A Very Private Gentleman: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)If Martin Booth's new novel A VERY PRIVATE GENTLEMAN is a bestseller, expect Italy to become a highly popular tourist destination. His narrator, an international criminal, spends the novel alternately enticing you to join him high in the Italian Apennines and cautiously warning you from trying to find him.
The novel's setting, a small, unnamed, rural Italian village, is exquisite and exquisitely rendered. Booth takes time to describe precisely and poetically the old wine shop run by a maniacal dwarf and an obedient giant, the ancient apothecary whose floorboards have absorbed centuries of spills, and the historic piazzas that inspire nothing but nonchalance in the townspeople who visit them every day.
Clarke, which is not the narrator's real name but an alias, poses as a painter of butterflies, a Nabokovian occupation that allows for such eccentricities as long absences, erratic behavior, and no set schedule. So he often lounges and partakes of local delicacies --- the wine, the home-smoked prosciutto, his two mistresses, all of which he describes in tantalizing detail --- while he practices his true calling. Clarke's real profession is much more sinister than painting insects, although equally artistic. He doesn't reveal it until almost 100 pages in, but hints, "I am the salesman of death ... I do not cause it. I merely arrange for its delivery. I am death's booking-clerk, death's bellhop."
Despite his obsession with privacy and death, Clarke is an endlessly entertaining narrator, and his insights into the international underworld and the human condition are intriguing. "Everyone is a terrorist," he observes. "Everyone carries a gun in his heart. Most do not fire simply because they have no cause to pursue."
Booth's rendering of his narrator's voice is remarkable, both for its consistency and for its intricacy. Not only does Clarke keep his guard up through the novel's course, he also manages to convey a great deal about his antihero without him realizing it. Clarke admits his deception to the reader: "The names are changed, the places changed, the people changed. There are a thousand Piazzas di S. Teresa, ten thousand alleys that have no names ... You will not find me."
But Clarke seems unaware of his own self-deception: while he is astute and witty, he can also occasionally be self-important and even boorish in justifying his very private lifestyle. And he studiously avoids cultivating any lasting human connections while wondering how to make his mark on the world, never realizing that to do one is to ensure the other. But his shortcomings become the book's strengths, for as he contemplates life and death in Italy, his flaws --- and his own ignorance of them --- reveal his surprising depth and complex humanity.
Booth makes A VERY PRIVATE GENTLEMAN more than just a postcard from Italy; the setting has direct thematic relevance to the story. History is not just a recurring motif, but a character in itself, an antagonist who constantly reminds Clarke of his encroaching mortality. What better place to set such a face-off than in the seat of Western history, the land where the Knights Templar roamed, where abandoned castles and churches litter the terrain. Even the view from his window captures eras past: "What I can see, with my pair of compact pocket Yashica binoculars, are five thousand years of history laid out before me as if it were a tapestry upon a cathedral wall, an altar-cloth to the god of time spread over the world."
Ultimately, even the passage of time becomes a delicacy in A VERY PRIVATE GENTLEMAN. With a watchmaker's precision, Booth has written a suspenseful and intricate tale, one that is as inviting as it is cautionary.
--- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner

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Maryland Voices of the Civil War Review

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(More customer reviews)With this book, Charles W. Mitchell makes a major contribution to Civil War studies. No state in this era was more torn than the state of Maryland. Applying both scholarly wisdom and personal tenacity, Mitchell has successfully labored to uncover the story of Marylanders through their own private testimony. Moreover, he organizes and connects his material beautifully, to make a truly readable and indeed enjoyable, if at times harrowing, volume. Such a book has been needed for a long time; and for many years hence, both scholars and ordinary readers will be in Mr. Mitchell's debt.

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The most contentious event in our nation's history, the Civil War deeply divided families, friends, and communities. Both sides fought to define the conflict on their own terms-Lincoln and his supporters struggled to preserve the Union and end slavery, while the Confederacy waged a battle for the primacy of local liberty or "states' rights." But the war had its own peculiar effects on the four border slave states that remained loyal to the Union. Internal disputes and shifting allegiances injected uncertainty, apprehension, and violence into the everyday lives of their citizens.No state better exemplified the vital role of a border state than Maryland-where the passage of time has not dampened debates over issues such as the alleged right of secession and executive power versus civil liberties in wartime. InMaryland Voices of the Civil War, Charles W. Mitchell draws upon hundreds of letters, diaries, and period newspapers-many previously unpublished-to portray the passions of a wide variety of people-merchants, slaves, soldiers, politicians, freedmen, women, clergy, slave owners, civic leaders, and children-caught in the emotional vise of war. Mitchell tells the compelling story of how Maryland African Americans escaped from slavery and fought for the Union and their freedom alongside white soldiers and he reinforces the provocative notion that Maryland's Southern sympathies-while genuine-never seriously threatened to bring about a Confederate Maryland. Maryland Voices of the Civil War illuminates the human complexities of the Civil War era and the political realignment that enabled Marylanders to abolish slavery in their state before the end of the war.

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Annapolis, City on the Severn: A History Review

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(More customer reviews)Jane Wilson McWilliams has achieved a rare feat for what ordinarily would be a local history but is likely to have much broader appeal because its subject is the Maryland state capital and home of the U.S.Naval Academy: She has written a book that is as useful for locals as it is for outsiders. Whether it's the existence of those huge Academy radio transmitter towers that greet the mariner or city/county politics in the midst of the post-World War II expansion, she tells the story with grace and detail. Hers also is an inclusive book that weaves in the history of black Annapolis. She says she only followed the objective of the first Annapolis historian, Elihu Riley (The Ancient City, 1887): "To gather the rays of light from their varied sources and to form them into one prism of information."
In addition to McWilliams's writing, the book contains a lot of previously unpublished historical pictures, many striking and some in color. The book, a copublication with the Maryland Historical Trust Press, also is a feather in the cap of Johns Hopkins University Press, which lately has been accused of judging its publication list by salability rather than heft. In terms of Maryland history, this book should be welcomed with the same enthusiasm that greeted Sherry Olson's Baltimore: The Building of an American City, also by Johns Hopkins, three decades ago.
This is local history at its best -- readable but also a basic reference book.

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The story of Annapolis resonates in every century of American history. Annapolis has been home to tobacco plantations, political intrigue, international commerce, the U.S. Naval Academy, ballooning population growth, and colonial, state, and national government. Jane Wilson McWilliams's captivating history explores Annapolis from its settlement in 1650 to its historic preservation campaign of the late twentieth century.McWilliams brings alive the people of Annapolis as she recounts their fortunes and foibles. Be they black or white, slave or master, woman or man, each has a place in this book. With unsurpassed detail and graceful prose, she describes the innermost workings of Maryland's capital city-its social, civic, and religious institutions; its powerful political leaders; and its art, architecture, and neighborhoods. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this book chronicles more than three hundred years of Annapolis history. As unique as the city it describes,Annapolis, City on the Severn builds on the most recent scholarship and offers readers a fascinating portrait into the past of this great city.

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Trout Madness Review

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(More customer reviews)This book relates simple tales of a lawyer gone mad with trout fishing. What is so unique about this book is the simplicity in the stories told, they feel so close to the heart that the reader can almost touch them. Reading this book will show you how to appreciate the simple things in life and to take notice of the vast array of people who inhabit this world. Even if you have never fished for trout you're sure to enjoy this book

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Trout Madness was John D. Voelker's (aka, Robert Traver) fifth book (to be followed by his equally popular, Trout Magic). Here, for the delight of his many fans and friends, are twenty-one stories gleaned from the lifetime of glorious fishing - as true as can be expected of a fisherman. They cover the whole range of the trout fishing season, from The First Day ("Entire expedition got half shot and retired in vast disorder") to The Last Day ("Only eight more months to the magic first day"). There are hilarious stories that make one laugh out loud and stories that have an undercurrent of deep emotion. But each one carries that special kind of oblique humor and canniness that were John D. Voelker's special mark. And though this is no "how to" book, the author cannot help divulge in his stories some of the tricks of a lifetime of wily fishing.Here are a few of the stories: "The First Day," "Fish Car," "The Haunted Pond," "Trout Heaven," "The Old and the Proud," "The Old Fox," "Spots Before the Eyes," and "The Last Day." (71/4 X 101/4, 196 pages)

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Revival Study Bible (Hardcase) Review

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(More customer reviews)I was given this Bible as a gift and I simply love it! It's full of helpful notes by Christian men and women I have long admired. So thankful!!!

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I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens Review

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(More customer reviews)He was the son of a self-made California businessman who often made profits betting on "fixed" horse races. Lincoln Steffens grew up privileged in a large, happy well-fixed Republican family, which he remained emotionally close to for the rest of his life. After a three year stint in Europe during which he studied at the Sorbonne and Leipzig University, Steffens was shocked to receive a $100 bill from his impatient father instructing him to immediately go to New York and do something "practical" with his life.
But his father also supplied a letter of introduction that helped his son land a job at the New York Evening Posst, a venerable, if somewhat staid and conservative major newspaper in the 1890s. From that time on, Steffens made his own way in the world. He investigated Wall Street and went on to report on major graft going on nearby, on Mulberry Street, where the New York Police Department was headquartered.
Steffens was hired a few years later, in 1901, by the brilliant editor, Sam McClure, who was already making a huge reputation for McClure's Magazine by hiring the most eclectic and original writers any magazine has ever had on its masthead --Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Ida Tarbell, William Allen White and Ray Stannard Baker, among others. Years later when a contingent of these same writers had a "falling out" with the mercurial McClure, they all hid behind a door (including Steffens) while Ida Tarbell did the negotiating.
From the beginning, the very level-headed and careful Tarbell, McClure's favorite and most trusted writer, said that Steffens was "the most brilliant addition" to the McClure's staff, even though "she often felt uncomfortable with his incredibly outspoken" and what she deemed somewhat obnoxious personality.Nevertheless, despite Tarbell's misgivings, the McClure's connection was the making of Steffens as a nationally known investigative journalist. He went on to "tutor" the new police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in the "ways" of his new department, and count him as a life-long confidante, desspite their ongoing and profound differences. And Steffens went on to investigate the governments of a score of cities across the United States -- Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Minneapolis and others, eventually packaging all these reporting forays into one critically acclaimed book "The Shame of the Cities."
And, it is a profound understatement to say that the cast of characters that Steffens made friends with along the way was legendary -- John Reed, Ernest Hemmingway, Walter Lippmann, Sinclair Lewis and others.
But in the end, the big question about Steffens that biographer Peter Hartshorn grapples with in an intelligent, careful way is why was this hard-head, award-winning muckraker was so muddle-headed when it came to looking at Russia seventeen years into the revolution when even the most ardent left-wing writers of the time were beinning to make caustic attacks on the murderous activities of the Stalin regime? The title of Hartshorn's biography, based on Steffens' famous comment, "I have seen the future," underscores the profound mark this comment and Steffens's dogmatic, uncritical view of the Stalin regime had on his journalistic legacy. As Hartshorn points out, "by 1934......daily tyranny and terror were already hallmarks of the Stalin regime, that seventeen years into the revolution could not be easily dismissed......."
"In the end," Hartshorn writes, "Steffens went too far. His aceptance of Lenin and Communism was extreme. But his painstaking diagnosis of the central problem in his own country --the deliberate suppression of democracy --and his courage in pursuing and revealing this ugly truth helped to set America on a better course, rightfully establishing the name of Lincoln Steffens as the greatest of the muckrakers."
Nevertheless, despite Hartshorn's balanced, graceful writing job and his intensive research on turn of the century politics and journalism, Lincoln Steffens himself still seems somewhat elusive.

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At the dawn of the twentieth century, Lincoln Steffens, an internationally known and respected political insider, went rogue to work for McClure's Magazine. Credited as the proverbial father of muckraking reporting, Steffens quickly rose to the top of McClure's team of investigative journalists, earning him the attention of many powerful politicians who utilized his knack for tireless probing to battle government corruption and greedy politicians. A mentor of Walter Lippmann, friend of Theodore Roosevelt, and advisor of Woodrow Wilson, Steffens is best known for bringing to light the Mexican Revolution, the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times, and the Versailles peace talks.Now, with print journalism and investigative reporters on the decline, Lincoln Steffens' biography serves as a necessary call to arms for the newspaper industry. Hartshorn's extensive research captures each detail of Steffens' life-from his private letters to friends to his long and colorful career-and delves into the ongoing internal struggle between his personal life and his overpowering devotion to the "cause."

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Buryin' Daddy: Putting My Lebanese, Catholic, Southern Baptist Childhood to Rest (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography) Review

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(More customer reviews)Buryin' Daddy: Putting My Lebanese, Catholic, Southern Baptist Childhood to Rest is a worthy offering in the University Press of Missisippi "Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography" series.
The careful arrangement of everyday events and detailed recounting of specific conversations build what could have been just an autobiographical memoir of growing up in a small Southern town into a compelling mystery. Using the title as a clue, it is apparent that the friction between the author and her father is leading somewhere. The reader is moved through the multicultural universe of this small, Southern town, each ethnic group pulling and tugging on the loyalty of the author.
The Lebanese (really Syrian) enclave came down the Mississippi River in the early 1900's, peddling small wares house to house. Some members stopped in Vicksburg while others moved up the Yazoo River to the thriving river port town. By Nicholas' generation they have become a substantial element in the relatively large Catholic Church and part and parcel of the business community, owning the town's primary car dealership and Main Street grocery and dry goods stores.
Members of the original group marry outside their Lebanese community and the addition of Southern Baptist small farmers from Yazoo County and non-Lebanese, though Catholic, members create some of the tensions that permeate the life of the author. The school integrates and attitudes toward the black community enter the mix.
However, the primary friction arises when the author's mother insists her growing family must leave the grandparent's sheltering home on Grand Avenue (the reader can tell the kind of home by the name of the street) and have a home of their own. The father's discipline appears capricious after the grandparent's benign leadership. He apparently is not as financially successful as his father and the author sees the family denied essential creature comforts.
The separateness of the author, in spite of a plethora of relatives who are always about, is palpable. Tension is exaggerated as the author takes on what she perceives are the problems her father creates for her mother. We get blunt, unvarnished descriptions of unpleasant surroundings in the author's life.
Father dies unexpectedly in the first third of the book. The rest of the short narrative is a nuanced, compelling story of getting away, first to an eastern college then to success in New York in the publishing world. Continual visits home mature the author, who emotionally is firmly tied to this family and this town. She comes to grips with the death of her younger brother through sorting through memories of him with others who loved him also. She is required to accept the beloved grandmother's dementia. Most importantly, she learns many facts about her grandfather and especially her father.
Burying Daddy is a process, along with coming to grips with her harassing memories.
The book takes on the universal experience of maturing. The power of the book makes us realize that we, too, grew up with tunnel vision, only partially knowing and understanding our parents and our world. Forgiveness is sometimes the only answer.
The minutiae of everyday conversations is relieved by lyrical passages describing Yazoo City and the Mississippi Delta that it borders. They remind the reader of the series namesake Yazoo author Willie Morris who also responded to the beauty of that region.


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A descendant of Lebanese Catholic immigrants on her father's side and Baptist sharecroppers on her mother's, Teresa Nicholas recounts in Buryin' Daddya southern upbringing with an unusual inflection. As the book opens, the author recalls her charmed early childhood in the late 1950s, when she and her family live with her grandparents in a graceful old bungalow in Yazoo City, Mississippi. But when the author is five, her eccentric father-secretive, penurious, autocratic, hoarding-moves his growing family into a condemned duplex nearby. Separated from her beloved grandmother and chafing under her father's erratic discipline, the girl longs to flee from the awful decrepit house. When she's a teenager, she and her father find themselves on conflicting sides of the civil rights movement and their arguments grow more painful, until a scholarship to a northeastern college provides the means of her escape.

Two decades later, Nicholas has built a successful career in book publishing in New York. When her father dies suddenly, she returns to Mississippi for the funeral and to spend a month in the hated duplex as her mother comes to terms with her husband's passing. But as she sorts through the strange detritus of her father's life, the author comes to understand that he was far more complex than the angry man she thought she knew. And as she draws closer to her surprisingly resilient mother, affected by stroke but full of blunt country talk, she finds that her mother is also far from the naïve, helpless creature she remembers. Through a series of surprising and oddly humorous discoveries, the author and her mother will begin to unravel her father's poignant secrets together in this graceful and generous exploration of the intermingling of shame and love that lie at the heart of family life.

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I Gave My Heart to Know This: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)A dead fiance', a mysterious trunk, old letters that were never destroyed, a mysterious photograph, an abandoned tree stand, random conversations with people who have the answers to questions about the past, chance meetings and reunions, long lost mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and grandmothers, an empty ring box, an unfinished letter found in a wallet, women working dangerous jobs on the home front during WWII, union activities in a mine, a mentally unbalanced character, a possible mass murder, meeting Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner and dancing with Judy Garland, a wife attempting to poison her husband, gambling and losing everything, wives leaving husbands and husbands leaving wives, mothers leaving daughters and fathers leaving sons.................................... and more!
An unbelievable story that attempts to tie a family's past to the present without leaving any loose ends.

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Ocean of Blood (The Saga of Larten Crepsley) Review

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(More customer reviews)I loved this book. Larten is my all-time favorite character and to be able to learn more about how he became what he was during the original series is wonderful. There were parts of this where I gasped, where I laughed, and where I wanted to cheer. My only complaint is that it is too short. I read it in one sitting, practically devoured it (then again, I read a lot of books in one sitting). I would definitely recommend this book to those who loved Cirque Du Freak (of course read the first book of this prequel first).

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Before Larten Crepsley was a vampire general...Before he was Darren Shan's master... Before the War of Scars...Larten Crepsley was a teenager. And he was sick of the pomp and circumstance of fusty old vampires telling him what to do. Taking off on his own with his blood brother, Wester, Larten takes off into the world to see what his newly blooded vampire status can get him in the human world. Sucking all he can out of humanity, Larten stumbles into a violent, hedonistic lifestyle, where cheats beckon, power corrupts, and enemies are waiting. This is his story.

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Solace: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)Solace, by Belinda McKeon, is a novel about love and longing. As a noun, `solace' means to find comfort or consolation in a time of distress or sadness. As a verb, it means to give solace to someone else or oneself. This book is about people who find solace in the small things of this world and find it difficult to talk about the bigger things. They hang on to what they know, especially when they face tragedy or their worlds turn upside down.
Tom and Mark are father and son. Tom works his farm in Ireland and Mark is working on his doctorate at Trinity University in Dublin. Tom finds it difficult to understand a life that does not consist of working the land and he finds it very difficult to understand his son. Mark comes to his father's farm when he can to help out, usually on a weekend. There is a huge emotional distance between them and they often end up fighting. Maura, Mark's mother, tries to smooth things out but the gap between father and son is huge.
Mark meets a woman in Dublin named Joanne. Unfortunately, there is bad blood between Mark's father and Joanne's deceased father. This makes the relationship difficult for the family dynamics. When Joanne becomes pregnant, issues rise to the surface and even more distance is felt between Tom and Mark.
The novel takes place in the mid-2000's when Ireland is just beginning to go from a booming country to a place of poverty. What was once a land of opportunity for everyone is becoming a place where housing values are decreasing, unemployment is rising, and large companies are moving out of Ireland to cheaper venues.
Mark has been working on his dissertation for several years without much success. He chose to work on the topic of a woman writer who lived near his father's farm and to assess her writing and relationships with other writers of her time in a new way. His thesis advisor is not impressed and Mark makes one false start after another.
Symbolically, these false starts are similar to the attempts at conversations that Mark and his father have. They start and stop, try to meet one another at some common ground but fail. When tragedy befalls both of them, Tom becomes very dependent on Mark but Mark distances himself even further from his father, burying himself in his studies.
The prologue opens with Tom and Mark alone on the farm with a baby girl named Aiofe. There are no females present and Aiofe is very enamored of her grandfather. Tom takes Aiofe with him on errands he has to do in town and ends up in a grand discord with Tom who did not know where his daughter was. No matter how they try to bridge their distance, they fail. They can find no solace in one another when they are faced with tragedy or pain.
The solace that they have comes from what is familiar to each of them. For Tom it is his farm and the land, and for Mark it is his child and his studies. We readers sadly watch the fumbling attempts they each make to reach each other and the increasing distance that occurs. At one point, Tom gets a cell phone and attempts to call Mark several times a day. Mark makes it a point not to answer and Tom keeps calling.
This is a story of a father and son, of rural Ireland trying to maintain its identity, and the difference between living in a city and living on a farm. Tom can't understand cities and Mark abhors life on a farm. The book is very well-written but at times it goes very slowly, losing the pace that it might have carried. Belinda McKeon is a playwright and there is that sense of discourse in this novel. She has an MFA from Columbia University and this is her debut novel. She is a very promising novelist with a poetic sense and a gift with words. I especially love her characterization of Tom and Mark. I look forward to her future work.

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Groundswell Review

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(More customer reviews)Emma Walker looks like she has it all. Just seven years ago she was on the verge of being exactly nowhere without a job or her scholarship to college when she gets the letter she's been waiting for - a chance to work with a screenwriter on a movie. While she's been warned to stay away from its womanizing, captivating star, she still falls under the spell of Garrett Walker. After a whirlwind courtship that defies all of the rules of Hollywood standards, the two fall in love and marry.
Now here she is all these years later rubbing shoulders with everyone who's anyone, a successful screenwriter in her own right with a summer blockbuster under her designer belt but there's still some of that insecure girl that Garrett plucked from the movie lot seven years earlier in her. The crowds, the parties, the faking it all - it's getting tiresome. When she sneaks away for some peace at a big event, she ends up seeing something that destroys her world instead - evidence that Garrett has been unfaithful.
With a leak to the press and depression setting in, Emma decides to flee somewhere she's never been before, somewhere simple where she can reconnect with the woman she was before Garrett - the kind of woman who didn't wear high heels or fancy dresses - and decide what parts of her life were real and whether she can go back to the life she used to have.
This is such a crazy emotional whirlwind of a book, generally in a dramatically good way for a reader. Emma very quickly goes from a starving student to having one of the world's most sought after actors at her feet. There are awkward moments when she's tossed into social situations he didn't prepare her for and things that he just dumps on her but when he sees she's stressed, he piles on the charm and they work through the problem.
There's barely any page time given to Garrett and Emma's seven year marriage, but there is a lot written about what happened before the wedding and the ways that Emma had to adjust to his lifestyle. It was a pretty interesting look at Garrett - I wanted to channel Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, grab Emma's hands and tell her, "You in danger, girl." I believed he loved her but he had pieces that were a little scary.
I had a like/dislike relationship with Emma. She only seems to have two ways of being - in a relationship or lonely and depressed. I really liked three of her long-term friendships, one that she made during her relationship with Garrett; they were probably the best - maybe only - indicator of her growing confidence with herself. When she got to Mexico and started to pull herself out of her depression, she was more likable than before she'd even met Garrett.
This would fit perfectly as a good beach read. It's not overly fluffy but it's a smooth story with some Hollywood name-dropping, a rags-to-riches smart heroine who deserved better than the flawed hero she ended up with plus a little sparkling Mexican surf and a gorgeous surfer to ride the waves with.


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EAT, SURF, LOVE. A butterfly flaps its wings in New York City . . . and a groundswell forms in Mexico. . . . Sometimes the biggest ripples come from the smallest events. Like the day that Emma Guthrie walks into world-famous movie star Garrett Walker's trailer. When she steps through the door, she's a novice PA who's just dropped out of college after losing her scholarship. When she walks out, she's on her way to becoming Mrs. Emma Walker—wife of an A-list actor. Soon, Emma has made the transition from nobody to red-carpet royalty, trading jeans and flip-flops for closets full of Chanel and Birkin bags, swishing past velvet ropes to attend every lavish party and charity gala on both coasts. With her husband's encouragement, Emma pens a screenplay based on her life, Fame Tax, which becomes a blockbuster sensation. Through it all, Garrett is her ally and her mentor . . . until their relationship is thrown into question by an incriminating text message that Emma discovers on Garrett's phone the night of the Met Costume Institute Gala. Devastated by her husband's infidelity and hounded mercilessly by the paparazzi, Emma must flee New York City to get away from it all and clear her head. Her destination? A sleepy coastal town in Mexico where no one recognizes her and there is nothing but unspoiled beaches for miles. Here, she meets Ben, a gorgeous, California-born surf instructor, who teaches her about the healing powers of surfing, shows her the joys of the simple life, and ultimately opens her up to the possibility of love. From Manhattan's hippest restaurants to the yacht-and-celebrity infested waters of St. Barts, Katie Lee's debut novel is an irresistible insider's glimpse into a glittering world—and a captivating story about how losing everything you thought you wanted can be the first step to finding what you need.

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Southeast Asia Handbook, 2nd: 2nd edition guide to South East Asia covering 7 countries (Footprint Southeast Asia Handbook) Review

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(More customer reviews)I buy countless travel books, and I would definitely recommend Lonely Planet over Footprints for SE Asia. You get more places and more helpful info in the Lonely Planet book. That said, I highly recommend Footprints over LP for South America.

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Sip slings in Singapore, get beyond Bali, or take time out in Thailand with this second edition of Footprint's guide to Southeast Asia. This annually updated handbook is the perfect companion for anyone wanting to get off the banana pancake trail and escape and really uncover this beautiful region. Whether one wants to experience the surf, sea, and sand of a thousand deserted islands, witness the sheer craziness of a twenty-four-hour metropolis, or delve deep into the culture of the region's mysterious and diverse countries, this is the guide that goes there.

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Shylock's Daughter Review

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(More customer reviews)...Never ever abandon your faith to run off with a goy!
_Shylock's Daughter_ provides a fascinating response to Shakespeare's _The Merchant of Venice_, as author Pressler strived to humanize the play's more one-dimensional characters. Providing a rich and complex view of Jewish life in sixteenth-century Venice, Pressler does her best to provide a variety of different viewpoints as she tells her story. Unfortunately, Pressler's array of narrators are as defensively pro-Jewish as Shylock's character was virulently anti-Jewish.
The title leads us to expect Shylock's daughter Jessica to be the martyred heroine of Pressler's book, but the plot systematically paints her as the most unlikeable character in it. Contrasted with her ugly but righteous foster sister Dalilah, who does most of the early narration, "free-thinking" Jessica is depicted as spoiled, selfish, and capricious. Jessica's desire for "freedom," which might be understandable to a modern teenager if it were coached in more meaningful terms, seems shallow and sinful when contrasted with Dalilah's pious obedience. "Freedom," as far as the early narrators are concerned, is nothing more than a catch-word for "extravagance," and is respected (or not) as such.
"Love" also takes a back seat. Jessica's seduction by Lorenzo is complete by the time the story begins, and we never see what caused her to fall in love with him in the first place. (We do of course hear the theory that he is only interested in her for her money.) When Jessica does assert herself as a narrator, it is after their elopement, when Lorenzo's love has failed to meet her expectations, when she finds the Christian feasts filled with sin and mockery, when every thought of her robbed and broken-hearted father fills her with shame. The contrast between Jessica's quick treatment of her love and her elaborate telling and re-telling of her everlasting regret is so stark that it diminishes Jessica from a character to a moral vehicle.
Jessica's unhappiness after giving up her faith for her freedom is so enormous, so complete, that one cannot help but wonder (as sweet Dalilah does) what on earth she was thinking at the time. Pressler leaves no room for doubt that Shylock's daughter was woefully duped, that Shakespeare's Christian characters are all vicious villains, and that only a quiet life as a pious Jewish daughter is worthwhile in such time of trouble. And in such terms, this story is not likely to be very interesting to anyone who wonders *how* Jessica came to discard her faith and *why* she did what she did.
Though the antithesis of the Shakespearian "happily-ever-after" is quite refreshing, Pressler's exclusive focus of the consequences of Jessica's action makes her story read like an Aesop fable. "And the moral of the story is..."

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The Rings of Saturn Review

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(More customer reviews)Sebald's book is full of destruction and loss, yet hope radiates from the objects that remain. The author is deeply curious and impressively educated, which allows him to see cycles of life and death in cities, buildings, artifacts, and engravings. A marvelous storyteller, he weaves fantastic yarns so full of digressions that the reader seems to be dreaming. "I'll just push to the end of the chapter," I would think, but when I reached it, the pattern of each story was so plain, the sense of distance so sharp that my head was clear, my mind refreshed. I'd be left with a few strands of meaning that would serve as the warp for the woof of the next chapter. I was never sure where Sebald was going on his ramble through Suffolk - it was almost like accompanying a somnambulist - but in the end I had entered his dream and luminous ghosts paraded before me, full of light and forgiveness. Leaving the spell of his book, I looked at the old, familiar world with new horror and wonder, a stranger on a new planet with my first inkling of the real story.

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Of Time and Change: A Memoir Review

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(More customer reviews)In this well-written memoir, Frank Waters shares intimate details of his friendships with many of the artists who lived in Taos, New Mexico during the Mabel Dodge Luhan era. A pulitzer prize-winning author, Waters uses his talent with the pen to acquaint the reader with his artist friends in Taos and tell his own life story. Waters also shares his exploration of the history of Native Americans in the Four Corners area. If anyone is qualified to write about the art world in Taos at that time, it is certainly Frank Waters. A must-read for those interested in the Southwest.

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Seven Sorcerers Review

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(More customer reviews)The blurb drew me into this book at once, by describing a young girl who woke up one morning only to find that her brother no longer existed. 'Ooh', I thought. 'People being mysteriously erased from existence is always interesting.' And it was! The title of this book is a bit misleading, because the seven sorcerers only really play a side role to the main plot, but I was still happy with the way it turned out.
The story isn't so easy to describe without giving things away. I suppose it's just a classic fantasy adventure of the "child enters magical world" type. Importantly, the characters are all likeable, the villains have proper motives (as opposed to being evil for no reason), and enough intriguing adventures and incidents occur along the way to keep the action flowing quickly. I would have liked to have seen more character development going on, mind you. When the characters are likeable, why not? There was one major character in particular who we never found out much about at all - the focus was entirely on his role as a guide and his escapades in various situations later on. I wanted to know more about his past, who he was, and so on. Even the main character wasn't fleshed out much. We met her mother and brother briefly in the opening chapter, but she seemed to forget about her regular life very quickly after setting out on her quest. This was a shame, because I felt I couldn't really get to know her properly. Ditto for the other characters. There needed to be more depth to them.
The one really major downfall with this book was the ending. I was reading happily along, when the text suddenly... stopped. I turned over the last few pages, thinking that perhaps I'd made a mistake, but no! It was really the end of the book. But I had so many questions that were left unanswered! What happened to the villain?! What about all these weird things that had been going on during the story that hinted of secrets yet to be revealed!? (I'd been looking forward to these revelations for the whole novel, and felt very cheated when they never arrived!) What about the mysterious person they all kept mentioning?! What about wrapping up the adventure?! The characters didn't even have a farewell conversation! I'd been expecting quite a few revelations which never happened! Very disappointing, and there ought to have been at least another two chapters after the place the book stopped. I suppose this means there will probably be a sequel released, because it makes no sense to just end the story like that, otherwise a whole bunch of things that happened would have been rather pointless. But even so, it could have been handled far better.
I'm giving this book a 4/5 (I'd prefer 3.5 if Amazon would let me, though). I liked it a lot, but the ending was terrible! (Well, that's not quite true - it's more like it didn't have an ending at all.)

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Dogboy Review

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(More customer reviews)I just read this book to my ten year-old son and I can't remember a children's book I've enjoyed more. It's heartwarming, historically interesting and full of originality, especially in the portrayal of the main character Brind, the "Dog Boy" who was raised by dogs and helps care for a nobleman's mastiffs. I particularly loved the author's use of dry humor in bringing the Middle Ages to life. For instance, one of the main characters, an English knight who is captured during a battle in France by an amiable French lord (they become pals), struggles to figure out if the code of chivalry would allow him to return home when the lord suddenly dies, because the ransom to secure his freedom hasn't yet arrived from England. The story works on an adult level, yet the relationships between the half-wild boy Brind and the mastiff "Glaive", his canine soulmate, and the feisty orphaned French girl, Aurelie, makes an appealing story for children. There are some violent scenes and nasty characters, so the book is probably best for older children (as well as teens). I hope this book catches on -- it's an absolute gem.


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