Waris Dirie ran away from her oppressive life in the African desert when she was barely in her teens, illiterate and impoverished, with nothing to her name but a tattered shawl. She traveled alone across the dangerous Somali desert to Mogadishu--the first leg of a remarkable journey that would take her to London, where she worked as a house servant; then to nearly every corner of the globe as an internationally renowned fashion model; and ultimately to New York City, where she became a human rights ambassador for the U.N. Desert Flower is her extraordinary story.

What do scientists make of coincidences? I'm sure most have some clever hypothesis to explain them away as random probabilities, but I prefer the theory of Deepak Chopra in Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: The Essence of Harnessing the Power of Coincidence. Here he says, "When you live your life with an appreciation of coincidences and their meanings, you connect with the underlying field of infinite possibilities. This is when the magic begins."

"Georg Aeberhard's individual coincidences are lined up in a chronological order but you may pick every one by itself. The stories reach...