Book excerpt: If you want to be entertained and yet stretched, then Twisted Journeys is the book for you. Albert Trajstman has again shown his mastery of the novella in this new collection of three new works. Diverse and ambitious, the stories take us to faraway places and strange situations. Each novella twists and turns in unexpected directions, changes shape and weaves strands together. Journeys of a Prodigal Son is a romp set in the sixteenth century, travelling with the story's insensitive protagonist on a journey through Renaissance Italy. He is shipwrecked and meets a Venetian merchant and his family, a duchessa, a Jewish librarian at the University of Bologna and a wise sophisticated Turk. Liberally laced with sexual adventures, the story takes us to exotic settings and unexpected endings. Journey to Find out What Happened concerns a scam perpetrated against the US army in post-war Paris. The cast includes a world-weary journalist, a shady lawyer, an enigmatic US soldier and a number of bit players. Follow the journalist as he tries to find out what really happened. It's a mystery in the best tradition of Graham Greene's The Third Man. Finally, My Journey with the Nixons and Others is a bitter-sweet story set in Melbourne from the 1960s to the present, a story of growing up in the company of a bizarre family called the Nixons. Sad and humorous in turns, it is told in an episodic fashion. Enjoy a master storyteller who takes you to unexpected places!