LONELY Planet, purveyor of some of the most well-thumbed bibles for aspiring globetrotters, has produced a book that will strike a chord with adventurers prone to getting themselves into unexpected scrapes.
Next to the guidebooks, this is arguably the second-most useful companion to pack for those long journeys - if only to give hope to those situations that seem all but hopeless.
Many people can relate in tortuous detail their collisions with fate - not all can make them entertaining and informative.
Predictably, some of the 20 stories whose locations stretch from the Canadian Arctic to the Cook Islands and are crammed into 250 pages, convey the sheer panic of their authors' plight while a few - like tedious jokes - get lost in the telling.
Others play on the fear of being in a life-threatening situation, though they never are.
All have happy endings - presumably, if only because any other outcome would have resulted in no story being told - and many contain useful nuggets on things to pack (such as chilli sauce to liven up Mongolia's stultifyingly boring staple food - mutton).