Richard Allen Anderson has been counted as a member of the human race for eighty-seven years. Richard developed a love of literature during his primary education in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin public school system. Authors like Hawthorne, O'Henry, Dickens, Poe, Shakespeare and Sophocles were among his first tutors. Yet, his graduate and post-graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Penn State majored in math and science, enabling a working career of over 30 years in industrial research and development. Following retirement he took up writing fiction, nonfiction and poetry for his own amusement, winning prizes in each. He has had three volumes of poetry and one illustrated children’s book published to date. These short stories are his first published collection of fiction. In it you will find tales of life and death, love and hate, gods and demons, desperation and hope, justice and vengeance, mystery, history, humor and adventure-imaginative fabrications, Taradiddle and Cookie Crumbs.