Breaking and Entering is a debut collection of thirteen short stories about relatively ordinary people who experience beauty and tragedy in their lives when they least expect it. Each story in the collection explores a facet of what happens when the barriers or bonds between people break down. These breakdowns can be caused by a chance encounter, a long forgotten choice or a simple mistake. Breaking and Entering is also the title of the first story in the collection. It is about a man who has just helped his beloved terminally ill wife die, when an odd pair of burglars break into his house and give him a reason to live. Fallout Shelter, another story in the collection, was initially published in Short Story America's inaugural anthology, available at www.shortstoryamerica.com. "I write to understand how people become who they are. It is only though fiction that we can look directly at the universal truths that bind us without being blinded." Laura Semonche Jones