Unlucky Stiffs: New Tales of the Weirdly Departed

Nothing makes you want to embrace the quiet loveliness of life's ordinary moments more than the prospect of a spectacularly dumb death. Consider the fates of these unwitting headline-makers:

• Betty Stobbs, an elderly shepherdess who rode her motorbike up the hill to feed her charges, was run off the road and into a ravine by her own stampeding herd of hungry sheep.
• Cornell University senior Terrence Quinn got drunk one night and climbed into the chimney of the Sigma Alpha Mu frat house. He was discovered when his shoes and pants dropped into the fireplace after someone opened the flue.  He had been dead for at least three days.
• Boro Mandic not only survived a horrific car crash, but walked away without a scratch. Doctors declared it a miracle. On the walk home from the hospital, he was run over by a train.

In the tradition of Thinning the Herd: Tales of the Weirdly Departed, Ceilán's latest collection of true stories offers another shamelessly irreverent romp through the unenviable final adventures of some of the world's unluckiest stiffs.