I like Angels and I would like to read about angel and help me understand about Angels so they can, help me. And guide me in whatever I am doing.

This book called out to me in early 1997 soon after my sister in law passed away tragically. I found the title itself comforting because my mother used to sing me the folk song of the same name. What I love about this book is that it is comprised of stories of ordinary people and their extraordinary encounters with angels. It is amazing to "see" the hand of God touching the lives of people just like you and me...and it gives you something to think about in case you are missing the small "miracles" in your own life. I also like the fact that the individual stories are short so if you are pressed for time, you can read one through quickly and move onto the next story when you have more time. It is more likely though, that you will be unable to put the book down and will come away feeling a sense of peace and hope for the future with your newly found awareness of God.

If you like to read about real people and their real experiences with angels, this book has almost 2 dozen treats for you. Each person's story is preceded by a short biographical introduction. The people who met angels are of all ages and stages of life. Most were people of faith and the angels they met were there in response to some great need. All were mystified, comforted, and strengthened in their faith. Your faith will be strengthened, too, as you read.

This book was exceptional for natural birth control methods. It provided an insite to the timing and control one must have to practice this method. I want to recommend this book to anyone interested in birth control.

I am so glad I read this book! It gave me a working understanding of my body and its functions. And also the control that I want WITHOUT DRUGS. This is a book for responsible couples. If you don't want to take responsibility for your sexual activities or relationships, then you will not like this book. If you want to create a future with a partner, you should get this book!

This under-rated book deserves far more exposure than it has received. Imagine a method of family planning that is natural, harmless, 99.9% effective, is beneficial to couple communication in a marriage, and in keeping with one's relationship with God. That's what the Billings Method offers.

Aside from a course in the method, this is an excellent primer on how the Method works. It is a method that will not harm a woman's future fertility (as oral contraceptives do), and will help a woman determine when she is fertile (great for couples having trouble conceiving).

It is a method which works - we've used it 100% effectively to both postpone and conceive. It has been the best thing we could have ever done for our marriage, our relationship with one another, and our relationship with God.

Chicago police officer Zack Lorenzo is stunned with the apparent heart attack suffered by his twenty something wife, which lead to her fatal drowning in the bathtub. Three days after Gabriella is buried, Zack waits in hiding for her family to leave the cemetery so he can visit alone. Urban archeology major Cecil Taylor, not realizing whom Zack is, mentions that no one is buried in Gabriella's coffin. Using electronic equipment he proves his case to a shocked Zack.

Four years later, Zack is a private detective working mostly typical cases, but also handling the paranormal with Cecil as his technical partner. Zack investigates a disappearance case in West Texas starting with questioning Sheriff Jo James about a New Mexico mining accident seven years ago in which she claimed zombies existed. As Jo and Zack partner up, they make the rounds of various practitioners of the paranormal with almost every visit leading to the person strongly recommending they need to work together to survive and perhaps win against a powerful seemingly immortal enemy.

Fans of paranormal private investigative romances will take immense delight with Evelyn Vaughn's BURIED SECRETS. The story line will remind readers of the X Files as Zack and Jo make the rounds of many of the West Texas practitioners of the "arts". Though the villain fails to live up to the reputation garnered by the inquiries, the lead characters and a couple of their helpers are fun to watch, the Paranormal 101 trip a delight, and the investigation enjoyable as the audience receives an engaging weird tale.

Harriet Klausner

Ms. Vaughn really knows her stuff when it comes to different magic systems and it shows as Zack Lorenzo and Sheriff Jo James investigate reports of the walking dead and try to determine which magical user in this west Texas new age town is the culprit. Jo is a strong heroine who won't take any guff from the over-protective Zack and the development of the romance as these two strong-willed people sparked off each other was fun to watch. Their friends, Ashley and Cecil, are fascinating in their own right and I hope to see them again in books of their own.

Though there are no vampires in this book, the tone strongly reminded me of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series, with dialogue and bits of humor reminiscent of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Jo has no super powers like Buffy or Anita, but she's a super heroine who has to overcome her own fears and work together with Zach to overcome the evil force creating zombies. A fabulous, suspenseful read!

BURIED SECRETS is an excellent investigative romance that delves into the Paranormal. This story also has a touch of humor that takes the edge off the unknown evil they are fighting. Jo and Zack's argumentative conversations are comical and the relationship with Zack and Cecil is also very comical and that of a big brother, little brother. Zack irritates Jo to no end with his acts of chivalry and his bossiness, but that however doesn't stop her from wanting him. Zach's attitude towards Jo is fiercely protective. Even though she is the Sheriff, according to Zack she is still just a "girl" and hates that he has brought her into danger. The connection that Jo and Zack have is intense and magical. Though I had expected a much more dramatic ending to this story, I really enjoyed it. While Zach and Jo each face their own fears, they develop a bond that will bring all forces of evil to its knees. Evelyn Vaughn takes us on an exciting journey of bone-chilling suspense and enjoyable romance.

Vis a Vis is the language book I used for my first year of college French. The instructor I had for French class only used the text for vocabulary and some of the verb charts. He also made us memorize some of the postcards in this book, much to the chagrin of many in class. His favorite method of instruction was having the class translate endless numbers of sentences, a process I thought was pretty effective in learning French grammar. I relied on the book to review examples of the sentences from class. I rarely used the exercises in the book, although the ones I did use seemed to be pretty effective learning aids. I still believe the best way to learn a language is total immersion in that language and culture (to learn French, live in France). Since it isn't easy to live in Europe without a job or lots of money, most of us have to rely on books like Vis a Vis. The book is similar to the one I used for Spanish in high school: lots of pictures and French text that explain French culture. I recommend auxiliary texts such as 501 French verbs and a LaRousse dictionary along with this book, or any other introductory French language book. The verb tables in the back of Vis a Vis are inadequate for truly learning the gist of verb conjugation. French is tough, and to learn it you will need all the help you can get.

We used this book for our beginning French classes at Stanford continuing studies. The one flaw with the book is that the grammar is kind of all over the place so it's hard to use as a reference. However, the book has a lot of good information and is very fun to use and read. The CD ROM is absolutely fantastic!! You follow the day to day lives of four French student/actors. They speak clearly and there's text to accompany the video scenes. The CD ROM made studying very fun. I'm trying to find something like this at the advanced level. Please email me if you have suggestions!

Salut! I used this book for two semesters worth of beginning French class at a university, and must say that if used with the proper teaching skills, students can certainly excell quickly in learning this fantastic language. There is a cassette tape included that helps develop troublesome accents for newbies to French, and after reviewing the book once again after having taken the class about a year ago, I have even more appreciation for both the book and the language it instructs. It contains conjugations in all forms, great lessons, eye-pleasing references, problem issues with different words, and a great gradual learning process to keep the interest of students first learning this beautiful language. I would certainly recommend any French teacher or professor to examine a copy and quite soon I think they will agree with me. This book is great!

When I first knew of the existence of this book, I wondered: why, there should be such a dictionary in every language! And, yet, how come I didn't even once think of searching for that kind of dictionary in English?? I should have known of it much earlier!

English is my second language, and even though I belong to the cateogry of "advanced" learner, I still have difficulty, for instance, in locating the right preposition or adverb that go with certain verbs or adjectives. For example, the very subtle difference in meaning between "be familiar to vs. be familar with" is a very difficult one for a non-native English speaker like me to grasp. The BBI dictionary of English Word Combinations aims to address problems unique to ESL learners, including the one I just mentioned. Keep it handy, and it will let you command more accurate & "real" English.

The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations is useful for the ESL student, but also for professional translators. Translators are often "in the zone," between both the source and target language and forget the simplest phrasal verbs. I've found this book helpful in sweeping up those messy pronouns that betrayed the original source language of my translation. Praise to the authors. They would have gotten 5 stars if there was more emphasis on modern use of the word combinations. The ESL reader still won't know what it means "to come out" (as in announcing a sexual preference or a hidden attribute) by consulting this book. But, I know, writing a dictionary is like sweeping the beach!

This is an extraordinary tool for translators into English. It is a dictionary of collocations, and provides information that is hard to find in other dictionaries. It helps you find that elusive word that goes with another, and answers many questions about which preposition to use.

This book is much better than it looks like. I thought that this whole book would be completely easy to figure out, but it was actually a lot better. This is the first history mystery I read and in it there is a young girl who is african american and one day in the middle of the night her brother, her father and the girl, Bessie herself all have to go to New York City. Soon Bessie's father begins to go places late at night and come back late in the afternoon. One day Bessie sees her father hugging a lady and she becomes suspicious. What has happened to her mother? And who is the lady her father is with? Where is her father going that he has to stay for such a long time? This is all part of this book, and no it isn't the best book you can ever read, but it's better than it looks!

My daughter and I have completed another "history mystery". This one takes place in 1928. It begins with Ed Coulter taking his daughter, Bessie, and his son, Eddie, away from their North Carolina farm in the middle of the night, but leaving his wife behind. Bessie and Eddie soon find themselves living in their aunt's house in Harlem. Their father is hardly ever around and nobody will explain to them what's going on. Bessie is afraid that her family is breaking up, especially after an attractive, well-dressed woman picks her father up in a car one afternoon.

My daughter rates this one about average for this series and I can see why. The mystery isn't the most compelling. There is little sense of danger and no pirates, secret tunnels, or dark forests with unseen characters lurking just out of sight. On the other hand, my daughter didn't see through it, so it maintained her interest right to the end.

Personally, I found this one more humorous than any of the others. There are several funny situations, like when Bessie finds herself forced to eat oatmeal from a dish she had secretly had a big, slimy slug in earlier and had put away without washing. The situation surrounding Flo, the neighborhood hoodoo woman is also amusing.

Like the others in this series, this story is good for kids. It includes real historical information and characters, and it has positive messages and role models. Originally, I gave the whole series 5-star ratings. In my opinion, however, the Harry Potter books are the heavyweights in this genre, and though I still recommend the "history mysteries", they aren't as good as Harry. So, in the interest of consistency, I've changed my "history mystery" rating to four stars. This one, while not the best of the group in our opinion, certainly isn't inferior to the rest, either. I recommend the entire series to girls in the nine to twelve age group.

This book keeps you on end and you don't know what is going to happen next! There are a lot of twisting bends in this book. I thought the dad was cheating all the way but you will have to find out what happens! This was a great book and I think it deserves six stars!!1

Underhill's purple prose is impenetrable. The blowsy sentences run on and on and say next to thing about the beliefs and practices of the various saints under discussion. She does not make a logical, analytic point in her book. She apparently cannot distinguish between degrees of mysticism or define types of mysticism, such as mysticism which is excessively rooted in religious dogma and mysticism which goes beyond all religious dogmas. The best thing about the book was the appendix, which concisely listed the names of influential saints and the mystics as well as translations of their major works and biographies about them. Go directly to the appendix, buy the original sources, and don't waste your time on Underhill's babbling.

This 1911 work is a classic in mystical literature. Underhill's book contains a number of treasures from mostly Christian mystical writers.

But it is most particularly a useful read for a practitioner of mysticism, in that her estimation of mysticism often demonstrates exactly what one should avoid. Her celebration of sanctimony and mystical positivism provide good examples of attitudes that will surely result in an ineffective mystical practice. Evelyn Underhill joins many other writers of her time (and ours) in failing to appreciate the profundity of a successful mystical surrender: letting go of Everything, the ability to not be sure of anything. I would recommend the book to the serious practitioner, you may be embarrassed for her by much of what you read, but may thereby avoid embarrassing yourself by discovering and rooting out your own hidden stockpile of these same triumphalistic attitudes.

By carefully reading Underhill's sometimes tedious book and her understandable (and quite forgivable: may she rest in peace) misperceptions of the mystical landscape, one may at some point suddenly grasp why the successful mystic tries to always keep at least one foot safely secured in the floor-less chasm of complete ignorance.

Raymond Sigrist Apophaticmysticism.com

I read Underhill's magisterial "Mysticism" the summer after I graduated from high school, and I've been a student/devotee of the western contemplative tradition ever since. Underhill's accessible if British-formal prose provides a wonderful, elegant stage on which the majesty and depth of the interior life can be celebrated. The book neatly divides into two halves: the first examines mysticism from theological, psychological, and philosophical perspectives; the second takes the reader on a tour of the process of mystical growth over the lifespan, looking at such key life passages and transitions as conversion, self-purification, illumination, the "dark night," and union. What emerges is a developmental map for adult spiritual growth, which is a tremendous corrective to many of the silly notions floating around in our society, such as the idea that one single "born again" experience is all that is necessary to achieve total spiritual attainment. What I especially love about Underhill is her evident enthusiasm and passion for her subject matter. Without ever saying it in so many words, she reveals in her writing that mysticism is more than a dry subject for disinterested study; it is a living, breathing tradition, that demands engagement and participation from those who would explore it. Ultimately, mysticism is not found in a book, but in the lived process of relating to the Divine. It's ironic that this message needs to be passed down in books, and yet, Underhill's wonderful study of the subject does just that. This was written in 1911, and shows some marks of age; for example, the chapter on "Vitalism" refers to a philosophical fad of her day that seems almost totally irrelevant a century later. Even so, I have a house full of books on this topic, ranging from the scholarly (Bernard McGinn) to the popular (Thomas Merton) to the just plain silly (Keith Harary's and Pamela Weintraub's "Mystical Experiences in 30 Days"), and I have yet to find a single volume that provides a better, more useful, and more potentially transformative introduction to the contemplative life than this book.

When I first read the title of this book "Three Year Picnic," I didn't pay too much attention. And I thought it is a book about someone's vacation story. However, I noticed that there is a subtitle under the title, "An American Woman's Life inside Japanese Prison Camps in the Philippines during WWII" then I realized that it is NOT what I thought. This is a truth story about a young woman, Evelyn Whitfield who spent three years in a prison camp during the Japanese occupation. In the book she portrayed the life in a civilian prison camp (of course it was different from military prison camp). In the camp, prisoners suffered from starvation, lack of medical treatment, mulnutrition, etc. However, I didn't find any in depth torture or physical abused by the Japanese soldiers. That was the good thing in that camp. But I was surprised. This book is not as "horrible" as other wartime stories/memoirs. Then I understood why Evelyn put the book title in that way.

I stopped by the booth at the book fair in November that the publisher of this book put on. Evelyn Whitfield was manning the booth that day. She had sold all the copies of her book, but she was such a warm personality and sold other people's books so well, that I had to order a copy of her book.

She wrote the manuscript shortly after her release and return from three years spent in Japanese prisoner of war camps in the Philippines. This was not originally meant to be published as a book, but for some reason she has dusted it off and published it. I suspect the Premiere Editions is a vanity publisher, though I do not know for certain.

First off, I must get out of the way that the writing is somewhat amateurish. I might characterize it as something I would write.

She tends to write as I would expect someone of her generation who is not a writer would, with much respect for the sensibilities of the people like her. Everyone in her prisoner of war camp holds up rather well under the circumstances. She does not write much about disagreements, and the ones she does write about she laughs off as minor. While not having experienced the horror of a prisoner of war camp, my experience with living in close quarters with people is that arguments are much more serious that one would gather from the plucky crowd who inhabits her camps.

But several things do come through the story. The lack of contact with the outside world comes through so much in the story that I found myself wondering if they ever made it out alive. Having met the author, I know that she did. She does not fall into the trap of describing the events taking place outside the camps. As a reader, you have no context to compare against. As I suspect that they had little context in which to place themselves during their incarceration.

The absolute precariousness of their position shines through loud and clear as well. One never finds her in the exaggerated position where she is near death due to the capriciousness of a Japanese guard. No guns being pointed at her head. However, subtly she paints a canvas with arbitrary decisions regarding food, shelter, and bowing which show how much at the mercy of others they were.

The hope that the prisoners exhibit also is apparent. The internees attach themselves to any rumor that whips through the camp. Sightings of planes. Contact with former employees and acquaintances through camp fences. The disappointment shows when their camp translator is no longer allowed to translate in meetings with the Japanese authority, because she can understand the words they say in addition to the official translation.

I highly recommend this book. While not the greatest writing, her story is compelling.

This can happen to any of us, let's not forget it.

Many don't know what happened to American civilians in the Phillipines during WWII.

How inspiring that people like ourselves can survive such unbelievable treatment and then not only live to tell about it but take on the task of humbly sharing the experience in the hope that others, by knowing what can happen, may work towards preventing this from ever happening together.

This is a book that I and others I've shared it with, couldn't put down.

Recently, at a family reunion, I met a lifetime friend of my wife's family. He was part of the team, crptographer, that rescued Evelyn and the others from the camp. It was fascinating to hear from him more about the conditions found there in the Phillipines.

This is well told history, truly interesting history.

The moment Conn saw Crystal, he was taken with her, until he finds out she's hiding a devastating secret. I felt for Conn, who was disillusion with the young woman, and for Crystal, who was divided between her husband and her ruthless father and older brother. The story shows how the hold family can have over someone and how hard it can be to overcome, even when your heart belongs to someone else. As I read it, I kept wishing that would hurry up Conn would forgive Crystal, because what she did wasn't malicious, just out of fear for her mother and younger brother, but the author showed that in real life, people's feelings don't heal as quickly and it takes a lot to forgive.

Highly Recommended Crystal Braden knows how to keep a secret. She will do anything to keep her Mother and younger brother safe; even if it means lying to the only man she will ever love. Forced into betraying Conn O'Brien, Crystal feels as if her heart is being physically torn from her body. Conn O'Brien journeys to Bushwacker to claim the ranch he thinks is part of his inheritance. Along the way he stops to rescue a fair maiden. Ever a sucker for a damsel in distress, Conn has no idea Crystal is a clever diversion. It is his misfortune to fall instantly in love with the lovely woman, which only seems to aid her cause. The stakes are high, the wages steep, and the outcome uncertain as Conn and Crystal play the game of hearts with winner take all. Evelyn Rogers tells a masterful tale of family greed, divided loyalties, and ultimate betrayal. Ms. Rogers writes with authority and the expertise of a much published author. Her characters come to life, possessing strong personalities and sensuous natures. Her research is impeccable and her dialog rings true. Betrayal packs a wallop, is hard to put down, and sizzles. Kathee S. Car

Crystal and conns love story is mixed with mistrust and betryal,but most of all with a undieing love that over comes many trials. I laughed and cried all throught this story. couldn't put it down.

Overall an interesting read, I found Mothers & Sons to have an inordinate number of references to Freudian psychology and Oedipal situations. The book bases it's conclusions on actual psychological case studies and sometimes reads more like a doctoral thesis than a guide to raising a loving child. while definitely insightfull it doesn't contain as much practical advice as I'd hoped beyond the obvious. On the other hand if you want to know what makes your husband tick......

While some might object to the overarching psychoanalytic tone, there is a lot to learn and enjoy here as the author incorporates personal experience, anecdotes, research and mythology into her account of the relationship between mothers and sons. I liked her early statement that having a son had moved her from a rigidly feminist position toward one that is more flexible and humanistic. The first section discusses the traits that are uniquely male, and contains chapters on male energy, male role models, male separation and love & sex. I thought this was particularly informative. The second section deals with various special relationships -- shared parenting, single mothers, stepmothers and gay sons. Final chapters deal with the mature relationship between mothers and sons.

The author writes from experience and with compassion, and this is a worthwhile book for mothers (and sons) to read.

As the mother of 3 sons, I found this book particularly insightful in exploring the unique role both parents play in their sons' lives. Fascinating interpretation of standard boy's fairy tales/stories -- such as Jack & the Bean Stalk & Bambi -- and the impact such tales have on a boy's coming of age.