Presents brief, quirky stories featuring African animals, including the story of a zebra that loses its stripes, and a cheetah that chases down and catches an impala in order to give it a Valentines Day kiss.

Welcome to an Africa where zebras lose their stripes, lions sleepwalk, and ostriches mingle like spaghetti. Unexpected Tails is more than a collection of clever surprises. It is a happy jumble of skewed perspectives that are guaranteed to have you smiling from page to page. After all, it's not every day that you get to see how an animal creatively (and dangerously) flosses his teeth.

Take a pinch of unease. Stir it into a large dollop of the macabre, add a generous helping of dark and stylish wit, garnish with the bizarre and what do you have? Roald Dahl at his brilliant, hypnotizing best, cooking up some of the most unusual stories ever told. Here in one volume are Tales of the Unexpected and More Tales of the Unexpected, making this a superb compendium of vengeance, surprise and dark delight.

Fifty years and sixty-eight countries! With plans to visit many more. Being a teacher, school holidays allow many adventures which I share with family and friends when I return to my home in Ballina. I think even some of my students have become enthused about travelling by looking at photos and hearing stories. I started writing some of my unexpected travel experiences in the back of a travel diary while on a long fl ight and as the memories fl owed so did the ink.