After a tongue-in-cheek beginning that will seem very familiar, especially to younger readers, this short story bounces like a mis-hit tennis ball from one episode to another as it follows the progress of would-be tennis champ Jez on the trail to Wimbledon.

Q. What do a talking mouse, an extraterrestrial dressed as Santa Claus, a burping cow and the imaginary friend of a goldfish all have in common? A. They're all in this book Talking Trousers is a story about a mouse who is given the speech gene in an experimental research laboratory. In Santa Comes Down The Wormhole, a space outlaw finds the Voyager space probe and decides to visit planet Earth disguised as Santa Claus. Also included: Fish Figments Bonaparte Breaks A Wing The Burping Cow Ivy and Holly

A volume of short stories with a wide range of themes. In Stirring The Grass, Rick Griffin's Muslim girlfriend, Sara Awad, is reported as missing. This opens up a whole can of worms involving international espionage with all its attendant deceit and duplicity, and propels those closest to her on a roller coaster of emotional turmoil... In Man Flu, something strange starts claiming the lives of birds in the West Hill dominion. There are no external wounds, no signs of struggle, no readily obvious cause of death. The inner circle, under the presidency of a charismatic robin, decides that humans...

If the Voyager 1 space probe was picked up in outer space by extraterrestrials, what would happen? Here's your opportunity to find out. Voyager 1 was launched by NASA in 1977 to study the outer solar system and, ultimately, interstellar space. It carried a gold-plated audio-visual disc in the event that it might be found by intelligent life-forms from other planetary systems. It was discovered by goopmutt bandits who towed it through interstellar space at superluminal speed. In an effort to conceal their crime, they manipulated the data on the craft's digital tape recorder and left it in the...