S.R. Crockett wrote some twenty-odd novels that centered in and around the Scottish country that he loved. He wrote about that land so clearly, so beautifully, and so well that at moments it almost seems alive to us as we read his telling of it.

In "The Story of Seven Dead Men," six men play a little joke on a little boy. They had found a dead man in the ocean and told the boy that the man was only sleeping -- a joke the little boy never quite understood because the joke was ultimately played on the six fishermen. There are several more stories within these pages, all fascinating and entertaining.