Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn unto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth. And in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of Ielool, the month of reaping, he climbed the hill without the city walls and looked seaward, and he beheld his ship coming with the mist. Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over...

In this prequel to Alice in Wonderland, Cath would rather open a bakery and marry for love than accept a proposal from the King of Hearts, especially after meeting the handsome and mysterious court jester.

The three pigs escape the wolf by going into another world where they meet the cat and the fiddle, the cow that jumped over the moon, and a dragon.

"In 1984, the late great Edward Abbey compiled this reader, endeavoring, as he says in his preface, 'to present what I think is both the best and most representative of my writing - so far.' Two decades later, it remains the only major collection of his work chosen by Abbey himself, a feast of fiction and prose . . ."