An entertaining look at outrageous fortune, this off-the-wall collection features tales of against-all-odds survivors, ludicrous luck, and death-defying near misses. Culled from newspaper reports around the globe, these brief accounts cover everything from the miraculous to the ridiculous. You'll read about:

* The New Jersey man who survived a near-fatal mugging when the bullet to his chest ricocheted off his credit card-filled wallet. * The woman who ate for free in an Italian restaurant after a small stone from her dinner got wedged in her tooth-only to discover the next day that the stone was an uncut diamond worth thousands of dollars. * The two morgue attendants playing chess on the night shift who got the shock of their lives when one of the "corpses" sat up and moved one of the chess pieces. * The dumbstruck man confronting an oncoming train who promptly fainted and fell between the tracks-where the train passed over him without incident.

Available as hardcover only 124 pages