This remarkable volume of stories from the author of Hostage to Fortune has been produced over a lifetime of writing. Tales Before Midnight explores a wide range of human emotion and events, from a city terrorized by a wild beast to the amusing spectacle of a gang of tree climbers just trying to stay out of trouble. There's the wealthy merchant and his teen-age bride, the Malagasy totocaf in Beethoven's Vienna and the mysterious stowaway who witnesses the guilty deeds of his fellow voyagers - or does he? A young and imaginative writer gets an early lesson in prejudice and censorship. A columnist tries to blackmail a crusading senator, a doctor once convicted of euthanasia is asked years later to commit the same act again, and a forgotten French town is liberated by a deserter and experiences close calls in a satirical retrospective of Cold War Europe. Tales Before Midnight rewrites the old adage that "truth is stranger than fiction". Certainly in these stories, fiction is often truer than truth. Read Less