Spirit of Fear by Evelyn Gale wrapped me in from the first to the end. Well written, fast paced, no word clutter--I had a great read.

I loved the reaction of the heroine, Rachel Beckman, when she found her husband murdered. Her grisly smile was understandable; after all, he'd beaten her for the pleasure the beatings fed to his nasty control-hungry appetite.

Finally free of him, Rachel finds she has become so dependent on his control that she must relearn the freedoms she had as a younger woman. Each step, even driving a car, is a brave walk back to finding her spirit.

Couple this journey with the discovery that any one of half a dozen people could have murdered her husband--and someone is after her, and Rachel finds that she must dig even deeper for courage. But from this search, Rachel discovers that she has a mind that can't resist exploring the puzzle pieces of the crime and a spirit to go after the suspects. She is a natural, albeit still somewhat timid, and her thinking is way ahead of the police.

Gale wrote using her farm wife background as a research tool. Her characters spun from the mosaic of rural America breathe with the spirit and life she's given them.

Rachel's search for the murderer, while she, herself, is a suspect forced me to become involved. Perhaps, it was Rachel's lack of grief that sent the police in the wrong direction; or maybe they didn't like her clever logic, which left them in the dust. Even Rachel's connection to Earl Martin and friendship with Jerry Walton made the police suspicious. For whatever reason, Rachel must find the proof to convince the police that she is the victim, not the perpetrator.

I look forward to Evelyn Gale's next book.

Jane Evelyn Atwood is a compassionate American who has spent most of her adult life in France, and has become one of the outstanding photojournalists in the world. While other talented photographers earn a lot of money taking pictures of fashion models and high society, Atwood's committed outlook has led her to depict the less-fortunate specimens of the human race. Her subjects have included blind children and Parisian prostitutes. Years ago, she was the first to photograph the terrifying physical decline of a man dying of AIDS, which broke new ground when her reportage was published in Paris Match.

In Too Much Time, the striking and poignant photos, in black and white, are reason enough to buy the book but that would be only half the story because Atwood is one of those rare photographers who can write as well as they take pictures. Indeed, when I became engrossed with the text, not only her own words but also transcriptions of what American women prisoners told her, I almost forgot that it was a picture book.

Mrs. Birkby was one of the 'radio homemakers' who broadcast recipes, tips and news to Iowa's rural housewives as well as writing a long-lived newspaper column. Needless to say, after decades she had a very rich collection of recipes and local history to share. This she has done in a book that is very well organized, easy to read, and involves the reader. Having never read her column, I can assume this style is what endeared the author to generations of Iowans.

This book focuses mainly on the years Mrs. Birkby spent with her husband starting and maintaining an Iowa farm for 10 years following WW II. It is broken up into chapters on topics such as 'Grocery', 'Milking', 'Stoves', etc. Recipes in each chapter follow the narration. I prefer this format for historical cookbooks, as it makes it much easier to leaf through and locate recipes.

I've tried several of the recipes, and all have worked well for me.

This book would have rated five stars for me, even if it hadn't had any recipes. Mrs. Birkby's struggles to make a success of a small farm with her family make a valuable documentation of postwar rural life. Reading her accounts, particularly of laundry, illustrates how far we have come as a nation with housekeeping.

Thank you again, Mrs. Birkby, for sharing your personal and professional history with us!

The book is designed to take you into moral areas where you may not have to treat (but who knows what life will bring?). "Most of the questions in this book you will never have to answer. (Unless your life is very interesting.)"

What follows are 250 questions in 125 pairs. "We suggest you answer the first question in each pair before reading the second question." The reason for that instruction is because the first question is often a set-up for a more difficult question designed to help you see any potential hypocrisy (such as a double standard) in your reactions.

For example, one opening question is: "Would you be able to forgive your child anything at all?" Now most parents will probably answer pretty liberally here. We are all familiar with the picture of the Mother crying at the execution of her son, the condemned murderer, protesting that he was a good person.

Then, you get hit with the second question: "Would you forgive your mate anything at all?" From overhearing many people talk about that subject, most people have a long list of things they would not forgive a mate for.

My assumption then is that you are supposed to think about why you would treat your mate differently from your child. Naturally, that might make sense of your child is still very young, with diminished capacity to hew to the straight and narrow. But what if your child is 40? Shouldn't the standard be similar, if not the same? Only you know what you would answer, but that is the sort of thinking that these questions will stimulate.

The subject matters cover stealing, cheating, priorities for your life and society, preferences in family relations, relationship values, relationships to strangers, priorities for character traits, sexual attitudes, sex role attitudes, choices between self-interest and self-sacrifice, racial attitudes, life span versus quality of life issues, faithfulness, trust, law versus morality, and self-interest versus morality and legality.

The questions are short and pretty simple. How you answer them is not so short and simple, especially after you see the second question. Leave yourself the option to go back and rethink your answer to the first question.

I found the experience of reading this book and answering the questions to be a very valuable and rewarding one. I think you will, too.

The only weakness in the book is that the design makes it unnecessarily hard to keep from seeing the second question too soon. You should keep an opaque piece of paper with you to cover the bottom of each page as you go. A better design would have been to have had the first question on a right hand page, and the second question on the following left hand page. That would have increased the cost of the book by making it longer, but it would have worked much better.

I suspect that this would be a good book to discuss with other members of your family. You may be able to add even more moral muscle by thinking some of these questions through together. Certainly, you will understand each other better.

Choose better and choose well!

Adventures of the Rat Family was not published in book form until after Verne's death, with the
appearance of the 1910 anthology Yesterday and Tomorrow, containing only a few of the engravings and a text revised by Verne's son, Michel, his literary executor. The Oxford edition is
the first time that Adventures has been published in book form in any language with all of the original illustrations.

As Adventures of the Rat Family attests, Verne's writing is far more diverse than his reputation as the father of science fiction suggests. He wrote more than 60 novels, as well as numerous short stories, plays, articles and poems, covering a range of genres and literary forms. He was actually most prolific in the genres of adventure, mystery and comedy.

Adventures of the Rat Family deals with evolution, a problematic and controversial idea when the story first appeared in 1891, and one that was surely prohibitive for American publishers. This was especially true since Adventures of the Rat Family was also one of Verne's few stories accessible to a very young audience. However, like many fairy tales, its larger significance requires more sophisticated adult reading.

Verne portrays a magical movement up and down the evolutionary ladder, as a close-knit family of rats is transformed into various lower forms of life, from mollusks to birds. The instigator of these deeds is a genie, hired by a cruel prince who desires the family's daughter, although she loves another.

Verne both recognizes and mocks the idea of evolution by having his characters change from one species to another, finally making a metamorphosis into men and women. Added amusement is
provided by one cousin who never quite catches up as he makes each transformation, always retaining a feature of his previous incarnation, until finally he has a donkey's tail even after
becoming a man.

Verne had long been interested in evolution and basically accepted the theory. His 1858 play, M. de Chimpanze (untranslated), is of a chimp that readily adapts to high society, and a giant prehistoric man is sighted in Journey to the Center of the Earth. Verne portrays a "missing link" species in his 1901 novel, The Aerial Village, and speculates that the tribe will be incorporated into an imperial colony. "The Humbug" is the story of a P.T. Barnum-like character whose successful hoax convinces New Yorkers that he has unearthed the bones of early man near Albany.

By cloaking his use of the evolutionary theme within the fantasy of Adventures of the Rat Family, Verne hoped to circumvent disapproval of his more serious and controversial subtext. He had first related the story during a European lecture tour in 1887, and he was so delighted with the idea that he enlarged it into a novella. He cleverly imbued it with his satirical expertise, lending it a light touch that concealed much of its bite. Verne was skilled in comedy, especially when it involved bizarre characters in unusual locales, as demonstrated by his treatment of the stuffy British travelers in Around theWorld in 80 Days.

Adventures of the Rat Family is a rewarding, one-of-a-kind story that will be enjoyed in different ways by all ages.