This book of short stories was written with three primary objectives in mind. The first was to create a series of meaningful short stories that would instructively comment on real life and humanity - embracing the positive, predictable aspects as well as those that tend to be challenging and unforeseen. Teens as well as young adults tend to have acute interests in realistic fiction that teaches necessary lessons in and about life. The second was to produce teacher-friendly literature, designed to be taught and discussed in typical classrooms. In such classrooms, it would illustrate specific, teachable, and salient literary devices, integral components of the art and science of writing. Finally, it was written to be read and enjoyed by two distinct target audiences: high school age students / young adults and middle grades students. This text offers three other unique features. The first is that many of the stories' main characters are maintained throughout the series of stories. Thus, a study of character traits and development need not stop at the end of a given story as it would with traditional short stories, but can be continued through other stories where diverse situations and environments exist. Much like different television episodes, these stories reveal known characters in unique circumstances. This presents the readers with rare opportunities to observe the ebb and flow of the personality development process, as well as the development and continuity of relationships. This lends a unique dynamic to the insights that readers and studiers would gain during their normal processes of literary analysis or classroom learning. The second unique feature is seen in the adapted versions. All of these stories are fully accessible to younger readers, even though the adaptations do not omit the challenging ideas and concepts as traditional adaptations might. The complex ideas and concepts have been fully maintained; they've simply been expressed in a manner that causes them to be graspable by middle level readers. This makes it possible for both groups of readers to do the same post-reading comprehension / discussion exercises. Third, each story has numbered sections, allowing easy pre-reading assignments for student practice. Of course, there is a teacher aid section, featuring vocabulary aids as well as comprehension / discussion sections with answer keys accompanying. All review exercises are correlated with specific benchmarks of the Florida Sunshine State Standards, which standards typify national student achievement standards.