day! And it IS, after all, what you really do talk about! Some of the toilet stories I've gathered are truly hilarious, and some, sad to say, are not! It's a third-world out there, and if you are not prepared for it—BEWARE! The pages in this ebook will make you much more aware! But be forewarned: this ebook is not for the faint of heart. Oh yeah, you will laugh your “okole” (Hawaiian for ‘butt’) off, and, if you're not quite ready for it, it just might dissuade you from really, truly roughing it. However, discouraging you from third-world travel is not my purpose; rather, it is to inform you, enlighten you, and prepare you, somewhat, for the inevitable consequences of drinking the ice or water, eating unpeeled fruits or veggies, eating some street food, or crossing that stream with an open sore, any of which may have some unpleasant and unintended consequences in store for you! My advice to you is this: if you are squeamish about toilets in the third-world, perhaps you should think about making alternate travel plans! In any event, the travel tales of toilets, which follow, should help prepare you for such adventures! When nature calls you and you have NO-where to go or not much of an idea of what you can do about it, well, you will have earned yourself a place in these very pages!

From the editor of the award-winning and bestselling anthology Brown Sugarcomes a sultry and sophisticated new collection of erotic adventures from around the world More than an erotic travelogue, these edgy, atmospheric and sexually charged stories explore what new desires and personas are unlocked while one is away from home, each one more wildly exotic and adventurous than the next. Contemporary, enlightening, and deeply sensual, these stories take you to new lovers, trysts, and rendezvous around the globe, from the streets of Paris, wet with rain, to the sun-kissed beaches of Jamaica, from the hidden verandas of the Mediterranean to the forbidden banks of the Nile. Praise for Brown Sugar “Audaciously refreshing.”—Essence “As smart as it is sexy.”—Honey “Particularly intelligent, varied, and sexy.” —Publishers Weekly

The ‘Travel Tales Collection, Airplane Stories,’ No. 9, April 2015, is part of Michael Brein’s ‘Collections’ travel tales series and contains among the best travel stories from Michael’s huge collection of travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world. ‘Travel Tales Collections’ are groups of very interesting similar travel stories of a kind on a variety of very specific travel subjects, themes, or countries, such as close calls, great escapes, pickpocketing, scams, safety and security in travel, Paris, Morocco, Mexico, and so on. Eventually, several hundred ‘Collections’ on all sorts of specific travel subjects, themes, and countries will be available on all the major eReaders. An airline story is in the news today! And so it goes. There’s hardly a day now that an airline incident of some sort or another is not in the news. We’re taking a lot closer look at air travel these days than ever before. Therefore, as regards the psychology of travel, we should take a much closer look at what actually happens on airplanes. And so, in The Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series, that's exactly what I do. Air-travel-life stories include the full range of the human air travel experience, from pre-boarding incidents to arrivals; from the cabin to the loo; from the public and private lives of airline personnel as well as passengers—from the pilots to the stews to you—from that which makes us laugh to that which makes us cry, as well as, unfortunately, to that which creates abject fear and terror in the skies. Air travel is now more in the public eye than ever before. Thus, it is no wonder now that regarding the experience of traveling in the skies—like any other aspect of travel—we are not only more circumspect than ever before—we are, on closer view, now much more aware of how air travel is now seen to elicit the full range of the human experience. And in this one particular unique microcosmic window of scrutiny we see that air-travel is but one unique travel environment in a cornucopia of many others, and one that is neither unimportant, insignificant, indistinct, nor independent with respect to the overall experience of travel. Love it, hate it, or simply endure it, the lure of traveling in the skies, whether as just a means to a place or as an end in and of itself, the activity of flying, per se—airplane travel stories not only endure, they are on the increase. Whether you've survived a crash, been bombed by terrorists, been part and parcel of other scares and frights, been harassed upon departure or on arrival, or even laughed yourself stupid on a flight, your tales are memorable, and it is my personal mission that some of them are repeated here! Introduction to Travel Tales of Airplanes: Terror in the Skies! Part 1 Travel Tales of Airplanes: Terror in the Skies! is divided into two parts simply because there is so much material. Part 1 appears here in the current Travel Tales Collection issue No. 9 Apr 2015 and serves as a general introduction to this subject matter. Part 2 The unabridged, expanded forthcoming ebook Travel Tales of Airplanes: Terror in the Skies, part of The Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series, is a larger volume and includes both Parts 1 and 2. The travel stories in Part 1 consist mainly of the personal air travel tales of Michael Brein (me), the author, plus those of a few other contributors. The travel stories in Part 2 are, largely, the air travel stories of world travelers and adventurers whom I’ve encountered and interviewed all throughout my travels over the last four decades to 125 countries. Mostly, your own air travel will typically be exciting, interesting, and without incident, but odd things can and do happen to you at almost any turn along the way in your travels, and air travel is no exception. Unfortunately, the restricted, constricted, and microcosmic environment of the airplane lends itself sometimes to a variety of episodes illustrating the vagaries of the human temperament and behavior that rear their ugliness on airplanes from time to time, whereby air passengers and crew sometimes act and behave in ways that are often atypical and different from how we normally would behave at home. I hope only peaceful and laughable events happen to you in your air travels. I sincerely hope that the negative travel tales of airplanes do not happen to you in your own travels. If something interesting happens to you in your air travels, you deserve to also be in these pages! Got an interesting travel tale for The Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series? Please contact Michael Brein at [email protected]. Note: Some stories may be repeated in other eBooks in the series depending on the countries and subjects covered.

Michael Brein’s Travel Tales Collection, Turkey 1, includes Michael’s own personal travel tales of the sorts of things that can happen to you in your travels in Turkey. Of course, Michael’s Turkey stories are fairly unique to him, but somewhat similar things may happen to you. To Michael, Turkey has been a paradox: On the one hand, he found the Turkish people to be among the most hospitable and kindest people in the world; on the other hand — as in other parts of the world — Turkey has its dangerous and dark side, too. Michael found that most of his travel experiences in Turkey were great, but he quickly learned to keep a wary eye towards the potential negative, which was, fortunately for him, atypical and rare. There are almost always unsettling, rare surprises that do pop up now and again in your travels. Michael hopes they don't happen to you. But if they do, hopefully, you're all the wiser for reading about them in these pages. The Travel Tales Collection, Turkey 1, features stories of incredible hospitality, love, despair, ignominy, war, and more. Whether you are just an armchair adventurer or are actually planning a trip to Turkey, Travel Tales Collection, Turkey 1 will provide you with many interesting and useful insights about the land and people of Turkey. The Travel Tales Collection, Turkey 1, is part of Michael Brein’s Collections travel tales series and contains among the best travel stories from Michael’s huge collection of travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world. Travel Tales Collections are groups of very interesting similar travel stories of a kind on a variety of very specific travel subjects, themes, or countries, such as close calls, great escapes, pickpocketing, scams, safety and security in travel, Paris, Morocco, Mexico, and so on. Eventually, several hundred Collections on all sorts of specific travel subjects, themes, and countries will be available on all the major eReaders. Future Collections and other ebooks will also include additional travel stories on Turkey.

Book 1: Unravel the art of storytelling with “How to Tell a Story, and Other Essays by Mark Twain.” Twain's collection of essays provides keen insights into the craft of storytelling, sprinkled with his signature humor and wit. Explore the nuances of narrative technique as Twain shares his thoughts on the art of spinning a compelling tale. Book 2: Venture into the realms of mystery and the supernatural with “The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories by Mark Twain.” Twain's short stories delve into the mysterious and fantastical, showcasing his versatility as a storyteller. Each tale offers a glimpse into Twain's imagination, blending the mundane with the extraordinary. Book 3: Embark on a humorous and insightful journey through Europe and the Holy Land with “The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain.” Twain's travel narrative captures the humor and observations of a group of American tourists exploring foreign lands. Filled with satire and cultural commentary, this work reflects Twain's keen eye for the absurdities of travel and human nature.

Some of the world's greatest women writers contribute stories about food from across the globe.