The Highway War
Maj. Seth Folsom, USMC
Potomac Books, Inc.
22841 Quicksilver Drive, Dulles, VA 20166-2012
1574889885 $29.95 www.potomacbooksinc.com 1-800-775-2518
Andrew Lubin, Reviewer
www.andrewlubin.com
Years ago Marine artist Col Charles Waterhouse drew a cartoon of a grizzled Marine Gunny, complete with cigar, pulling on a Santa outfit as he prepares to entertain young children, as compared to his normal demeanor of an intimidating Gunny. Maj Seth Folsom's book details a similar transformation, as he grows from a nervous young officer facing his first combat to that of a skilled and articulate officer and husband.
A Captain at the time, Folsom is a blunt and honest writer who discusses his fears and concerns of what he is about to encounter in Iraq. The likely-hood is that many Marines and soldiers, both officers and enlisted, can identify with his worry of how he will fare in his first combat: Can he hack it? How well will he perform? Will he make any mistakes that might cost the lives of his Marines? The difference between them and Folsom is his frankness in discussing these concerns.
Folsom uses the story of his role as company commander to tell the story of Delta Company, 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion as they participated in the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. From watching and waiting as his fellow Marines fought at An-Nasiriyah, to the fighting on the way to Baghdad and beyond, Folsom pulls no punches and spares no feelings in his descriptions of leading 130 Marines into combat. The invasion in March 2003 was the beginning of an unusual war against a non-traditional enemy, and Folsom has to find his balance as an officer when dealing with both his superiors and the Marines under him while learning how to lead Marines in combat. Sand, stink, rain, lack of sanitation, fatigue, grime, and nerves are just some of issues with which he dealt even before he and his men even encountered the enemy. Folsom covers the military actions from 21 March 2003 through the April 2003 capture of Baghdad, and he accurately recounts the stress, excitement, and confusion of those historic days.
With the book written from the notes and recollection of his wartime journal, this is a fascinating memoir revealing are his feelings as he dealt with his Marines, and how he matured as an officer and as a human being. Many readers, especially his fellow officers will find much to critique in his rough and abrasive leadership style, and his dislike of the media is at odds with Marine Corps policy. But it is Folsom's same bluntness that lets him write so revealingly – and perhaps these same readers can use his vignettes as an 'after-action report' in order to guide themselves in similar circumstances.
In perhaps a reflection of the asymmetrical nature of this war, Folsom recounts participating in briefings with the generals and colonels leading the invasion, and later singing with his men as they blast rock & roll music at rock concert levels. Perhaps one unexpected bonus of war in the wired age is that we readers can share in our warrior's thoughts and experiences while they are still fresh, and as such, Maj Folsom's book is both an exciting read and highly recommended.
Of Time and Place: A Farm in Wisconsin.
Richard Quinney
Borderland Books
608 Frederick Circle, Madison WI 53711
9780976878124 $28.00 Borderlandlandbooks.net 608-232-0135
Paul Buhle
Reviewer
This is a very special volume of family farm and small town, Midwestern memories with a far wider philosophical scope. Quinney is a retired sociologist of note, a considerable influence upon the study of criminology among a generation of scholars. He came back home in retirement, to the college town closest to the family farm and one-room schoolhouse sites of yore (the farm is still in business, though turned over largely to conservation purposes). There, tucked away in the farmhouse, were photos going back generations, and living memories that could be tracked down through oral history. Quinney is reconstructing a world that seems to have vanished with the days before pesticides.
So this is four generations, seen in words and in photographic images actually improved through software and probably clearer than in the tattered family albums. One side, the most remembered of the two came from famine-stricken Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, worked their way to the Midwest and bought the farm three years after the US Civil War ended. The other side came from North Devon, Britain, and included a Revolutionary War veteran. The historic moment of the farm purchase was a tumultuous time of Radical Reconstruction in the South and of struggles for women's rights and labor rights in the North, but these great events had little apparent effect upon the farming life. Except, of course, that the visions of equality summoned up in the titanic battles counted less on the ground of the emerging Gilded Age than the sudden spurt of wealth among the already wealthy. While some family members worked the farm in those hungry, depressed 1870s and after, others found their way, intermittently, into the resorts and cities and nearer roadside taverns, working the various trades. It was an Irish way, and they were far from alone in the shuttle from countryside to city life and back.
Much of this is intimate, and includes Quinney's own discovery of crucial details. One great aunt leaves the farm to work for the railroad, then in a packing house, marries and has eight children, divorces, and lives alone, supporting herself by washing and ironing. Her sister, Quinney's grandmother, is dead at 35, from tuberculosis or s they called it, "consumption." In the cities it was known as the "Factory Disease," because the cramped conditions and poverty of the immigrant working class made them vulnerable; but tuberculosis swept the countryside as well, especially visiting itself upon the poor.
Life grows somewhat more prosperous in the twentieth century. Farm folk even take vacations to far places, bringing back mementoes of a lifetime less exotic, more predictable. In Quinney's farm family, unlike mine, a ten year old girl could own a camera and begin a lifetime of amateur documentation, making Of Time and Place almost a history of the popular art form, in the experience of one extended family.
For children growing up in the 1930s-40s, the horses to ride and the omnipresence of cowboy popular culture nurtured the imagined exoticism of the Wild West, in reality generations gone already, exciting adventures with men in black and white hats (especially the Lone Ranger, albeit with no hat at all, on the radio and in comic books). The Quinney boys of this generation had a mother who was a schoolteacher until forced out, by law, with her marriage. She made them her star pupils, naturally, and the inevitable message, intended or not, was to get up and out: the leave the farm life behind.
We never, of course, leave anything behind. As an oral historian knows, memories of childhood and adolescence grow ever-stronger with the passing of middle age into older age. Hardly anyone will look as carefully and thoughtfully as Richard Quinney does at the lives of the ordinary farm folk whose biographies rarely if ever reach the pages of the New York Times. But these are lives documented and ruminated. It makes for a valuable study in passages of modern culture.
War Memorials
Clint McCown
Graywolf Press
2402 University Avenue, Suite 203, Saint Paul, MN, 55114
1555973124 $23.95
Desiree Parker
Reviewer
War Memorials by Clint McCown brings to the forefront what it means to be a contemporary southern writer: revealing the poignancy of rural southern life in America with subtlety and heart. McCown adds another trademark dimension, one that makes all his books even more appealing, and that is a gentle humor that only adds to the readers' empathy for his quirky, flawed characters.
The novel follows Nolan Vann, a thirty-three-year-old man whose life is falling into shambles as quickly as his new living room did when a tree fell on it during a storm. His wife of more than a decade, Laney, is having an affair with a man and is pregnant with her lover's child, he has lost his job as an insurance salesman for his father's company for insurance fraud, and for much of the novel he is working as a part-time repo man with his friend, Dell.
Nolan's despair is mirrored by the state of the town itself and its inhabitants: the local bridge that is famous for not being destroyed during a war is barely holding together, the local hardware store owner is giving up his business to sell marbles, the local diner where all the workingmen gather for a too-greasy breakfast is slowly deteriorating, and even the fair that brings all the townsfolk together has rides that are held together with rusty screws and a prayer. Yet there is hope to be found, too, in the hearts of the characters as they find a way to muddle through their bleak surroundings. One of Nolan's repo victims has lost all her possessions, yet wants to open a zoo, and though one character is attacked by a snake and another is shot by an arrow, they persevere, they go to work and limp along because that is all that they know to do, and this is the key to the poignancy evoked by the novel. In Nolan's world, surviving is heroic, and those that give up – his mother, his wife's lover – these are the true losers, not those that have no jobs and no possessions.
The unifying theme and title of the book, war memorials, draws the reader's attention to the irony of celebrating wars and death in this town, a place where plaques and signs celebrate the history of battles while the inhabitants struggle to survive without honorable mention, where people discuss bygone days and soldiers who have died as though they were more real than the man sitting across the counter.
Throughout the novel, McCown embellishes the quirky escapades of Nolan and his buddies with little insights that make the story even richer: "I admired that about cats: they never looked guilty, no matter what they'd done. Unlike dogs. Dogs understood the difference between good and evil. Or at least they understood what it meant to break a commandment – and they'd hang their heads in shame when they got caught… I figured we all started out like cats, but then the world put us on a leash and a collar and turned us into dogs." It's gems like these that make Nolan a rich character and make McCown a modern southern author that deserves attention.
The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague
Y. Yudl Rosenberg, edited and translated by Curt Leviant
Yale University Press
PO Box 209040, New Haven, CT 06520-9040
9780300122046 $25.00 www.yalebooks.com 1-800-987-7323
Fred Reiss
Reviewer
A golem is a Jewish robot. Unlike today's robots, which are fabricated from some amalgam of metallic alloys and digitally controlled, a golem is made from the clay of the earth and brought to life through Jewish magic. The idea of inanimate objects becoming animate dates back to the time of the Greeks and the story of Pygmalion and his statue of Galatea. The Talmud, the written compilation of the Jewish oral traditions, is the source of the word golem as an automaton, or soulless being. The Talmud tells the story that Rava created a golem using his knowledge from a very early kabbalistic book, Sepher Yetzira, the Book of Formation. He sent the golem to Rav Zeria. After speaking to the golem and getting no reply, Rev Zeria realized that the being was a golem and ordered it to return to the dust. Golems, according to tradition, are speechless because speech comes from the rational soul, which only God can give.
A golem is incapable of disobeying its creator, but in one story, a sixteenth century rabbi, Eliyahu of Chelm, created a golem that grew bigger and bigger until the rabbi was unable to kill it without deception. Upon its death, the golem fell over the rabbi and crushed him to death. Additionally, there are those who believe that the great Middle Ages' Jewish mystical poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol created a female golem to serve as a housemaid.
The first story about a golem printed in the popular press appeared in 1847, in a book of stories by Wolf Pascheles of Prague. Since then, stories about golems have appeared in both print and in the movies many times beginning in the twentieth century. Stories appeared in German and Yiddish through the teens and twenties, and in German and French films in twenties and thirties. In the 1980s, both Elie Wiesel and Isaac B. Singer wrote children's books about a golem. The golem even made it to television by appearing in a 1997 X-files episode. In these and in many other stories and movies, authors and screenwriters portrayed the golem like Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, a monster and an evil killing machine.
The original story about Rabbi Judah Loew (1525-1609), known as the Maharal of Prague, and his golem appeared in 1909 by the Polish orthodox rabbi and kabbalist, Y. Yudl Rosenberg. Because the rabbis at that time considered any writing unrelated to Talmudic and other erudite learning frivolous, Rosenberg successfully argued that the books' author was actually the Maharal's son-in-law, Rabbi Isaac Katz, and that he obtained the book at great expense. These stories became so popular over the years that fact and legend grow to be indistinguishable. Yet, Rosenberg was all but forgotten. Curt Leviant does us an immense service by providing the English-language reader with a wonderful first-ever translation of Rosenberg's The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague from the original Hebrew and bringing Rosenberg's name to the forefront.
Judah Loew ben Bezalel, an important religious figure in Prague, was well-known for his scholarship in the Talmud and knowledge of the Jewish mystical arts. He eventually became the Chief Rabbi of Poland, and the people lovingly called him the Maharal, a Hebrew acronym for "Our Teacher, Rabbi Loew." The Polish government held him in high esteem, and he even met with Emperor Rudolf II on more than one occasion.
Blood libels, an insidious form of anti-Semitism, are accusations by Christians that Jews kill Christian children (ritual murder) for the purpose of draining their blood to make matzos for Passover. Blood libels are an urban legend first documented in Germany in 1475. Although the extent to which blood libels were a problem during the Maharal's leadership is open to question, Rosenberg has the Maharal create a golem, a superman, through Jewish mysticism to assist him bring-to-justice those who falsely accuse Jews of this crime. It should be noted that blood libels were a growing problem in Eastern Europe during Rosenberg's formative years, and perhaps his book was his plea for divine intervention.
The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague, which covers the exploits of the Rabbi and his golem from 1580-1590, is more than a set of stories. Rosenberg gives us glimpses of the dependence of the Jewish people on their God; and allows us to observe the complex set of beliefs held by the Maharal's archenemy, the priest, Thaddeus, who constantly attempts, and in a few cases succeeds, in converting young Jewish girls to Christianity. He also supports those who accuse Jews of blood libel. In addition, Rosenberg's stories allow us to compare the actions of Thaddeus with the more liberal, but unnamed, cardinal.
Through these stories, readers also come to appreciate some of the sixteenth century's Jewish rituals of the Sabbath, Passover, and Purim; and learn how the Polish government and court system operate and interact with Jews. Most important of all, Rosenberg takes us back to the golem's Talmudic roots where the golem is not a Frankenstein-like monster, but rather a soulless being that struggles to comprehend the world and abide by its master's directives to the extent that it is able to understand them. The Maharal's golem, like all golems, has neither feelings, nor desires, nor wants. The golem is a silent servant. Nonetheless, one cannot help but feel a bit of sorrow when the work of the golem is through and the Maharal ends its existence through another kabbalistic ceremony. The stories in The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague are adult Jewish folklore at its best.
If the Creek Don't Rise
Rita Williams
Harcourt Inc.
525 B Street, Suite 1900, San Diego, CA 92101
9780151011544 $23.00 www.HarcourtBooks.com 619-231-6616
Judy Jacobs
Reviewer
I picked up this book to read based solely on the title. I expected to read a frontier type story with all sorts of sage advice and comments about how mean people can be to one another. What I found was a moving, poignant account of a sensitive, insightful young girl growing up with an aunt who had a limited capacity for love.
Rita Williams memoir is of the only black girl in 200 miles, living in the Colorado Rockies in the 1950's and 1960's. Without an ounce of self pity and with vivid word pictures she relates the story of her life from her earliest recollections through her teen years. With unvarnished clarity she tells us about her unstable existence, her attempted suicide, a date rape and an unwanted pregnancy. The total difference in the personalities of the two main characters is what sets this book apart from others of its kind. Rita is a normal, loveable, questioning, perceptive and observant child who has nowhere and nothing to channel her emotions into. Her aunt is a harsh domineering opinionated woman who looms over all Rita does like a dark cloud that sucks all the self confidence, happiness and creativity out of her. The fact that Rita never gave up struggling with this tyranny speaks volumes about her tenacity.
Rita's story is proof that perseverance and dogged determination can allow one to rise above the circumstances life has plunged them into. This was riveting reading.
The First Thirty
Jillip Naysinthe Paxson
IdeaList Enterprises Inc.
PO Box 10-1187, Chicago, IL 60610
0975879405 $10
Melvyn Manapsal
Reviewer
An inspiring story about a boy who always followed his dreams despite constant criticism, doubt, and obstacles, The First Thirty by Jilip Naysinthe Paxson recounts the first thirty years of Greg Forbes Siegman's life, his efforts to make a difference, and the first thirty lessons he learned along the way.
The book starts out with Greg's late arrival for his first meeting with author Paxson. Once he arrives, the two men delve into the story of Greg's life.
The First Thirty details all of Greg's ups and downs, and there are many. Amid the description of his many successes, the inclusion of Greg's setbacks and losses (such as the one involving his loyal childhood dog, Tug) in the book brings the reader to the refreshing and inspiring realization that Greg is a normal human being, with pain, regret, anger, and hardships to overcome like everyone else.
Despite his many hang-ups, Greg's optimistic attitude shines throughout the book. Greg responded to the social problems he saw in ways that helped people. What was especially touching was when one of the kids Greg had mentored earlier became a mentor himself, showing how Greg's efforts to help one student became something positive for many.
Greg's story also offers the thirty lessons that he had learned before turning thirty to the readers. These words of wisdom are both practical and symbolic, offering insight and advice on topics such as perseverance, interacting with others, and goal-setting. Paxson's interweaving of the lessons throughout the book reveal how Greg learned each lesson after a particular event, and so the lessons and the events of Greg's life create a journey for the readers as well.
The inspirational story of The First Thirty is a mix of the films Old Yeller (Robert Stevenson, 1957) and Big Fish (Tim Burton, 2003), as Greg experienced the real-life loss of his dog, Grandma, and others he was close to, and at the same time held a steadfast belief in his exceptional imagination.
The First Thirty is a great story, both entertaining and educational, and readers will appreciate its brevity and its simple clarity. It is a pleasant surprise to come to the end of the book and recognize that Paxson formats the book so that it ends with the same meeting with which the book started. It is a perfect end to a book in which many things come full circle. The second time around, there is one significant difference: by now, the reader understands exactly why Greg was late to the meeting and everything that happened along the way – a reminder that there is more to life than meets the eye.
A story relevant to students in middle school to college, teachers, parents, executives, and senior citizens, this 96 page treasure full of valuable life lessons and experiences will benefit anyone who reads it.
Mysteries of the Middle Ages
Thomas Cahill
Nan A. Talese (an imprint of Doubleday)
1745 Broadway, 22nd floor, New York, NY 10019
9780385495554 $32.50 www.nantalese.com 212-782-8918
Rose Rankin
Reviewer
Writing a series named "The Hinges of History" demonstrates an author's bold intentions: namely, to publish a sweeping narrative encompassing the turning points of mankind's story. Mysteries of the Middle Ages, the fifth book in the Hinges of History series by Thomas Cahill, shows just how tantalizing, and nearly impossible, it is for historians to retell "the great central Synthesis of history," as twentieth-century author G.K. Chesterton called it. While attempting to explain the society of the High Middle Ages, Cahill sometimes loses focus among the numerous threads that constituted the tapestry of medieval culture. But this book's detailed narratives and deft storytelling compensate for its occasional lack of coherence.
After presenting the political, intellectual and religious foundations of medieval Europe, Cahill discusses various facets of European society between, roughly, the 12th and the 14th centuries. Monasticism, dynastic politics, science and art show the progression of society from late antiquity to the eve of the Renaissance in the 15th century.
Cahill establishes his pattern quickly: an in-depth chronicle of one individual is placed within a larger context. First, the life of 12th-century-abbess Hildegard demonstrates the practice of monastic cloistering. In chapter two, Cahill relates Eleanor of Aquitaine's story to explain the secular side of courtly love. These vivid biographies, as well as an oddly-placed one of St. Francis of Assisi in the courtly love chapter, are surrounded by references to larger ideas but never fully anchored in them. For example, Hildegard's monastic experience and the adoration of the Virgin Mary are placed side-by-side as connected phenomena. But the popularity of the Virgin doesn't explain Hildegard's exceptional impact on the intellectual and religious establishments of her day because most nuns never reached her status. Nor are the stories of Eleanor and St. Francis coherently linked by the simplistic summary, "And that is how romance became prayer." Despite this analytical weakness, however, Cahill's depth of detail and evocative language keep the biographies rich and engaging.
The interplay between detailed biography and broad-based themes becomes smoother as the book progresses. The growth of universities and the reliance on human reason follow a brief interlude about the rise of Islam. The third chapter features Abelard and Heloise's dramatic love story, and thoughtful philosophical discussions enter as well. Cahill shows how Abelard's abrasive demeanor prevented widespread acceptance of his ideas about the worthiness of reason. This discussion leads seamlessly into one of St. Thomas Aquinas, who succeeded in popularizing the logic of Aristotle because he reconciled it with Christianity.
In the fourth chapter, the analysis of medieval science (including things now considered pseudo-science such as alchemy and astrology) skillfully presents the medieval European worldview. Artistic achievements dominate the final chapters. Giotto's frescoes and Dante's poetry display changes in artistic interpretation and literature. These chapters showcase Cahill's impressive knowledge of Italian art history and the complexity of medieval Florentine society.
But the reader is left waiting for a conclusion that does not come. The final chapter and Postlude are unfortunately bogged down in the author's disputations on the present state of the Catholic Church and the West's current political situation. His opinions are sensible and well informed, but they do nothing to tie his many themes together.
This book's strength is its biographical sections, which give readers vivid looks into fascinating individuals and episodes from medieval Europe. It is indeed disappointing that Cahill's analyses don't always succeed at connecting his ideas, but his vibrant storytelling brings to life figures shrouded by the centuries between us and them. One can surmise from his frequent references to Chesterton's idea of the "great central Synthesis of history" that he is trying to create just that. But in this volume of the series, his analyses don't provide a cohesive explanation of the synthesis, possibly because it doesn't exist or can't be constructed. Although this "Hinge of History" may not always function smoothly, it will, however, connect the reader to enlightening people and places.
The Closers
Michael Connelly
Little, Brown and Company
c/o Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
0316734942 $26.95 www.hbgusa.com 1-800-759-0190
Rocky Reichman, Reviewer
www.LiteraryMagic.com
He's back.
Detective Harry Bosch comes out of retirement—to finish his life mission in law enforcement. Harry and his partner, Kiz Rider, make a perfect match for a crime novel. And Connelly is able to show that, as his characters delve into their case and try to solve it.
And the case they're assigned? If you think it has to deal with a murder, then you've guessed right. Only Connelly has added a twist here, to make things harder for his protagonist but more mysterious for his readers. That twist is time. Harry Bosch returns to the Los Angeles Police Department and is assigned to work on Cold Cases, or Open-Unsolved cases as Bosch and the rest of the detectives prefer. (Have your way, Detective Harry Potter—I mean Harry Bosch; I'm sticking with Cold Cases.)
The case is about a young teenage girl who was murdered seventeen years before Harry and Kiz Rider re-open the investigation. Throughout the story, Harry is confronted with trials from antagonists and family members of the deceased girl. Potential suspects are plentiful, but are almost impossible to find. And on top of all this, Harry has to deal with antagonistic co-workers.
The case sounds exciting, but the way Connelly delivers it slows everything down, and takes away a lot of the story's energy. The entire buildup of the plot is slow as well, leading readers wondering "and…what's your point, Doc?" It creates anticlimactic feelings.
Connelly's characters speak crisply. His own words come smoothly. He delivers information to his readers in a very clear way. Strong characters populate this book. And in the end, it turns out to be a very good mystery. If you become impatient while reading this book, you know what to do. Close it.
SunShines: The Astrology of Being Happy
Michael Lutin
Fireside
Rockefeller Center, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
978074327726 6 $AU 29.95 www.simonsays.com
Rose Glavas, Reviewer
www.astrologyrealm.com
Don't let the cover fool you! This book, on first glance, looks like it might be a bit of a light-hearted read, and that you could flip through in half an hour or so. I got hooked, not only by the down-to-earth language and style the material was presented in, but at the same time, the ease in which Lutin presents emotionally complex information.
Michael Lutin's background as a writer for 'Vanity Fair', and the author of many astrology books shows in the skillful way he presents the information in 'SunShines'. The author is the current President and Certified member of the National Council for Geocosmic Research, New York Chapter, member of the San Diego Astrology Society, ISAR, AFAN and of the International Society for Communicative Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Sounds like a busy man!
Being happy sounds simple enough, but as most of us know life can get pretty complex at times making it difficult to concentrate or achieve some of the simplest pleasures in life. 'SunShines' brings the focus back in on what is actually important to achieve happiness using a fairly simple, but powerful astrological technique. For those of you with as understanding of astrology, Lutin uses the Nodes as the basis for his book.
The book is broken up into two parts: part one looks at the individual sun signs which are further broken down into subsections according to the year you were born (this will let you know which sections to look at in part two). Part two looks at the deeper issues that may need attention in order for you to understand the astrology of being happy. For example, you can find money, love, recognition and escape as part of the themes examined here. There is also an Appendix explaining the astrology in more detail behind the book for those, like me, who are astrologers.
I must say that I am very impressed with the quality and content of this title, as it delivered much more than I expected: although it was very easy and fun to read, it was also deep in the information that was presented.
In summary, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in self-improvement or in learning about themselves more – as well as those that are trying to find more happiness in their life! This is an excellent, easy to understand title. You don't need any astrological knowledge at all except to know the date of your birth – although people with a background in this subject will also get a lot of information out of it.
Mockingbird Come Home
Stephen B. Wiley
Oasis Publishers
PO Box 626, Largo, Florida
9780976625117, $14.95
Dr. Tami Brady
Reviewer
Yesterday afternoon, I sat in my backyard and read this collection of poems. It was a beautiful summer day. Perhaps it was the perfect day for contemplation. Mockingbird Come Home brought me back to a million memories that I had forgotten and details of the magic of everyday life that normally seem to get lost in the chaos of my regular life.
Stephen B. Wiley has a gift for seeing the beauty in everyday life and seemingly normal things. Some of his pieces reflect images of the past. After reading a number of these poems, I found my reminiscing and remembering similar times in my own life.
Other works in this book looks to the present: situations, people, and thoughts. I often found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with the author's way of thinking or resonating with the feelings in his works. I think that often we are so busy that we forget about the beauty and wonderment in our own experiences and in our daily life.
Afrika's Bookshelf
Love Reparations
Jackie Young
1st Stream Publishing
9780978760205 $11.95 www.oncewritten.com www.Jackieyoungwrites.com
If Love showed up bearing an IOU, what would you do? This is the underlying question and lesson tucked poetically inside the pages of this debut poetry collection, Love's Reparations: The Learning Curve between Heartache & Healing. In simple language, provocative imagery, and thought-provoking honesty, Jackie Young poetically peels back layers of love and life until all that remains is the heart.
Love Reparations is a very profound book that focuses on various subjects and is divided into three categories which include HEARTACHE, LEARNING CURVE AND HEALING. I particularly was not favorable to the cover, but more so to the title that Jackie chose for her first book, Love Reparations. This is a perfect example of you can not judge a book by its cover.
Jackie has done excellent job with her book and is very interesting from the beginning to the end. My favorite poems from HEARTACHE include A Dream Deferred (very imaginative and powerful); Feng Shui (very spiritual and profound);Last Super(very sensual and emotional write); Blind Spot (very interesting and very vivid); Beauty is Only Skin Deep (very imaginative and striking write);Truth on the line( is a piece that most people find it hard to tell and is a deep emotional piece);FOREIGN LANGUAGE (is a very sensual piece that most women can relate to); and i built me daddy outta words (is a very unique and emotional write that most women or daughters can relate to). My favorite poems from the next section, LEARNING CURVE include Stepping Stones (through life we have to go trials and tribulations, and sometimes heartache and pain); Character Assassination (a descriptive self reflected and self help write); Revelation (spiritual and powerful piece); and Mellow Memories (an emotional write that most women who miss a special love one can relate to); and from the last section HEALING include Choices (a very striking piece that everyone can relate to); Love makes The world Go round (is a powerful write and very true indeed); and Baby Steps - in life we all have to take baby steps in order to get to where we really want to go and is a very striking piece.
I believe with each section, one will gain their own insight to what Jackie has depicted and will very much be inspired, healed and uplifted after reading her first book, Love Reparations. Congratulations Jackie! I look forward to reading your next book! Stay blessed.
Grandma's Purple Flowers
Adjoa J. Burrowes
Lee & Low Books
9781880000731 $15.95 www.leeandlow.com http://adjoaburrowes.com
Grandma's house has always been the narrator's favorite place. On her way to visit Grandma, she plucks daisies and sunflowers, and best of all, purple flowers--Grandma's favorites. Whenever Grandma sees the purple flowers, her smile grows wide--like the Mississippi River. One winter day Grandma is too tired to bake, but she rubs her grandchild's back gently and ties a ribbon that unraveled in her hair.
Later that night, Grandma passes away, and all winter long, the young girl is sad, missing her grandmother terribly. When spring finally arrives, and flowers begin to shoot up from the ground, the girl discovers her own special way to accept her grandmother's death and keep Grandma with her always.
In this moving story, author/illustrator, Adjoa J. Burrowes deals sensitively with the difficult experience of death, and tells a moving story that celebrates the triumph of hope and spirit during a difficult time.
Grandma's Purple Flowers is a remarkable story about how a young girl deals with the difficulty of coping with the death of her Grandma passing away and could not wait for Spring to return to see her Grandma's purple's flower shoot up from the ground. I think that most young girls will relate to this story when missing a love one, they will look forward to seeing and experiencing a new journey to overcome the passing of a significant love one. I think that Adjoa did an excellent both depicting the story and generating the illustrations.
The illustrations themselves tells a story and are captured very well. Congratulations on a remarkable job! Thank you for sharing this book with me! Five Stars Rating.
Step Up to the Mic: A Poetic Explosion
Michael J. Burt, editor
Poetic Press/Xpress Yourself
9780979250056 $12.95 xpressyourselfpublishing.org
Step Up to the Mic: A Poetic Explosion, a written version of an all-stair open mic, and features poets and spoken word artists of the new millennium.
Featuring HBO's Def Poets Red Storm & Georgia Me and Essence Best Selling Author.
Featured Poets: Afrika Midnight Asha Abney, Akua, Michael J. Burt, Tichaona Chinyelu, Gaudemus, Def Poet Georgia Me, Veronica J. Hill, Bill Holmes, Tinisha Nicole Johnson, a. Kai, Stephanie L. Kemp, Marc Lacy, TS Murphy, Grace Ocasio, Dana Rettig, Nyah Storm, Def Poet Red Storm, Queen Sheba, A. Shakur Towns, Neil G. White, and Estrell Young.
Step Up to the Mic: A Poetic Explosion is an anthology that is edited by Michael J.Burt and published by Poetic Press/Xpress Yourself Publishing. The cover designed was created by The Writer's Assistant and will be released on September 25, 2007. The layout of the anthology, Step Up to the Mic was simply outstanding.
Step Up to the Mic is created in an open mic format and gives an opportunity for various known and established poets/contributing authors to share their words and messages with the mainstream society. Each poet/contributing author offers a different message and touches on different subjects. Some of the subjects that are highlighted include love, inspiration, war, politics and revolution.
I think that the introduction to the anthology was phenomenal and very unique and was written by Michael J. Burt and entitled: A Cappella. This piece was very vivid and strong full of imagery and strength.
Another piece that I found to speak of honor and commitment was entitled, Pledge of Allegiance by Akua. I think that this piece is a self-reference and very well crafted. It serves as piece for all of us to reflect and refer to. It also is an educational and historical piece.
Older Than Hip Hop by Tichaona Chinyelu is a revolutionary piece that all of us can relate in some point our lives and also refers to the experiences that are occurring in today's history with Hip Hop. Older Than Hip Hop is very well crafted and profound.
The poems listed above were just some of my favorite poems. After reading, Step Up to the Mic: A Poetic Explosion, I am in total awe for words and am thankful for the opportunity to be included in the anthology. Congratulations to all of the poets/contributing authors for a job well done! Five Stars Rating
Afrika Midnight Asha Abney, Reviewer
http://www.clearblogs.com/afrikamaabney
Ann's Bookshelf
The Verneys
Adrian Tinniswood
Jonathan Cape
c/o Random House
1745 Broadway, 17th floor, New York, NY 10019
9780224071557 25.00 Brit. pounds www.randomhouse.com 1-800-726-0600
"Sir Francis Verney lay on his bed in the great hall of the sick at Messina. He was thirty-one years old. He was a long way from home. And he was dying". He had been a Barbary Coast pirate, a "sometimes great English gallant", a convert to Islam and, for two years at the end of his life when his fortunes lapsed, a galley slave. All of which makes for a dramatic opening scene in this family saga which has all the ingredients for a gripping television series. And it is all true.
The story of the survival of the Verney family papers, on which Adrian Tinniswood has based this history of the family and the times in which they lived, is an interesting story in itself. Briefly, it hinges on the mass of documents - letters, bills, parliamentary notes, playbills, rent-rolls and much more - which were found "in a dusty old gallery" by a distant relative who, in 1827, inherited what remained of the Verney family's estate. Through these papers, as Tinniswood notes, the family comes to life and the remarkable events (including the English Civil War, the beheading of one king and the replacement of another) which shaped their world and their daily lives become so vivid that "we know the Verneys almost too well, and it is impossible not to care". And he is right.
The book is divided into three parts. The first deals with the life of Sir Edmund Verney who, in 1615, inherited the estate from his piratical half-brother Francis. Death, arranged marriages, re-marriage and the Seventeenth Century laws of inheritance, plus the great importance of extensive and extended family connections, shaped the lives of every gentry family at that time. The Verneys were no exception. Edmund's mother had married three times. So, too, had his father, and Edmund was his second son. At the time of the eldest son, Francis's, death, Edmund was twenty-five years old, a Knight serving at the court of King Charles I, a staunch Protestant, and a happily married man, with two children. Tinniswood lays out the many and various family relationships in an easy, confident way so that the reader is only occasionally lost amongst them all. He is equally good at filling in the historical and social context of their lives without getting overly academic. So, we get to know Edmund and his wife Mary, and we are drawn into their close, loving relationship as they live through good and bad times, deal with the births and deaths of children and relatives, and face disasters, debt, war and also the constant more (and less) trivial demands of their relatives and friends.
Of Edmund and Mary's twelve children, we get to know three of the boys very well. Ralph, the steady, serious, eldest son, who became a Member of Parliament and supported the Parliamentarians against the King (to the great distress of his Royalist father and brother) was the one who saved and stored all the family papers. Tom, the ne'er-do-well scrounger of the family, was the second son. When he seemed inclined to run wild, his parents packed him off to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1634, to make his fortune. He returned after only one winter in this new colony in the Americas, "to the exasperation of his father".
Mun (short for Edmund), the third son, was a professional soldier in the King's army. He fought Cromwell's troops in Ireland and survived one of the bloodiest sieges only to be stabbed to death in the street two days later. The girls and the youngest son, we come to know less well, but it is clear that all the Verney women were independent-minded and determined, and that they were not inclined to be dictated to by their menfolk in spite of the conventions of the time.
Part two of the book deals equally interestingly with the lives of Ralph Verney and his wife and family. Ralph, ever the serious one, helped his father to shoulder the responsibilities of the family from a very young age. After his father's death, he inherited debts, and later faced the possibility of losing the estate altogether when Parliament threatened to sequester it because of his family's Royalist sympathies. He avoided this threat by putting the estate into trust and escaping to France. His loyal and loving wife Mary (they were married at a very young age, even for those times) was know by her closest relatives as 'Mischief'. She accompanied him to France, but a few years later returned to England to lobby for the lifting of the threat of sequestration. At Ralph's instruction, she even forged a document (a capital offence) in order to achieve this. Eventually she succeeded, but after returning to France she became seriously ill and only after her death was Ralph able to return to England. Ralph's grief at the loss of his Mary, exacerbated by the death of her recently born baby and of their much loved eight-year-old daughter, Peg, at about the same time, was intense and he never really got over it. But his later travels around Italy with his eldest son, Mun, make fascinating reading. So, too, does the career of his youngest son, Jack, who, as a baby, had been left in England during his parents' exile in France. Jack became a successful Merchant Trader in Syria, and Tinniswood paints a vivid picture of this exotic but very difficult part of the world in which Jack eventually made his fortune.
The lives of Jack and Mun make up most of part three of the book, but it also deals with the short lives of their four siblings. And it includes some vivid digressions on romantic myths about Seventeenth Century highway robbers and the real, but no less exciting, exploits of two distant but well-known Verney relatives who took to a life of crime and were hanged for it. Mun's fate was different but in many ways no less cruel. A charming character, Mun is described under his portrait in this book as "a complicated mixture of lecherous clown, tender father and loving husband". He married, under family pressure, at the age of twenty-six. But within weeks his wife began to suffer fits of madness, which continued periodically for the rest of her life. Mun, against all expectations, lovingly looked after her himself during these times rather than consigning her to the care of others. Tinniswood's brief examination of her madness, set in its historical context, makes interesting reading.
There is so much in this book that it is difficult not to write a book-length review of it. Suffice it to say that Tinniswood tells a fascinating story and he tells it well. He acknowledges his debt to those who earlier sorted through the documents and chronicled some of the contents, but as a social historian his approach is different to theirs. His accounts of the turbulent history of the times and of the wars which took place in Scotland, Ireland and England, often show the astonishing and ludicrous mismanagement and stupidity which accompanied the bloody events. And his occasional humorous asides throughout the book are a delight. I particularly warmed to his admission that one letter to Sir Ralph, which may have been a joke but probably was not, shows a distressing insensitivity in the sexual mores of the Verney men and he wished he had never seen it. Everywhere else, in this book, he clearly enjoys the ordinary humanity of the Verneys and it is this which makes the book a delight to read and which allows all the Verneys and their relatives and good friends to live again in our imaginations. What more could a reader (or a television producer, for that matter) want?
The Devil's Footprints (Novel) and Gift Songs (Poems)
John Burnside
Jonathan Cape
c/o Random House
1745 Broadway, 17th floor, New York, NY 10019
9780224074889 14.00 Brit. pounds hc
0224 07997 9.00 Brit. pounds pbk. 92 pages
The Devil's Footprints is a strange and haunting book written by a poet who seems always to have a sense of some shadowy presence which exists just on the limits of consciousness. That shadow is there in Burnside's poetry and it is there, too, in this novel, where the Devil's footprints of a local Scottish folk-myth frame the story and are paralleled at its end by those of Michael Gardiner, who is its narrator.
Michael's story is both ordinary and extraordinary. Ordinary in that it represents the thoughts of a solitary, introspective man looking back on a seemingly unremarkable childhood and adolescence. Extraordinary, in that at one time in his childhood he killed a boy who had been bullying him and he has carried that secret with him ever since. We know almost from the beginning of the book that he has killed a boy. What we do not know, is how this came about and what people and events in his childhood brought him to do it.
The threads of past and present are woven together in Michael's narrative. A newspaper report of the death of a woman and her two young sons in a burning car throws up old memories and poses new questions. Both lead him to re-visit his past, but also throw him into what he calls a temporary "insanity".
Burnside is a master story-teller, and this story, like the folk-myth with which it begins, has depths and mysteries beneath its surface which reflect the primal instincts of human life and the loves, guilts and fears which drive us all. Michael's description of his life, and of the events and people he remembers most vividly, gradually reveals his character. His sense of being an outsider, his mild alienation from his fellow beings, his fears, justifications, frailties, and his suppressed guilt, all become apparent. But so, too, does his sensitivity to the unique and terrifying beauty of the natural world of the Scottish coast around him, and his sense of belonging to it in some mysterious way. It is this, ultimately, and the long, hard journey he makes through the countryside back to this 'home', which cures his insanity. This a hero's journey to self-knowledge with a difference, for the hero is a very ordinary human being, much like any other.
Gift Songs, Burnside's most recent book of poems, explores this sense of place and belonging further. The title comes from a Shaker belief in the value of songs as gifts. And the Shakers are a group of people who, like Michael Gardiner in Burnside's novel, are outside the general community: Unlike him, however, they are intensely connected to their own community by their particular religious practices.
Gift Songs explores the sort of belonging which comes not only from faith but also from our sense of connection to the natural world. That sense of something other, some mystery present in particular surroundings, in light, music, silence: "phantoms we carry away / from our edited lives".
As always, the rhythm and music of Burnside's poetry has the power to suggest this shadowy presence. This, for me, is its appeal, although it may puzzle others, since the numinous is not something which can be spelt out. Nevertheless, there are simple gifts here, such as the beautiful 'Five Animals' poems, as well as more complex meditations. And Burnside crafts his gifts with loving care and with a skill which imbues them with magic.
Dead Lucky: Life and Death on Mount Everest
Lincoln Hall
Random House Trade Group Publicity
1745 Broadway, 17th floor, New York, NY 10019
978 1 74166 461 4 $34.95 www.randomhouse.com 1-800-726-0600
At 7.30pm on May 26th 2006, at 8600 metres on the face of Mount Everest, Lincoln Hall died. At 9am that morning he had stood on the summit and spoken by radio-phone to Alexander Abromov, the expedition leader at Advance Base Camp. He spoke briefly, letting Alex know that he and the three Sherpas, Lakcha, Dorje and Dawa Tenzing who were with him, were on their way down. One hour later cerebral oedema struck him and he began to hallucinate. For the next few hours he lapsed in and out of coherent consciousness. At times he was lucid and capable, at other times crazy: he refused his oxygen mask, fought to go back up the mountain, and tried to jump off Kangshung Face. The three Sherpas, soon joined by another, Pemba, pushed and pulled him down the mountain.
At Mushroom Rock, still 300 metres above Advance Base Camp, the Sherpas were exhausted, they had no oxygen, no food or drink, Hall was unresponsive and dying, and the weather forecast was bad. The Sherpas were ordered to cover Hall with stones and leave him.
No-one had ever survived a night on Everest at 8600 metres. Exhaustion, hypothermia, lack of oxygen, the retention of fluid in the brain so that the whole metabolism is affected, snow blindness, detached retinas, all these things are common at this altitude and all can be fatal. At the time of Hall's descent eleven climbers had already died on the mountain in the few months of the climbing season, the last just hours before Hall and the Sherpas reached Mushroom Rock. Alex, at Base Camp, phoned Hall's wife, Barbara, and broke the news to her that at 7.30pm, on Everest, her husband had died.
Barbara told their two teenage sons, rang a few people, and family and friends began to rally round to support her. Amongst others, she contacted Ang Karma, a Buddhist friend in Kathmandu, and asked him to perform the appropriate Buddhist ceremonies for her dead husband, who had become a practicing Buddhist in the late 1960s. Only late in the evening of the next day did Barbara hear that her husband was still alive, but that he had only a 50-50 chance of surviving.
Hall had tackled Mount Everest twenty-two years earlier but had been forced to turn back before he reached the summit. He joined the 2006 expedition as an experienced, high-altitude cameraman for a fourteen-year-old boy, Christopher Harris, and his father, who intended to climb the highest mountains on each continent, seven summits in all. Unfortunately, Christopher had experienced a severe drop in blood pressure shortly after leaving Advance Base Camp. A second attempt had produced the same result, so, recognizing that it was too dangerous for them to press on, he and his father turned back. Hall however, was urged to go ahead, and did.
Lincoln Hall is a very experienced mountaineer, veteran of some thirty-six years of mountaineering expeditions both as a climber and a guide. He is also a writer and film-maker, and he is co-founder of the Australian Himalayan Foundation.
Dead Lucky tells the story of his last expedition to Mount Everest, his death and his survival. Even for a non-climber like me, it is a fascinating story. His account of the difficulties of the climb, the expeditions and climbers he met, the harrowing descent, and his subsequent treatment for frostbite is gripping and well-written. He has no doubt, just as the Sherpas had no doubt, that he died. His description of his psychological state, his hallucinations, and the few moments of lucidity which surrounded that death alone on the ridge at 8600 meters is totally absorbing.
I was surprised to read of the large number of people who now climb Everest during the brief season when summiting is possible. I was surprised, too, to read of the fixed ropes and crevasse-crossing ladders which are put in place by Sherpas each season for some expedition organizers and which make the ascent marginally safer. Nor did I expect to hear that Hall reach the summit after passing a number of dead bodies, some of which have lain there for years, and that the summit was littered with empty oxygen cylinders and marked with yellow urine stains. I was shocked to read his account of the two Sherpas who were sent to help him when another climber found that he had survived the night at Mushroom Rock, and who bullied and threatened him, cut a rope at one critical moment, and attacked him with an ice pick (he had bruises to prove that this was no hallucination). Luckily, other Sherpas arrived in time to save him.
In spite of the organized expeditions, the final stages of the ascent of Everest are still extremely hazardous. Survival above 8300 meters is, to use Hall's word, "desperate". The oxygen level is so low that even with oxygen support just speaking is exhausting. The final stages of the ascent are begun in darkness, vision is restricted by an oxygen mask, and clothing is cumbersome. Gaining the summit and the euphoria of doing so often takes all the climber's energy, so descent is even more hazardous. As Hall discovered.
Dead Lucky tells an amazing story. Occasionally, I found the listing of names daunting and confusing. Hall seems to have felt obliged to name everyone on the mountain that year. His acknowledgments, too (thankfully tucked at the back of the book) run to seven pages and even include the cafe where he typed part of his manuscript whilst attending hospital for the treatment of his frostbitten fingers and toes. Nevertheless, the book is a pleasure to read, the photographs are interesting and the glossary useful.
One is still left wondering what prompts anyone to expose themselves to the agony, danger and trauma of trying to reach the top of Mount Everest. Hall's own list of reasons doesn't solve that riddle. Looking back, he sees the mountain as a mirror into which climbers look to find themselves. His brush with death has given him a new perspective on life and, as he says at the very end of the book, now that he has summited Everest his life can move on.
Ann Skea, Reviewer
http://ann.skea.com
Anthony's Bookshelf
Wanderlost
Ben Olson
Alphar Publishing
130 Church Street, #413, New York, NY 10007
0978602412, $19.95, 356 pages www.alpharpublish.com
WANDERLOST captures the essence of that strange period of life after college and before looming adulthood; when idealism is still a good thing, when one must choose to embrace the often mediocre task of mundane existence, or burn free and live according to the principles of our hearts. It is a coming-of-age tale, a humorous road narrative and an acerbically accurate portrayal of modern America Life in all its beauty and futility, written in a personal uninhibited style of journalistic prose.
Ben Olson says, "The book is a backlash to this dumb culture taken over by a crassness of people who are all passionately apathetic. This is a truthful account of a common man's struggle… and that is why it has merit. Sure it's fiction, but I only write fiction because I have to. I need the protection that it provides. Every writer knows that there is no real fiction, for what we put on the page stems from our experiences. I believe in something that will never die – the notion that you can still live free in America."
Ben Olson is only 25 years old and has already had a couple dozen articles published in weekly newspapers and some literary journals. Ben is a prophet howling at the American landscape, a straight shooting voice destined for an impact in American literary circles.
Mister Pip
Lloyd Jones
Random House
375 Hudson St. New York, NY 10014
9780385341066 $20.00 www.randomhouse.com
In "Mister Pip", Lloyd Jones weaves a narrative that will transform lives… in a voice that lives on long after the final page.
During the 1990 blockade of Bougainville, a south Pacific island rich in copper, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens's classic Great Expectations. So begins this brilliant award-winning novel about the strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen–year–old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip.
A private, linen-suited figure with a native wife, Mr. Watts is a mystery to the children of the island But Matilda's fascination with the story of Pip begins to trouble her devout, practical-minded mother. She starts to wage a not-so-silent campaign against Mr. Watts and nineteenth-century England, and the distance between her and Matilda, who is immersed in the new world of Dickens, grows.
Then the real war, which has been inching closer every day, arrives. The redskin soldiers visit the island and come to believe that Pip, the central character of Great Expectations, is a real, live man, being hidden by the villagers. Vengeance is extracted in increasingly terrible ways as the island fails to produce him. Yet as the villagers lose almost everything, for the children and Mr. Watts, the imaginary world exerts a stronger pull than ever. And for a moment, the power of story-telling seems as though it will save everyone.
The narrator's voice is that of Matilda, a village girl. She was named by the Australians who opened up the world's richest copper mine in Bougainville, and her name stands throughout as ironic comment on responsibilities intimate and global. Lloyd Jones has a special insight into the intricacies of the human situation - intimate and global.
Lloyd Jones, writing with the voice of an adolescent girl, is a middle-aged New Zealand author who has mastered a great novel: Wrought with the purity of grief, urgent in every cadence, and expanded by a faint lingering hope. But the end does not bring wonder but despair. And that's a wonder in itself, that such a grim subject can still carry something as luminous and as revealing to us readers worlds away from a forgotten village on the pacific.
Anthony Chaytor
Reviewer
Bethany's Bookshelf
Boomer at Midlife
Mark Cain
iUniverse, Inc.
2021 Pine Lake Road, #100, Lincoln, NE 68512
9780595411863, $15.95 iuniverse.com
Boomer at Midlife is an original novel about Walter "Boomer" Stapleton, the quintessential baby boomer: divorced, middle-aged, tired of his job, in a relationship with a woman much younger than he is. His only child is about to attend college. As his fiftieth birthday draws ever nearer, Boomer yearns to break away from the stereotypes of his generation and radically reinvent himself. Quitting his job, he moves to New Orleans to pursue his dreams, playing zydeco on his accordion. But what awaits him in The Big Easy will pull him even further into his mire of uncertainty about who he is and where his place in life is. At times irreverent, at times soulful, Boomer at Midlife is at its core an engaging parable about the human condition.
God's Healing Herbs
Dennis Ellingson
Cladach Publishing
PO Box 336144, Greeley, CO 80633
0975961934, $16.99 www.cladach.com
Now in a newly revised and significantly expanded edition illustrated throughout by Matthew Kondratief (writer, pastor, counselor, and owner of Sprague River Herb Gardens in South Central Oregon), "God's Healing Herbs" by Dennis Ellingson presents the history and showcases the value and use of some 130 popular herbs. Ellingson aptly provides the reader with an informative tour of a biblical herb garden, offers invaluable tips and even recipes for growing and preparing herbs, as well as offering resource listings of reliable herb suppliers. Organized alphabetically, readers will discover medicinal and medicinal charts to guide them with respect to the cited herbs. Of special note is the section devoted to 'Jesus and the Herbs'. A welcome addition for personal and community library gardening reference collections and supplemental reading lists, "God's Healing Herbs" is enthusiastically recommended for its herbal facts, lore, recipes, and advice.
A Geometric Analysis Of The Platonic Solids And Other Semi-Regular Polyhedra
Kenneth J. M. MacLean
Loving Healing Press
5145 Pontiac Trail, Ann Arbor, MI 48105
1932690999, $49.95 www.lovinghealing.com
"A Geometric Analysis Of The Platonic Solids And Other Semi-Regular Polyhedra" by writer, researcher, and original thinker Kenneth MacLean provides teachers, science students, and non-specialist general readers with an informed and informative introduction to the Phi Ratio as it is commonly encountered in the world. Offering a fascinating perspective, the reader is provided with a view of geometry and its patterns that is fully accessible to anyone with a high school level of competency in mathematics. Methodical, even elegant, the formulas and equations reflect the beauty of numbers and three dimensional figures. Enhanced with more than 140 full-color illustrations, "A Geometric Analysis Of The Platonic Solids And Other Semi-Regular Polyhedra" is a very highly recommended addition to personal and academic library Mathematics & Geometry reference collections and supplemental reading lists.
The Real College Cookbook
G. P. McDonald
Outskirts Press
10940 South Parker Road, #515, Parker, CO 80134
1598007890, $9.95 www.oustskirtspress.com/buybooks 1-888-672-6657
"The Real College Cookbook: 50 Essentials For All College Students" is a compilation of recipes that G. P. McDonald has acquired during his ten years as a college student. These are particularly 'student friendly' recipes that college kids can make themselves with a minimum of time and effort. Ranging from Hash Noodles; Frozen Pizza; Oshkosh Stew; Sugar Tortillas; and Funky Ramen; to Beer Cubes; Salisbury Pot; Studio Pie; Tangy Macaroni; and Cheesy Biscuits, "The Real College Cookbook" is an ideal 'how to' reference that are palate pleasing and appetite satisfying economic alternatives to the usual junk food selections of young adults living on or off campus.
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Bob's Bookshelf
Femme Fatale: Loves, Lies, And the Unknown Life of Mata Hari
Pat Shipman
William Morrow
10 East 53rd Street, New York, New York 10022
9780060817282 $25.95
She was beautiful, brilliant, and dangerous. Born Margaretha Zelle in Holland, Mata Hari was the most notorious femme fatale in history. In her new book, "Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hara" Pat Shipman reveals the real woman behind the decades of hype that have distorted this historical figure.
Married at 18 to a Dutch naval officer, Margaretha and her husband moved to the Dutch Indies where she gave birth to two children. After the mysterious death of their son, the marriage began to unravel and it ended with Margaretha giving up custody of her daughter.
In 1903 the young woman arrived in Paris where she began her transformation into Mata Hari. Starting as a circus performer, Gretha switched to dancing as a way to connect with society ladies who might put her in the right circles.
As a dancer "Mata Hari" was wildly successful. "Her genius lay not in what she did but in how she presented herself," Shipman writes. "She offered spectacle, emotion, and the mystery of the Orient, which was just beginning to be fashionable."
With fame and fortune came a stable of high profile lovers. At the outset of World War I, one of those lovers recruited Mata Hari to join the German Secret Services as a spy. To complicate matters, she then offered to spy for the Allies as well.
As a double spy, Mata Hari was taking orders from Germans at the same time she was working for the French. Eventually the French ensnared her in a trap that resulted in her sensational trial and a conviction for espionage. Mata Hari was sentenced to death by firing squad and was executed in 1917. An engrossing account of one of history's most enigmatic and mysterious figures, "Femme Fatale" exposes the truth behind a woman whose many myths and legends still persist today.
Get Smart!
Ron Dietel
Jossey-Bass
989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741
0787983349 $24.95 1-800-567-4797 www.josseybass.com
Subtitled "Nine Sure Ways to help Your Child Succeed in School", this informative book uses the latest educational research to show parents how to help their children become better students.
The author discusses nine areas that can make a radical difference in how well a youngster does in the classroom. He begins with "ability" and points out ways a parent can increase his or her child's ability to acquire knowledge.
Next, the discussion turns to how to help a child want to learn more. That is followed by a look at some techniques on how one can develop in a youngster a positive attitude towards both school and learning.
The school is the focus on sections that explain how to develop positive and open relationships with teachers, how to encourage good learning habits in the classroom, and how to make sure the school is meeting the needs of the child.
In the concluding chapters home learning is addressed as well as evaluation methods for ascertaining if a child is performing to the best of his or her ability . Finally, the author emphasizes that effective communication between parent and child is essential in making this all work so that the child can get the most out of the schooling experience.
Narrative Writing
George Hillocks, Jr.
Heinemann
361 Hanover Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801-3912
9780325008424 $19.50 www.heinemann.com
The emphasis of this guide is on producing content rather than form when it comes to student writing. The author's intent is to boost the students' engagement, making them active learners - not passive recipients of knowledge.
This is achieved by breaking the learning task into small, doable pieces which allow the young person to master these tasks thus, preparing him or her for more complex learning. By providing clear instructions and objectives while focusing on the procedural knowledge that accompanies academic success, Hillocks creates a scaffolding that will create confident and fully engaged writers. Students on the secondary school level would benefit most from the program set forth here, but it would be appropriate for some middle school youngsters also.
Bob Walch
Reviewer
Buhle's Bookshelf
Bumping and Other Stories
W. Jack Savage
Xlibris Corporation
International Plaza II, Suite 340, Philadelphia, PA 19113
9781425746018, $10.99 www.xlibris.com
Bumping and Other Stories is an anthology of original fiction by Vietnam veteran and stage actor W. "Jack" Savage. The twelve tales diverge widely in setting, mood, and memories. From a Ukranian prisoner's firsthand account of the wildly unlikely events in an abandoned slaughterhouse that led to his incarceration, to an estranged anniversary couple compelled to choose each other once again, to an off-stage player forcibly reminded of past choices that remain irreconcilable with his present life, Bumping and Other Stories touches a raw nerve with its passion, severity, and moral dilemmas. A twistedly thought-provoking collection.
The Brogan Book
Thomas Brogan
Lulu Press
860 Aviation Parkway, Suite 300, Morrisville, NC 27560
9781430317845, $12.95 www.amazon.com www.broganbook.com
Occasionally illustrated with black-and-white photographs, "The Brogan Book: Your Daily Blarney" is a compilation of prose poems and free verse lyrics employed by Thomas Brogan and range from rants, accusations, and sarcasm to novel ideas, original thoughts, and a great deal of what can only be described as 'blarney', nonsense, and old-fashioned hooey. Iconoclastic and ironic, Thomas Brogan is also entertaining, original, and a quite obviously gifted wordsmith well worth the reader's time. 'Feet': Feet are guides, that lead the way./Giving support and taking no pay.//Sometimes feet really begin to stink and smell./But, where you've been they will never tell.
An Afterthought Of Light
Victor M. Depta
Blair Mountain Press
2027 Oakview Road, Ashland, KY 41101
9780976881728, $15.00 www.blairmtp.com
The inevitable infirmities of aging and death are difficult for most people to consider and only then in moments of crisis. "An Afterthought Of Light" is a compelling and very highly recommended collection of superbly crafted poems by Victor M. Depta that address the 'fear, sorrow and helplessness' that infirmity and death inject into daily life. These deftly crafted free verse lyrics also contemplate the spiritual meanings that might be embedded in our experiences with these inevitabilities. 'Iraq': there was just himself/absorbed in his modest unassuming way/by the slow, black spiraling--/his days sloping down/swirling and choking/toward the endpoint of the cone/the dot, the horrifying moment/for himself alone//until his grandson/flung backward by a rocket-propelled grenade/in faraway Iraq/sped past him, impetuous youth/spattering flesh until the spiral was a messy blur/which clogged and stopped/endlessly/obliterated by grief.
Poems For A Beautiful Woman
Pasquale Varallo
Privately Published
7944 Ridgeway Street, Phila, PA 19111
097733791X, $12.00 www.amazon.com
The poetry comprising Pasquale Varallo's "Poems For A Beautiful Woman" run the gamut of forms and styles from articulated prose poems, to free verse, to classical lyrics -- all in celebratory expressions of romance, love, courtship, loss, and general appreciation of woman. Inspired and inspiring, "Poems For A Beautiful Woman" is strongly recommended to the attention of anyone who has ever loved, lost, or found a woman. 'Cara Mia': I need a hand to hold/To cuddle when its cold/A back to scratch when it itches/A joke to leave me in stitches/Pretty blue eyes to look into/When I say, "I Love You!"/Be my Valentine?
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
Burroughs' Bookshelf
Relationship Related And Other Poetry
Anthony B. Ashe
Reconstruction Books Publishing
12705 Longwater Drive, Mitchellville, MD 20721
9780978975203, $12.95 www.reconstructionbooks.com
Arranged in five parts, with each segment unfolding to reveal the constant yet changeable essence of relationships, the poetry of Anthony B. Ashe as compiled in "Relationship Related And Other Poetry" is contemporary in their themes and universal in their appeal. These are very highly recommended and intellectually stimulating free verse compositions that deftly utilize metaphor, simile and symbolism to reveal complex elements of human kinship. 'Kiss Me Now': succulent lips/or forever hold your piece//keep the measurement and directions/we're not trading recipes//cook with raw/unadulterated skin on skin//;when we scream/when we moan/when we writhe and grind//are you giving all to me?/does that make you mine?
The Republic Of Lies
Ed Ochester
Adastra Press
16 Reservation Road, Easthampton, MA 01027
0977666743, $14.00 www.amazon.com
A past president of the Associated Writing Programs, Ed Ochester edits the Pitt Poetry Series published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, co-edits the literary journal "5 AM", and has authored twelve books of poetry, including two previous Adastra Press chapbooks. Comprised of fourteen of his poems, "The Republic Of Lies" is the latest chapbook to present his unique poetry style as he critiques contemporary social and lifestyle values using the forum of free verse to 'speak truth to power' -- especially the powerful influences of ideologues. Expertly crafted with an especially articulate elegance, "The Republic Of Lies" is highly recommended reading both as poetry and as social commentary. 'Why I Love Teenagers': In Holiday Park, PA/the Burger King/has put out a signboard/advertising/for late-night employees/and some kid/contemptuous/of minimum wage/or the "free enterprise" system/and possible even/"In God We Trust"/has stolen the "C" form the sign/so that it reads: "NOW HIRING LOSERS"
Letters To Early Street
Albert Flynn DeSilver
La Alameda Press
9636 Guadalupe Trail NW, Albuquerque, NM 87114
University of New Mexico Press (distributor)
1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
9781888809503, $14.00 www.laalamedapress.com www.unmpress.com
Originally begun as letters to a colleague, Albert Flynn DeSilver's writing began to transform into a whimsical epistolary experiment that turned writing a traditional letter into a unique poetic exercise addressing emotions, elements of landscape, and the act of writing itself. The poems compiled and presented in "Letters To Early Street" represent fresh, lyrical and inventively articulate acts of communication. "Letters To Early Street" is emotionally rewarding, intellectually entertaining, and very highly recommended reading for anyone who appreciates the art and craft of writing poetry. 'Letter Forty Three': Dear equivalence,//I can feel a letter/welling up from that massive//fathom at the cusp/of what breath borders//upon hesitant/heights, here//where my absences/are all up to spec.//Soon this letter will shed its dilemma,/like an exasperated lemon-cloud--//Then the diehard physicalists/will have to absorb//the difficulty of such spendy/ephemera. How I enter//endless confrontation with no/emblem but skin.
Yes! You Can Stop Smoking Even if You Don't Want To, fourth edition
David C. Jones
E & E Publishing
1001 Bridgeway, No. 227, Sausalito, CA 94965
9780979160608, $18.95
Written by the founder of "Stop Smoking Recovery Programs" and former three-pack-a-day smoker David C. Jones, Yes! You Can Stop Smoking Even if You Don't Want To: Recover From Nicotine Addiction is now in an updated fourth edition. A groundbreaking guide, Yes! You Can Stop Smoking treats smoking as an addiction; dissects the self-talk and harmful false beliefs that prevent one from quitting; advice for avoiding self-sabotage; true-life stories of people who quit smoking; and much more. Affirmations for the first ninety days of quitting smoking, each with a blank half-page where the one quitting can write down his or her feelings, rounds out this invaluable, keen-minded and encouraging guide.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Carson's Bookshelf
All You Have To Do Is Ask
Meredith Walters
Anhinga Press
PO Box 10595, Tallahassee, FL 32302
9780938078975, $14.00 www.anhinga.org
Meredith Walters was warded the Anhinga Prize for Poetry in 2006. Highly recommended reading for poetry enthusiasts who appreciate unique word skills, "All You Have To Do Is Ask" showcases her distinctive voice and originality which is clearly discernable throughout all of her free verse poetry. 'Li Po Made Me Think': Beside the water lotus all talk of our collective future/did not include separating into teams.//To no fanfare of clouds in the west/pilgrims anointed their troubles intimately.//The merganser seemed to inquire/into a second, more secret night.//By brute immensity or a chirp/we awoke to a white light//arriving through the wicks/of a dreamed-up and blossomless pear tree.
California Healthy
Patricia Hamilton
Park Place Publications
PO Box 829, Pacific Grove, CA 93950
9781877809439, $19.95 www.californiahealthy.com
California Healthy: The Adventurer's Guide to Local Delicacies, Fine Wine, Great Walks and the Good Life is a guide for California residents as well as vacationers. What distinguishes California Healthy is its close attention to the healthy food and fitness-promoting activities. County-by-county listings give the address, telephone number, and open numbers of everything from restaurants with healthful cuisine to parks ideal for walks to art galleries, botanical gardens, artisan's markets, colleges, special holiday celebrations and much more. Full-color maps and photographs on almost every page add a splendid visual touch to this high-quality guide for anyone in the Southern California area seeking to stay in shape.
Above the Gravelbar
David S. Cook
Polar Bear & Company
PO Box 311, Solon ME 04979
9781882190690, $12.95
Army veteran David S. Cook presents Above the Gravelbar: The Native Canoe Routes of Maine, a reminiscence of great canoe travels along Maine's many interconnected waterways, combined with a deep respect for now Maine's Native peoples once used their watercraft to traverse the state. A handful of black-and-white maps illustrate this thoughtful chronicle, which delves deep into the history of individual routes. Above the Gravelbar is not a travel guide per se, but rather gives itself over to the rich, scenery-capturing detail sure to intrigue armchair travelers and canoe connoisseurs.
Lysistrata
Aristophanes, author
adapted by Edward Einhorn
Theater 61 Press
2373 Broadway, Suite 802, New York, NY 10024
9780977019724, $14.95
Lysistrata is playwright Edward Einhorn's new off-Broadway adaptation of the 2500-year-old classical Greek play by Aristophanes. In addition to the text of the play itself, Lysistrata features essays by Einhorn, sample musical scores, and also a version of the play with the characters and stage directions removed, for directors who wish to make the decisions of who speaks what line for themselves. Retaining the bawdy humor of the original, Lysistrata is undeniably a laugh-out-loud comedy of war, sex, and wicked fun. Lysistrata is an excellent contribution to theater shelves, though the raunchy subject matter is decidedly for adults only.
Michael J. Carson
Reviewer
Christy's Bookshelf
Hollywood Station
Joseph Wambaugh
Little, Brown and Company
c/o Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
9780316066143 $24.99 www.hachettebookgroupUSA.com www.hbgusa.com 1-800-759-0190
LAPD's Hollywood Division is not as glamorous as it sounds. Here the prostitutes and transvestites troll for johns while "tweakers" fish envelopes out of mailboxes in search of anything they can use toward the purchase of their next hit of crystal meth and celebrity clones stroll along the Hollywood walk of fame seeking gullible tourists. Since Rodney King, law enforcement officials, from the beat cops to the detectives, must bide by rigid rules and continual scrutiny, from their internal affairs division to Washington DC. But they have the protective eye of their Sergeant on their side, a man they refer to as the Oracle, who has been on the Job for 46 years.
The story centers around a tweaker named Farley Ramsdale and his girlfriend, whom he calls Olive because she resembles Popeye's Olive Oyl. Farley is a small-time crook who thinks he is being smart by making Olive do all the dirty work: fishing envelopes out of mailboxes, trying to pass counterfeit bills in stores, and stealing magnetic cards from hotels which Farley sells to other criminals specializing in identity theft. When Cosmo, an Armenian immigrant and Ilya, his Russian girlfriend, steal diamonds from a jeweler, Farley quickly puts two and two together; Farley is the one who passed on to Cosmo a letter from the jewelry store inventorying the diamonds. When Farley demands a cut of the action, Cosmo decides he and Olive must be eliminated, but from that point on, everything begins to spin out of control.
Wambaugh is a master at characterization and witticisms. His humorous style and observations make this a fun read, with quirky, offbeat characters and plenty of action. What seems at first to be a loose, albeit amusing, telling of the goings on within the Los Angeles Police Department Hollywood Station and the criminals that surround it, comes together at the end to form one heck of a good story. The situations the officers find themselves in are at times laugh-out-loud funny, as are the interactions between the characters. Hollywood Station provides a poignant look into the inner workings and ever-present political wrangling behind the scenes of the LAPD. Highly entertaining; recommended.
Nature Girl
Carl Hiaasen
Alfred A. Knopf
c/o Random House
1745 Broadway, 17th floor, New York, NY 10019
9780307262998 $25.95 www.aaknopf.com www.randomhouse.com 1-800-726-0600
Sammy Tigertail, half-white, half-Seminole, has yet to find his place in the world. Raised by his white father, Sammy returned to the Seminole reservation at a young age, where he has since tried to fit in. Sammy has a failed work history as an alligator wrestler, and now he's trying his luck with the tourist industry. When Sammy takes his first vacationer on an airboat ride, the man dies from a heart attack. Sammy panics and dumps the man's body into the water, then goes into hiding on Dismal Key. His first night there, Sammy scares a group of college students off the island, but one young woman refuses to leave.
Honey Santana is a strong woman determined to raise her son to be a good man in a corrupt world in Southern Florida. Honey hears song lyrics in her head and is prone to an obsessive need to make a point. When Boyd Shreave, a telemarketer who hasn't done an honest day's labor in his life, interrupts her dinner one night, his rude response to her attempt to tell him he's calling at a bad time prompts Honey to take action. Honey lures Boyd to Florida with promises of a major investment in land, where she intends to teach him a lesson in civility. Boyd arrives with his mistress, Eugenie, and the three embark on a kayak ride through Ten Thousand Islands. Unknown to Boyd is that his wife has hired a private investigator to trail her husband and catch him in the act. Honey also has a man after her, Piejack, her former employer with a bandaged hand and mismatched fingers, who's been lusting after Honey and is determined to make her his.
Throw into this wild mix Honey's levelheaded son, Fry, and her ex-husband, Perry, a former drug runner who is still in love with Honey. The two have come to rescue Honey from Piejack, which leads to one hilarious romp through the Everglades with characters bumping into and chasing one another all over the island.
On par with Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen delivers a fun read, with wacky, outside-the-box characters and a laugh-out-loud plot. The story moves quickly and is vastly entertaining throughout, so much so that the reader will not be quite ready to put the book down at the end. This must-read is highly recommended.
The Frugal Editor
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Red Engine Press
Branson, MO
9780978515874 $18.95
As the literary market continues to tighten its proverbial belt, today's writer must assume more of the responsibilities surrounding book publishing than ever before. No longer can a writer depend on a publisher or agent to accept a manuscript in need of editing, and submitting a manuscript that isn't as near perfect as possible will, in all probability, result in rejection. To the rescue comes acclaimed author Carolyn Howard-Johnson with The Frugal Editor, the latest in her How to Do It Frugally series. This little gem is a must-have for any writer, published or not, bestselling or unknown. Filled with valuable tips, The Frugal Editor touches on all aspects of self-editing, such as how to spot common grammatical errors, from superfluous adverbs to confusing dangling participles, as well as how to organize the workspace, format the manuscript, and use Word's tools to the fullest. Also included are sample query and cover letters, and pointers on correcting intrusive taglines, when to use an ellipsis, and correct spacing, to name a few. The book takes the reader step-by-step through the editing process, from rough draft to galley. No questions are left unanswered, no topics left uncovered. This generous writer goes so far as to recommend resources through other books and websites, with plenty of advice from agents and editors.
The Frugal Editor is one of those reference books every writer should have by their computer for constant use and study. Highly recommended.
The Mephisto Club
Tess Gerritsen
Ballantine Trade Group
1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036
0345476999 $25.95 www.ballantinebooks.com www.randomhouse.com 1-800-726-0600
Boston Medical Examiner Maura Isles is called to a gruesome scene early on Christmas morning, where a young woman has been brutally killed and dismembered, with satanic symbols all around her body and the Latin word "Peccavi" (I have sinned) scrawled backwards across her bedroom wall. Detective Jane Rizzoli, back on the job after maternity leave, suspects a serial killer is on the loose when Maura's nemesis, psychiatrist Joyce O'Donnell, is murdered in the same manner. Dr. O'Donnell was part of a group of scholars from around the world calling themselves the Mephisto Club that track demons. When members of this group are murdered and Maura's life is threatened, the action moves to Europe in search of a young woman whom the Mephisto Club is certain will draw the demon to them.
This captivating thriller touches on a fascinating subject: demonology, its origins and presence in the world today. Gerritsen's outstanding characterization is once more on display along with a thrilling, fast-paced plot. Jane Rizzoli remains a strong character, a jaded woman whose marriage and baby have become a calming force. Maura is a lonely woman intrigued by a priest, and this relationship is a painful one for Maura as well as the reader, who longs for Maura's happiness. Gerritsen offers a galvanizing look at Rizzoli's parents, the two people who shaped her, which helps the reader understand her cynicism and insecurities. An electrifying read.
Christy Tillery French
Reviewer
Clay's Bookshelf
Coral Moon
Brandilyn Collins
Zondervan
5300 Patterson Avenue SE Grand Rapids, MI 49530
9780310252245$12.99 www.zondervan.com
Leslie Brymes, reporter for the Kanner Lake Times has dreams of going national. Hoping her coverage of actress Edna San's murder last year would raise her to the stardom she dreams of. But when she awakens one morning to find seventy something year old Vesta Johnson, a woman loved by all murdered and put in her car she has second thoughts about being a reporter.
Police Chief Vince Edwards is at a lost as to who would murder Vesta. But all clues point to one person and that is impossible, that person being Henry Johnson, Vesta's late husband who passed away fourteen months ago! But what of the eerie feelings he has experienced? And even Leslie feels an evil presence is trying to kill her.
With a police department of only five men and with the Idaho State Police looking for clues at the crime scene Vince must figure this out, does he have a serial killer on his hands, a ghost or a one time murder? But what of the note found pinned on Vesta's chest? Vince is racing against time will the murderer strike again and what does Leslie have to do with all of this?
Leslie feels that she can't trust anyone but has to find out if in someway Vesta's murder is her fault. The second body appears and the notes begin to appear what does all this have to do with the new proposed hotel? And what about the teenager that calls Leslie with information that Leslie has to pursue? What of the evil that seems to have fallen on Kenner Lake? After all the twists and turns the climax will have you seating on the edge of your seat.
If you love mystery, intrigue and suspense than hold onto your seat as author Brandilyn Collins gives you a glimpse of the unseen realm of demonic forces and how God places prayer on the hearts of His people even those who question who He is and has everyone looking to the pastor for guidance.
Coral Moon is the second book of the author's new series, the first being Violet Dawn all revolve around the sleepy little Town of Kenner Lake. Brandilyn Collins has a way with words so much so that you find yourself not being able to put down this awesome page turner. The characters jump right off the page at you, characters or people you feel you know and become entangled in their lives.
If you're new to Brandilyn Collins as this reviewer is you'll find yourself wanting to read all ten of her other 3 series of books, while waiting in anticipation as to what is in store next for the people of Kenner Lake in the third book Crimson Eve. Word of advice don't read Coral Moon alone on a dark and stormy night!
The Dead Whisper On
T. L. Hines
Bethany House Publishers
1140 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minneapolis 55438
9780764202056 $19.99 www.bethanyhouse.com
It's been eleven years since Candace MacHugh's father died. Living in Butte, Montana with nothing but her memories, Canada feels alone, she misses her father so much and has no contact with her mother since she blames her mother for kicking her father out. Then one night she hears her father speak to her from the shadows wanting her to join him and the work the dead are doing attempting to make contact about dire warnings and great dangers. The dead want her to become an "operative", one of the contacts between the living and dead but to do so she must become "dead" to the world. Canada is so happy to hear her father's voice and gets caught up in the excitement of at least working with him and talking to him that she says yes without really thinking. And she is whisked away to her first assignment. But Canada doesn't seem to be fitting in at least to the "operatives" thinking. Her "death" is staged, her car flies off the road and flies into the Berkley pit the biggest Superfund site in the United States.
Her father and the operatives tell her to watch out for Keros the golem who is out to get her but no one can tell her why. But the shadows and the operatives are afraid of him. Then Keros finally catches up with her and makes her realize he is not the bad guy and is not out to kill her which makes Canada begin to question as to what is really happening with the shadows or Nothingness as Keros calls them and the operatives. Keros tells her "The heart is deceitful above all things" and "What you see isn't always what's real. Often isn't, in fact."
Meanwhile people in Butte are disappearing, actually turning to ash and burning up. And Canada questions why the shadows and the operatives don't want her in Butte, for that is where the truth lies. Once Canada gets it all figured out that the shadowy figure is not her father and that the shadows are living underground in the mines in Butte waiting for their time to take over. Canada knows they must be stopped but how? Can she trust Doug, the computer geek operative who has figured out the truth, too but even if she can't she knows she needs his help.
The author T.L. Hines will leave you spellbound in this awesome page turner that will have you on the edge of your seat. A must read for anyone who likes suspense for this one will leave you guessing as to what will happen next. And the author admits that Butte is his favorite city in Montana, and it shows as Hines goes into great detail describing the town. It really makes you feel you are there as you go to the Columbia Gardens; see the Our Lady of the Rockies and to the Berkley Pit. And go on the run with Canada first trying to get away from Keros and later the operatives for you will feel you are there. As a Christian suspense it may leave some questioning about someone speaking to the dead but trust this reviewer there is a bigger story here. "The Dead Whisper On" is T.L. Hines second book the first being "Waking Lazarus" and on the surface both seem to be about the dead but as the author states "They're about living, and specifically living the life God has called you to". So whether you are a Christian or not this is a must read for all suspense lovers.
Hippies of the Religious Right
Preston Shires
Baylor University Press
One Bear Place 97363 Waco, Texas 76798
9781932792577 $29.95 www.baylorpress.com
The title says it all in this novel about the counterculture movement. Turn the book over and the line at the top of the book will really peak your interest "From the Counterculture of Jerry Garcia to the subculture of Jerry Falwell", so how can you resist reading and the author does not disappoint. The author is Preston Shires who has a PhD from the University of Nebraska and teaches history at the Southeast Community College in Lincoln, Nebraska and makes a strong but interesting point of how the hippie counterculture movement of the 1960's evolved into the Jesus Movement of the 1970's and the 1980's. But than again as Shires points out the 1960's hippies seem to follow the Golden Rule philosophy of the Bible which is "Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets" (Matthew 7:12) even if they themselves did not know it at the time. From this philosophy it just seemed to birth into the Jesus Movement as the hippies grew older and looked for a deeper meaning of the whole "love" thing and still didn't want any part of their parents' religion. This reviewer feels the author puts it best - "Although the youth of the sixties rebelled against many of the strictures of their parents' generation, they did retain at least two important older-generation principles. They never abandoned in the main, a commitment to the golden rule ideal, and they never relented in their pursuit of freedom or expressive individualism. What they did reject was the conformism that forbade them the right to do new things and think new ideas".
Read how the religious leaders at the time became involved such as Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, David Wilkerson and many others. Also read of some of the leaders that came from the hippie movement into the Jesus Movement like Keith and Melody Green and the beginning of their ministries.
Exceptional book at explaining the Jesus Movement, a definite read for the 60's historical buffs, or even a great subject for a debate team, great for Christians or anyone interested in how modern day Christianity evolved from the hippies to the Jesus movement to now. Overall this book would be great for a group study as it does read like a textbook but it's amazing that so much information is contained to only 242 pages. The notes at the end of the book; just give an added depth to some of the information and requires reading as well. The bibliography book list is really great for a further reading or study. There is even an index that makes it great for going back for rereading of certain sections. This book has this reviewer's vote in agreeing with the author's argument but read it for yourself and than decide. And what better time for this novel to arrive on the scene as we celebrate the great Summer of Love of 1967.
Cheri Clay
Reviewer
Debra's Bookshelf
The Hades Project
Lynn Sholes and Joe Moore
Midnight Ink
2143 Wooddale Drive, Woodbury, MN 55125-2989
9780738709307 $14.95 www.midnightinkbooks.com 1-800-843-6666
Cotten Stone is peculiarly suited to fighting the forces of evil. By day a senior investigative correspondent for the Satellite News Network, Cotten also happens to be the mortal daughter of Furmiel, the only one of the Fallen Angels to have sought forgiveness for following Lucifer over to the dark side. In this third installment in Lynn Sholes' and Joe Moore's series of Cotten Stone mysteries, Cotten and her off-limits love interest Father John Tyler, director of the Vatican's intelligence gathering arm, uncover another fiendish plot hatched by the "old man" and his cronies. The "Hades Project" of the book's title, a marriage of modern technology and ancient religious artifact, threatens to unleash a hell on earth unless Cotten and John can do the Lord's work in time. The fate of the world is at stake, of course, but of more immediate concern is the welfare of two extraordinary children whom the bad guys need to have in their power if their diabolical scheme is to succeed.
The Hades Project, like its predecessors in the series (The Grail Conspiracy and The Last Secret), is a smoothly-written, nicely paced page-turner. The prose is transparent--which is to say that one doesn't notice it much, for good or ill, while reading, which is appropriate for the genre. The plot is not edge-of-your-seat gripping, but it definitely holds one's interest. The characters are likable but not as fleshed out as they might be. This time around the story is furthered both by the introduction of a character, one of the children, who is likely to become a fixture in the series and by--if I'm not imagining it--a ratcheting up in intensity of the just-this-side-of-licit relationship between Cotten and Father John. it will be interesting to see what happens to these characters in subsequent installments.
Practically Perfect in Every Way
Jennifer Niesslein
G. P. Putnam's Sons
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
9780399153914 $24.95 www.penguin.com 1-800-847-5515
Jennifer Niesslein has reason to be content. She lives with her husband and son and two dogs in a nice house in a nice neighborhood in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is reasonably young (in her early thirties) and reasonably successful (Niesslein is the cofounder of Brain, Child magazine), reasonably happy (her "average" happiness is in fact a 6 out of a possible 10) and reasonably well-to-do (having married into money). She is also a more than reasonably good writer. Still, Niesslein thought her life could stand some improvement....
Practically Perfect is a type of book we seem to be seeing more of these days (unless I'm just noticing them more): the author undertakes a project of some kind--outlandish or unusual in some way--and invites the reader to come along for the ride through the magic of creative nonfiction. A sort of travelogue without the travel. Watch while the author reads the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, say, or spends a year cooking Julia Child recipes. It's a conceit, of course, but one for which I have a particular weakness. With the appearance of each of these new books I kick myself for not having come up with the idea myself.
For her book, Niesslein--why didn't I think of this?--immersed herself for two years in the advice of an assortment of self-help experts, from Dr. Phil to Dr. Laura, from Cosmo to Oprah to Dale Carnegie to Dear Abby. She divides the spectrum of self-help possibilities into seven general areas--house, finances, marriage, mothering, community, health, and spirituality--and approaches these topics serially, exploring the programs of a number of different experts on each topic. Niesslein does not follow the various gurus' advice slavishly, but she is more serious about adopting their programs than most readers probably are. She journals her feelings for Dr. Phil, religiously cleans the "hot spots" in her house per the advice of her cleaning expert, and she exercises for 8 minutes every morning because Jorge Cruise told her to.
There is a practical benefit to reading this book. Readers are introduced painlessly to a host of different self-help programs. Like me, you may find yourself Googling some of them to find out more. But with books like this I'm really just in it for the ride. I want to spend time with an interesting character who can entertain on the page: check, and check. Niesslein's personality is spiced with a dollop of misanthropy (which, frankly, I find attractive):
"Just because I learned some tips on how to interact better with people doesn't mean I find it enjoyable or even worthwhile."
She is wont to be riled by petty grievances:
"One evening, Brandon walks into the kitchen and catches me, while I load the dishwasher, playacting the scene that will happen when the recycling bin thief is confronted. You had to have known that wasn't your recycling bin, I snap. That nasty-ass green one is. My ire is contagious, and soon Brandon and I have, together, painted a devastating picture of the perpetrators' moral vacuum."
And she writes well. It's a winning combination. My only complaint is that the book could use an index--for help with all that self-help Googling the book inspires.
The Real Festivus
Dan O'Keefe
Perigee Books
c/o The Berkley Publishing Group
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
9780399532290 $12.95 www.penguin.com 1-800-847-5515
If you're a Seinfeld fan you know all about Festivus, the faux holiday that was invented by George Costanza's father Frank:
Frank Costanza: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.Cosmo Kramer:
What happened to the doll?
Frank Costanza: It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!
In the Seinfeld episode ("The Strike"), the celebration of Festivus involves an aluminum pole, feats of strength, and a ritual airing of grievances. It is not, at least in George's view, an occasion of celebration, but rather a holiday to be endured. The idea of Festivus has nonetheless leapt from the small screen into the popular imagination. Need a Festivus pole for your own real-life celebration? You can buy a six-foot floor model online.
As it turns out, Festivus did not spring fully formed from the heads of Seinfeld's writers. It sprang from the imagination of Daniel O'Keefe Sr., the father of one of those writers. The O'Keefe family actually celebrated Festivus annually during the 1970's and 80's while Dan O'Keefe and his two younger brothers were growing up. But as the author explains in The Real Festivus, the holiday they observed was rather different from--if no less bizarre than--the celebration popularized on television:
"Though only a family of five originally celebrated Festivus, these days it is celebrated by literally dozens of prisoners, college students, and bored people in rural areas across this great nation. And some crappier nations like Canada and Uruguay. And God bless them all and keep them from rape and thresher accidents. But they're doing it all wrong."
In this record-straightening book, O'Keefe explains the genesis of Festivus, its symbols (a clock and a bag, but no pole) and rituals. Festivus was celebrated (irregularly, with no set date) with depressing music and the recitation of poetry and the ingestion of meat. There were strange hats and coarse political statements. Each year one or more themes were assigned to the holiday. (In 1977, for example, the theme was, "Are We Depressed? Yes!") But the most important element of Festivus was the annual tape recording. More than half of this book is taken up with a transcription of some of those Festivus tapes--jokes and pronouncements and embarrassing family secrets and summaries of the family's history since the last recording.
Do these transcripts make for interesting reading? Well, not per se. We readers are like outsiders peering through the O'Keefe's windows. The boys are teasing one another, their mother sitting to the side, for the most part quiet. Their father is hamming it up in front of the cassette recorder, now speaking German, now breaking into song, now declaiming in some more or less meaningful pidgin Romance language. Most of the jokes are lost on us, but we can appreciate the atmosphere within. And so the Festivus transcripts, if not riveting, wind up providing us with a surprisingly intimate portrait of a family, its members intelligent and deeply odd, playful but mutually supportive.
In his humorous introduction to The Real Festivus Jason Alexander (George Costanza on Seinfeld) says of the book that it is "a shameless attempt to cash in on an international phenomenon. It is airport or bathroom reading at its best." Which is true enough. But it's also mildly informative and funny and charmingly written and brief. Recommended, in short, for the Seinfeld aficionado.
Power Play
Joseph Finder
St. Martin's Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
9780312347482 $24.95 www.stmartins.com 1-888-330-8477
Jake Landry is a junior executive with Hammond Aerospace, a company riven more than usually by corporate infighting since the recent selection of a new CEO intent on cleaning house. Jake is exceedingly competent, and in fact knows more than anyone else at Hammond about the new wide-bodied jet the company is rolling out. His expertise lands him a last-minute summons to the company's annual leadership retreat -- three days off the grid at a remote fishing lodge in British Columbia, team-building with a bunch of alpha male execs. But once they're arrived at the lodge, professional backstabbing takes a back seat to more immediate dangers: a gang of dead-eyed hunters take the group hostage and demand an enormous ransom for their release.
Like Joseph Finder's previous corporate thrillers, Power Play is laced with technical jargon, which lends the story credibility yet somehow doesn't weigh down the pages. The story is narrated in the first person by Jake, who turns out to have a complicated past that makes him particularly well suited to dealing with a bunch of heavily-armed baddies. Jake is arguably a bit cartoonish, a hero who stands up for the underdog and doesn't kowtow to power, who gets himself in hot water for his troubles. But he's sufficiently fleshed-out to carry this adrenaline-rush of a read. Finder is adept at dripping Jake's back story into the text. Come to that, he's expert at writing smart, edge-of-your-seat fiction that you'll want to read in one sitting: feed the kids before you start on this one.
Jakeman
Deborah Ellis
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
311 Washington St., Brighton, MA 02135
www.fitzhenry.ca
9781550415735 $16.95
Deborah Ellis dedicates her book to "The children of those we keep in cages."
This remarkable book centers on a bus load of inner city black and latino kids traveling by bus to spend Mother's Day visiting their moms, an aunt, and a grandmother who are in prison. These children are in foster care and their only relatives are in jail. Jake DeShawn and his older sister Shosone take a gift to their mother, of only the allowed items; white socks, two bars of white soap etc. The list is utilitarian, and the items are allowed only three times a year. The socks Jackman picked out have a thread of blue along the tops. They are thrown out by the guards because they vary from the allowed. The children's visit which is framed by yellow lines they can't cross, hands visible at all times on top of the table, gives a taste of the real thing. Chilling.
Jack is an artist who has created an image for himself. He is Jakeman, a superman type with barbed wire surrounding him. He gathers strength from this image of himself. The kids become the sum of their parts, adding up to a force which makes them all stronger. But, there is no protection from his mother's words, that her being incarcerated is her kid's fault.
"You both kept asking for stuff," Mom said. "You wanted singing lessons and science camp, video games, paints, and other art supplies. Fancy running shoes. How was I supposed to pay for all that? I could barely pay my night school fees."
There was so much truth to this I felt stunned reading it, even though I balked at the mother blaming her kids for her committing the crime that put her behind bars. At the close of this heart rending visit Jake thinks, "A quick good-bye was easiest, like yanking an old bandage off an arm."
I recommend this story to all readers in this age group, and for all prison libraries. This is a book their mothers should read, too.
Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out Of A Tree
Lauren Tarshis
Dial Books For Young Readers
c/o Penguin Readers Group
345 Hudson Street, 15th floor, New York, NY 10014
9780803731646 $16.99 www.penguin.com 1-800-847-5515
Imagine closing a book, feeling as though you have lived other lives. Lauren Tarshis takes the reader on a journey into hearts and minds you will never forget. When Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out of A Tree, changes in her life had prepared the ground. She stood up to face the changes.
Emma Jean is brilliant, scientific, a logical thinker who analyzes everything, but somehow her feelings are not part of the equation. Emotions are messy. In spite of her stoicism you find yourself loving Emma Jean. The girl Colleen, who she is placed at odds with, is in every way except one, her opposite. They are both kind. Colleen is not logical and cares too much what people think.
"Colleen Pomerantz had this idea---a faded, crumpled, smudged idea---that being nice counted for something, even in the seventh grade."
The viewpoint changes between the girls works very well to show the characters in depth. Tarshis is unusually deft in keeping these view point switches clear and in character in this first novel. The voice of the narrator is never heard, everything comes through dialog and action.
The popular, self centered, manipulative Laura, has made life miserable for Colleen. Emma Jean explains to Colleen;
"Chimps are very much like humans. In their communities, certain individuals become dominant. These individuals are known as alpha chimps. They achieve dominance through intimidation. They bare their teeth and beat their chests and achieve control of the group because the others feel threatened."
"That's very interesting, Emma Jean. But why are you telling me this?"
"Because you think Laura Gilroy is the alpha chimp."
This novel transcends age categories. I would recommend this book not only for this age group but anyone who loves a good story and needs to learn how to face the alpha chimps in our society.
Franci McMahon
Reviewer
Gary's Bookshelf
The Quickie
James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
Little Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group USA
1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
9780316117364 $27.95 www.HatchetteBookGroupUSA.com
I did not like the first book "Step On A Crack" by these same two authors. There were several reasons. Among them was the pacing was very uneven and I had no interest in some of the characters. I am happy to say that is not the case here. In fact this one has all the elements that make Patterson one of most read authors. The story is full of conflicts, good cops and bad ones, the characters are interesting, believable, and the novel speeds along until its surprising ending. Though Patterson has several co-authors, most of the books are rapid-fire thrillers. This one is a new addition to that list.
Kill Now, Pay Later
Robert Terrall
Hard Case
299 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
9780843957754 $6.99 www.HardCaseCrime.com
Hard Case has another winner with this mystery that reads like a Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer thriller. There are women galore, gunplay and lots of hard-hitting action. Though published in 1960 the novel, of course, is a little dated but not very much because the writing is fast and furious with fun characters and situations. Speaking of Mickey Spillane, Hard Case has one of his last novels set for publication in November.
Cafe Indiana
Jeanne Raetz Stutigen
The University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Monroe Street, Madison Wisconsin
9780299224943 $19.95 www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress
The author of "Cafe Wisconsin" now takes the reader to Indiana and shows the best eateries that are family owned diners. She tells who the owners are, what type of food is served, location, hours of operation and a lot more. I noticed there are so many places that are only open for breakfast and lunch. The book is also broken down into regions of the state like the Wisconsin book. This is a food lovers guide to some of the best eating places in the state of Indiana.
Kiss Me Deadly
Susan Kearney
Tor Romantic Suspense
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
9780765356673 $14.95 www.tor.com
From the first page in which Mandy Newman is followed, crashed into and sent into the waters of Tampa Bay, to the final revealing page the author takes readers along a whirlwind of exciting suspense that is a page-turner. The author also does a great job of setting the tone of what it is like to live in the Tampa Bay area.
High Profile
By Robert B. Parker
Putnam
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
9780399154041 $24.95 www.penguin.com
Parker is back with a new Jessie Stone and that's a good thing. A talk show host is murdered and Stone has to find out who did it and why. Stone investigates and finds many different layers to this stars life. Parker also has Sunny Randall involved in the hunt for the killer. The story has all the elements of the Spenser novels and more because of the combined characters from his two different series.
Lost Trails
Edited by Martin M. Greenberg and Russell Davis
Pinnacle Books Kensington Publishing Corp
850 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022
9780786018246 $6.99 www.kensingtonbooks.com
Some of the best writers in the field of western fiction tell new stories of the long ago era. There is gunplay, outlaws, marshals, bar fights and all the elements that make the sagebrush tales so much fun to read. I enjoyed the different views of the old west by so many authors.
Rush Hour 1 2 3
Newmarket Press
18 East 48th Street, New York, NY 10017
9781557047830 $19.95 www.newmarketpress.com 1-800-669-3903
This is the book for any fan of the series of "Rush Hour" movies. There are behind the scenes stories about all three films, how each film was made, pictures of all three movies and lots of trivia that is sure to please anyone who likes the Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker escapades.
Slip and Fall
Nick Santora
State Street Press
2500 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
9780681127494 $24.95
The author who has written for "Law and Order" and The Sopranos" now writes a novel that is a fast read. The story unfolds with an attorney who is so quick to rise to the top of his profession he doesn't care how he gets there. He just wants to get ahead and please his father. He becomes involved with gangsters who dictate to him how his office is going to run. One interesting thing is that this is the first of many books published by Borders Book Stores. This one would make a great film in the tradition of the "The Firm."
The Rabbit Factory
Marshall Karp
MacAdam Cage Publishing
155 Samsome Street Suite 550, San Francisco, CA 94104
9781596922174 $14.00 www.macadamcage.com
This is the first in the Lomax and Biggs mysteries. It begins with the murder of a child molester who just happens to work at a theme park as a rabbit character. There are many twists and turns as detectives Lomax and Biggs investigate the case. I liked the story but found it just a tad too long.
The Quotable Woman
Elaine T. Partnow
Checkmark Books
An imprint of Facts On File Inc
11 Penn Plaza, New York NY 10001
0816045755 $29.95 www.factsonfile.com
Women have always had something to say on just about everything. Now the author has collected some of the most famous women through the ages. There are many topics and unique perspectives females have. Some are very deep thinkers while others are very simple. The pieces are fun reading and very educational. This book should be used as required reading for courses in women's studies.
Echoes of Love
Kathleen Pickering
Lionhearted Publishing Inc
P. O. Box 618, Zephyre Cove NV 89448-0618
1573430366 $8.00 www.Lionhearted.com 888-546-6478
Melissa Ryan inherits half of a very prestigious auction house. She finds out that not everything is as it seems. She travels to England and becomes involved in many adventures with some interesting characters along the way. The novel is fast paced light reading sure to please any romance fan.
Gary Roen
Reviewer
Gloria's Bookshelf
The Ever-Running Man
Marcia Muller
Warner Books (now Grand Central Publishing)
237 Park Ave., NY, NY 10017
9780446582421 $24.99 800-759-0190; www.hachettebookgroupusa.com
Sharon McCone, who has married her long-time boyfriend Hy Ripinsky, has been hired by the latter's company, an international security firm, to investigate a series of bombings at their facilities around the world over a period of two years. No one has been killed – so far – and the company has finally decided to call in Sharon, a San Francisco private eye. No sooner is Sharon hired than the ever-running man [so called because all anyone has ever seen of him is a fleeting figure leaving the scene of the bombings] strikes again. Sharon comes dangerously close to being a victim, and relates: "I was hiding behind my car, watching an inferno that I missed being trapped in by less than a minute." And this time there is a fatality, a young security guard well known to Sharon and Hy.
As things escalate, Sharon becomes convinced that either Hy and/or one of his two partners are the primary targets, and has no choice but to launch investigations into their pasts, including that of her husband. For his part, Hy has assumed that would be necessary, which doesn't make it any less unpleasant to do, and indeed that quest has unexpected repercussions. Each of the three partners has a somewhat murky past which has included some acts that were less than legal or ethical.
Ms. Muller, the author of 24 previous entries in this series [one co-authored with her husband, mystery writer Bill Pronzini] and three standalones, has written another enjoyable novel. It is always a pleasure to re-enter the world of Sharon and Hy, and the California coastal and hilltop areas so beautifully described. Suspense mounts as the puzzle gradually is solved [albeit not before their lives are put at risk], with an ending that is unexpected but makes perfect sense.
Christietown, a Cece Caruso Mystery
Susan Kandel
Harper Paperbacks
10 E. 53rd St., NY, NY 10022
9780060883690 $13.95 www.harpercollins.com 800-242-7737
Cece Caruso, divorced mystery biographer and expectant grandmother, has been hired to help promote a new mystery-themed housing development just east of Los Angeles named Christietown, and who better for the job, since Cece's latest project is a book about Dame Agatha, the mystery of whose life and marriage have spawned several books. [The logo for Christietown, designed by the developer [who claims to be a distant relative of the famed novelist], is "a white-haired, hatchet-wielding spinster sitting inside a spinning teacup, the word Christietown spelled out in dripping blood." For the grand opening weekend, Cece is putting on a play inspired by Miss Marple, casting in it her friends, acquaintances and gardener. But when her leading lady's dead body is discovered on the night of the play, the celebration turns somber. Cece, having brought the dead woman on board in the leading role, feels responsible. She already has a lot on her plate, planning not only a baby shower for her daughter but her own wedding, and now finds herself searching for a killer as well. She employs her burgeoning Christie research to find the answers. Cece is an amateur sleuth [this is the fourth book in the series] and her fiance is an LA Hollywood Division detective, and this produces some not-unexpected conflict between them. She must also contend with her ex-husband, who has shown up several days early for their daughter's baby shower with both his own fiancee and her mother in tow—just to add to her challenge.
In addition to the murder mystery, the reader is treated to a good bit of fascinating Christie lore [including, importantly, the eternal Christie question: when she was 35 years of age, where did she disappear to for 11 days in December of 1926], as well as the occasional insights into the love of vintage clothing, which I found to be a lot of fun, contrary to my expectations. It must be admitted that "fun," in fact, is a very apt description of the book – lighthearted [albeit dealing with not one, but two murders], with characters with just the right amount of zaniness. All in all, a perfect summer read. Cece is a nostalgic charmer.
Innocent as Sin
Elizabeth Lowell
Wm. Morrow
c/o HarperCollins, 10 E. 53rd St., NY, NY 10022
9780060829827 $24.95 www.harpercollins.com 800-242-7737
In the latest of her 60-plus novels, Elizabeth Lowell tells a tale inspired by facts [relatively] 'ripped from the headlines' – brutal wars far from home shores, money laundering, the smuggling of blood diamonds, the inter- and trans-national illegal arms trade, among other things. Kayla Shaw, a private banker in Arizona, is unwittingly forced to become involved in money laundering on a huge scale when her client's husband blackmails her into complicity. The philosophy from which the title derives comes from a statement by Kayla: "Even sin was innocent once. The rest is timing and opportunity."
Rand McCree is a painter who becomes a reluctant participant in events that ended in the murder of his identical twin brother. That loss has motivated him, five years later, to find and track down the killer, an evil man who is Kayla's nemesis as well, and their shared hatred for the man and all he represents propels the plot. Circumstances have them both in the employ of St. Kilda Consulting, a "necessary organization in today's world of transnational crime, failed and failing states, feral cities, and the just plan savage places in between. All the places where duly appointed and lawful governments are just short of useless and corrupt governments thrive." Another player is John Neto, described as "a black man speaking Scots Gaelic—who was also a former British intelligence officer—was presently chief of intelligence of a small African country that was besieged by transnational criminals from Russia, Brazil, Europe, and the UAE. And this man was being interviewed for American TV in a room in British Columbia, Canada, about a murderous Siberian gunrunner presently living the high life of a socialite in Phoenix, Arizona."
I had some problems with this book, not the least of which was that I found the protagonists rather two-dimensional. I also felt the adjective "feral" was annoyingly over-use
