The Scene Menagerie contains an assortment of fiction scenes and episodes from the novels and short stories of one author, John R. Downes, plus a few excerpts from his nonfictions thrown into the mix. What a range of subjects War, the Great Depression, Custer's Last Stand, FBI, orphans, espionage, US history, gunfighters, bank robbers, Adbiz, growing up, mass merchandising, bad guys, dreams, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, code breaking, salesmanship, Hollywood, and more. Many novels contain scenes and episodes that can stand on their own as vignettes, short stories, and worthwhile reads. Regardless of whether the prolific authors are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Elmore Leonard, John Grisham, John Steinbeck, and hundreds of others, a reader can cull through their collection of tales and discover a treasure trove of candidate excerpts. Why not a selection of scenes and episodes from one author's repertoire of published fiction? The Scene Menagerie answers that question.