Award-winning author Amra Pajali¿ showcases her gritty, poignant and sometimes bruising voice in this eclectic short story book of previously published and prize-winning stories. Featuring powerful and moving stories of family dissolution, deprivation of war, tenderness of family and the heart-rending experiences of mental illness. As well as suspenseful new thriller stories with a twist of vindictiveness and retribution, and love stories that make the heart sing, Pajali¿ will delight and entertain. The Cuckoo's Song-Francesca is ten when a gypsy fortune-teller told her the day and the hour of her death and she has been waiting since. Fragments-Seka and her brother forage for books in a bombed-out school in Srebrenica during the Balkan war. Friends Forever-Two lifelong friends share a room at a nursing home, as well as a secret or two. School of Hardknocks-Amina is a new high school student after migrating from Bosnia and struggles to acclimate to the Aussie way of life. Woman on Fire-A young girl lives with her mother's boyfriend when her mentally ill mother is admitted into hospital.