In One Foot in the Grave, Mark Simmons introduced us to his half-vampire character, Chris Csejthe. In Dead on My Feet, Simmons shows us the transformation of Mr. Everyday into an Alpha Vampire who still isn't all vampire.
It's in the blood, so to speak. Csejthe has been infected with one of the two viruses which convert a human into a vampire, and he is caught in the middle - a man adrift between two worlds who is hanging on to his humanity for dear life!
In Dead on My Feet, Simmons brings a whole new cast on stage as he's moved his main character from a little town in Southeastern Kansas to bayou country - Monroe, LA. In that sleepy town we find a sho'nuf fortuneteller, a rogue vampire out for a little fun with Chris, a beautiful damsel in distress, a secretary that's the dream of anyone who ever needed to hire one, a vampire who fought in the Civil War, and a plethora of other fascinating characters.
The villains are equally interesting and a couple of them remind Chris of his all-but-forgotten past in some very unpleasant ways. The arch villain is a real blast from the past, an ancestor - maybe - who has come to Louisiana to do enormous evil, and only Chris can stop her. How he manages to survive any number of attempts on his life, and still defeat the utter personification of evil makes for a very strange and entertaining tale.
With Dead on My Feet, Simmons has flexed his story-telling muscle and moved to the head of the class. This tale is wonderfully entertaining, while at the same time, disqueting and edgy. Highly recommended.

I've been waiting a long time for this book to come out, as I very much enjoyed its predecessor "one foot in the grave". Chris Cséjthe the almost-vampire is back. Now living in Monroe he's working as a part time private investigator and university lecturer, and life is pretty good for him with the exception that his werewolf lover, Lupé, has left him because she couldn't stand the competition from his late wife's ghost taking up Chris's attention.

Things unexpectedly start to unravel for Chris when he takes a case to investigate if a local psychic is the real thing. It turns out she is and she has some dire warnings for him. Then another vampire turns up in town and tries to kill him and the local corpses start turning up on his doorstep asking him to dispense justice for them because he stands between life and the undead - and the local police are NOT impressed.

This is a wise-cracking, literary and fast moving novel. Chris reads like an old friend. Once you start this book you'll want to see how it ends as Chris is pushed to his limits and finds out more about himself and his new powers than he ever guessed.

I'm already looking forward to the next book in this series, and hoping its as much fun as the first two books. If you like your vampire/supernatural novels with a twist that doesn't rely on sex and excessive blood then these books are worth reading, but start with the first book to get the most out of this one. Though I do hope the next book will tie up some threads left dangling at the end of this one. (eg what happened to his secretary and her sick nephew etc)

A year ago, Chris Csejthe (pronounced "Chay-tay") was completely human - then a blood transfusion from the Lord of the Undead changed everything. Now he is a hunted man, sought by human and vampire alike for the secrets he knows and the powers that his mutated blood may bestow. So far he's dodged undead assassins, werewolves, a 6,000-year-old Egyptian necromancer, and Vlad Dracula himself. But now he's really got problems.

The dead are turning up on his doorstep after dark to ask for justice and the police want to know where all those corpses are coming from. Undead terrorists are testing a doomsday virus on his new hometown and he's caught in the crossfire between a white supremacist militia and the resurrected Civil War dead. His werewolf lover, jealous of his dead wife's ghost, has left him. And the centuries-old and still very beautiful (and very deadly) Countess Bathory is determined to have his uniquely transformed blood for her own dark purposes.

Now, more than ever, life sucks!

This book has some good examples, but lacks any detail.
It skims over all the complicated topics.
Does not do a very good job at demonstrating how to build applications that integrate a web browser and an ip phone.
Very introductory.

Developing Cisco IP Phone Services takes the reader through all of the steps necessary to create usable service applications. A lot of the info covered here just isn't mentioned anywhere else, including Cisco's web site. Even though services are constructed from standard protocols, creating ones that work well can be surprisingly challenging. I keep a copy of this book on my desk at all times as a reference. The user interface sections are quite useful. Spending time on how to design a service is at least as important as how one is written. On the down-side, however, I found the included code to be Windows-centric, and also wished they had included source code for the tools. But, the included information enabled me to write my own tools. I think that speaks for the quality of what you'll find here.

I needed to get an in depth understanding of the way services for the IP Phone were developed so as to develop security policies to help protect network assets. This book gave me exactly what I needed to know. It will be very useful to anyone who wants to develop XML based services for the Cisco phones.

For us coming from Emulation Rite in Europe, this book shows that we share 99% of the rituals described! It is really amazing to discover how close we are to the wordings and procedures from a century ago and another Rite. I am extremely satisfied to have chosen this book through Amazon, probably the only easy way I had to purchase it from Spain.

This is a great book due to the fact that it is a simple guide for the Freemason. This book is not for anyone not in the Craft. Despite the rumors of Masonry being in union with Satanic forces, this great work is proof that we are focused on God within our life. The reasons can be found in many books.
This is a groundwork, but not the entire focus. Remember, true enlightment starts with the admission of growth. This is an excellent starting point for the Freemason.

Purchased this book in 1982 out of curiosity to make a comparison to what had been disclosed to me. It is very interesting to read. Obviously, it is not appropiate for all to view. At least one that have a desire to learn about Freemasonry, other than seeking the correct way to learn more properly.

Svenvold's book adds little, if anything, to the body of facts surrounding McCurdy's brief criminal career, and his much-longer postmortem career as a sideshow attraction. Early on in the book, the writer admits this.
Nevertheless, it is entertaining reading, as Svenvold retraces McCurdy's pre- and post-mortem travels in the manner of a New Journalist.
His reportage about the world of the carny and sideshow makes the book worth reading, but if you are seeking anything NEW about McCurdy, this is not the place to find it. Some readers may find Svenvold's writing a bit too self-conscious, and indeed there are passages in which it appears that Mark Svenvold, not Elmer McCurdy, is the subject of the book.
Buy it anyway.

Many people have been more famous in death than in life, but Elmer McCurdy would seem to take the prize for post-mortem renown. McCurdy died at the relatively tender age of 31, then had a remarkably fertile career as a celebrity corpse, first in funeral parlors, then in carnivals, a wax museum, film and, finally, an amusement park. The entire stint lasted 65 years.

With insight, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek, Mark Svenvold relates the story of this unusual figure in his new book Elmer McCurdy: The Misadventures in Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw. In the process, the author also presents an incisive commentary on American entertainment history. While dead bodies have been held sacred since the time of the ancient Greeks, the underbelly of America's low-end entertainment scene thought nothing of exploiting a human corpse along with the average American's fascination with the grotesque.

McCurdy began life inauspiciously as an illegitimate baby in rural Maine. He earned his dubious claim to fame as an outlaw by bungling a couple of train robberies. His death, in a shoot out in 1911, featured all the color and flamboyance that his life lacked.

McCurdy's body, unclaimed by friend or relative, languished at Johnson's Funeral Home in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, laced with enough arsenic to preserve it well into the 21st century. Presumably to defray the expense of his storage, the embalmer put McCurdy on display for paying sightseers.

For the next several decades McCurdy traveled the beer-and-pretzels entertainment circuit, changing hands when one get-rich-quick scheme gave way to another. It isn't clear when or where folks lost track of the fact that he was a dead body and not an inanimate prop. Svenvold hints that truth didn't much matter to the carnies and B-movie makers who passed McCurdy's body from one enterprise to another.

Part of McCurdy's appeal in death was his ability to tap into America's secret fascination with outlaws and self-destructive behavior. In reconstructing his eventful life and afterlife, Mark Svenvold holds up a mirror to this interesting contradiction in our nation's collective psychological profile.

I just sequed into reading Elmer McCurdy's story immediately after reading Cornwell's newest on Jack the Ripper; I mention this because both authors like to ramble way off track, but unlike Cornwell, Svenvold never forgets to bring us back to Elmer and tie up all the strings; his forensic notes are written and described well, and backed up with data; all of which Ms C. just stumbles through. I live in the town where Mr. McCurdy was found, and I am in charge of an archival collection that has just added this book to a permanent collection of Long Beach history materials. I was wishing for more photos and illustrations, but I realize those were often difficult to find. This is a very entertaining and interesting read; but plan to take your time; it's not for people in a ripping hurry. Enjoy it!

I purchased 3 WROX books in the past this with good success. I expected the same thoroughness, but unfortunately, couldn't find it in this one.

As a somewhat seasoned developer using both Visual Studio and GoLive on our Corporate Intranet, I only needed to acquire familiarity with the features within Dreamweaver for my own personal use.

I enjoyed the overview and first few chapters in this book, and soon began to appreciate the potential this book might have. At the end of chapter two, I compared my project with the illustration in the book. They didn't look the same. I was determined to find out why, so I compared my code with the downloaded code. They were different. I rechecked the steps in the book looking for the missed steps, but didn't see it.

If you want to learn Dreamweaver MX, and don't mind checking your code with the downloaded code, then this book might work for you. For me, I'll look elsewhere.

In the beginning I thought this book over explains everything. When I started encountering territories that I'm not familiar with, I started to greatly appreciate the author's method of teaching. This book teaches you by getting you working on real projects from scratch. While you are following the step by step instructions, the author explains the science and whys of these instructions. The only drawback of this book is that project 1 seems to be tested only on Internet Explorer. I tried the files with Netscape 4.79 and 6.2 they both showed some flows that took me hours to figure out how to fix. Also I had to use a behavior extension to recover the mess, in Netscape, made by adding layers. Apart from that all my projects have worked perfectly. The second part is code intensive which I really appreciate. This book will show what's going on behind the scenes. Therefore you won't be limited by what Dreamweaver can offer. It will show you the way to go beyond Dreamweaver's ability. This is not a "for dummies" type of book. You have to follow the instructions very carefully. All the mistakes in this project turned out to be mine. For the effort made to write this book I cannot give less than five stars. I wouldn't hesitate to buy Professional Dreamweaver MX if it exists.

I found this book to be one of my most prized reference books. It takes you through the building of three different sites. You are gradually introduced to ASP and JavaScript.

If you are serious about web design, and have found FrontPage to bee too limiting, this is the book to get you going!

It is hard to argue with Mark McCormack's success. He's built up an almost billion dollar business. I will say that in another book, he said he takes only 3 day vactions. That if he took a 2 week vacation "I'd be so worried about my business at the end of the second week, it wouldn't be worth it." And he promotes working long hard hours. But I know more than one filthy rich self-made man, who are not retired but active in their businesses, who nonetheless do NOT work long hard hours year round, and take as much as a month off straight, while their businesses hum along nicely without them. I would say McCormack is failing in his methods of getting results if he can't at this point take long periods of time off, without worrying about his business. Richard Branson is active in his much larger Virgin empire, but he takes weeks off to go on those balloon expeditions of his. What is he doing right that McCormack isn't?

An example: In the book TIME TRAP (a time-management book I highly recommend) the author sites a salesman who made two goals for the next few years. The goals were to, each year, 1) double his income 2) double his vacation time. (!!) And the salesman succeeded, so that he doubled his income, as well as his vacation time, so that in the third year he had a lot more money, plus 6 weeks in vacation time. THAT'S what I call getting results!!!!

Harvey Mackay in one of his books sites a saleswoman he hired, who told him she worked 20 hours a week at her interview. Mackey told her, "But your resume says you did $2 million in sales at your previous job." She said, "I did. You can phone them and ask." Mackay did so, and they confirmed what she said. Mackay says to the reader, "So I don't care HOW many hours a week she works, with those kind of results."

Maybe it's the nature of a service business (which is what McCormack's management company is): you can't let a factory stamp out widgets while you do something else. You have to keep cracking the whip, or inspiring your subordinate agents, if they are what make-up your company. If that's the case, I'll avoid service businesses.

Reading this book is rather like being beaten over the head with a club - for example, he asks (over and over) - Do you have your planing tool at your fingertips 24 hours a day? If not - you are NOT ORGANIZED!!!! Three lashes!

He writes for a different audience than I, one that has In and Out boxes on their desk (I've never seen In or Out boxes on anyone's desk, ever), that needs an introduction to the net and that makes phone calls all day (executives on the East coast maybe).

None the less, if you can handle being beated up by the author, he does have some good suggestions. He suggests planning not only what to do, but when to do it, which is probably the biggest win I'll get from the book. Every day I know my list is too long, but I start at the top & work down. I think that if I figure out when things will happen (even if the time spans are only guesses, since I don't know how long many things will take) it will help me to understand better what I can really accomplish & what I can't and thus, to focus my energy on what I can do.

So I'd say that if you want to make things happen, it's worth reading for the hints that work for you.

This has helpful stuff in it. I even went out and bought a stopwatch to time certain tasks to speed myself up, as this book recommends. But the time obsession is kind of ridiculous at times, to the point where you almost expect Mr. McCormack to say, "If you could shave making love to your wife from 15 minutes down to 15 seconds, you'd save so much time." To get philosophical, Abraham Maslow wrote the seminal book TOWARD A PSYCHOLOGY OF BEING where he writes of the "self-actualized" personality, that he considers the most highly evolved personality type, but who are less than 1% of the population. One common trait amongst these extremely happy people is they often experience "peak experiences" where they feel immense joy and these experiences "trascend time." These people lose track of time during these experiences!!!! Now, it seems an obsession with time such as McCormack preaches would completely interfere with one's ever having such joyful experiences. I suppose it's like a lousy movie, where you are always looking at your watch, versus a great movie, where you forget about everything but the movie. So, I suppose to be successful and efficient, you have to say good-bye to happiness in a big way. But it's success that is supposed to make you happy, right? A major contradiction!!

I specifically enjoyed the play "Bend" because it had a "Sixth Sense " type of feel to it. The characters were original, (although some of their barriers of sexual abuse and alcholism were described in a stereotypical and predictable way.) This is a great play for anyone who is dealing with a limited budget, there is really no need for elaborate scenery or costumes. I found the character of the rodeo clown particularly interesting and loved how all of the characters slowly melted into different aspects of the main character and her barriers in life.

I also enjoyed "Purrrfect"... a very fun use of illiteration with creative insights into the feline world.

The other plays I found to be "strange" for "strange sake" and relied on shock value to carry the story with no real point or direction. None of the outlandish behavior (or language) made the plot travel. It reminded me of drunken conversations you have at happy hour that seem witty at the time but sound stupid when we joke about them the next day at work.

Overall, some new and original monologue opportunities for auditions in "Bend" and some fun reading and acting challanges in "Purrrfect". The other plays you can skip over... and pick up some "real" Absurdist Theatre by Pirendello. If you want repetition ("Figaro", "Harry") review a copy of "Who's on First?"... Mr. Frank, have you ever seen listened to "The Barber of Seville" or "The Marriage of Figaro"? Or are you drawing your research out of the Bugs Bunny version?

While this book doesn't have the most origional title for a collection of plays i have ever heard of, it still entertains.

From bend to Hotel 5, this book will make you cry, cry, and then cry some more. Although i will point out the lowpoint of the book (I, Figaro). Can anyone explain that play to me? The rest of the plays justify the spending of your hard earned mula on this fine book, unless you see something else in the store, then i would buy that instead.

Sorry Mr. Frank, but between buying a book or something else. Most people will buy something else. I bought your book because I couldn't afford the something else.

I am a playwright from New York and even though this book is self published it has great quality. The plays are very original and some are quite funny. I recommend this book of plays for those who are looking for something different, but amusing.

This book may be of some use to someone that has a 386 or 486 and wants to know something about them. If you are seriously looking to upgrade to a pentium III or IV, it is useless.

I bought this book expecting to find some useful information about how to upgrade my PII. It barely acknowledges that PII'S exist. My advice is if you want a good book that covers all the bases thoroughly buy Scott Mueller's UPGRADING AND REPAIRING PCs

Some of the best advice I've ever had about computer books came from a pair of friends who happened to be married to each other. The husband told me, "If you're looking for a reference manual, always buy the smallest one on the market so that you'll carry it around with you." The wife said "Always buy the biggest, fattest book on the market because it has all the answers." In this case, the wife happened to be right- -with its 1400 pages and 2 CDs, this book is certainly the biggest, fattest PC hardware book that I've seen on the market. It also contains the clearest writing and most useful information that I've seen for books of its type. This book will tell you how to upgrade your hard drive, choose a new video card, protect your computer from lightning strikes, and a lot of other important facts besides. But it's too big and bulky to make it easy to carry around.

The book is written at a level that just about anyone can understand. If you are comfortable plugging in the wires in the back of your computer and you can tell one end of a screwdriver from another, you should be able to tackle just about any hardware installation or upgrade job using this book. It's not just for beginners, however; even experienced technicians will find useful information in the book. The book is not written specifically for the A+ Certification exams, but it covers the core hardware concepts for the exams. A lab manual is also available for the book. The lab manual contains study questions as well as detailed instructions for common tasks.

Almost every chapter of the book starts with a "QuickSteps" section that summarizes what you need to do to complete common hardware tasks. The remainder of the chapter explains how the piece of hardware works, a little about its history, and provides more detailed installation information. The first of the 2 accompanying CD-ROMs contains video clips that demonstrate some common tasks. The other CD-ROM contains some useful utility programs and some A+ review materials (in a very clunky interface- -not very well done compared to others on the market) as well as some additional chapters and appendices. I had trouble running the video clips in the DVD-CD drive of my new IBM laptop running Windows 2000. However, they seem to run fine in the CD drive of my old IBM laptop.

It appears the book was intended to be formatted along the lines of the Applegate classic, "Kill or get killed". But in terms of content, the book is absolutely without merit. The unarmed combat section is a random collection of techniques based on archaic martial arts, with zero regard for the exigencies of real-world combat and agency mandates. The combat shooting information is informative only to the most clueless of novices. The information on nonlethal weapons MIGHT have been interesting before it was completely outdated. To be fair, the book's been around a few years...

I suppose Mr. Lonsdale does the spec-ops community a service by protecting the confidentiality of their skills and information from being disseminated to the public (and criminals for that matter) while he titillates teenaged wannabes with pics of marines training in raid houses and guys in bow stances doing cross-blocks against knife-stabs. As his customer, though, I'm not impressed. I certainly won't be buying his other stuff.

My disappointment may be caused by I expecting too many. The unarmed combat sessions covers only kid karate class. The mentioned "key strike points" are not secret in Chinese martial art, it is a basic knowledge. I learned Chinese martial art for several years, and I do believe my teacher teached me more than this book in the first year.

For the armed section, it is much better, but discussion is not deep enough. I expect more!

In depth study of individual CQB skills. Good info and training on firearms, but not detailed enough on CQB movements and searching skills .Best to be read with another STTU books in hand.

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, READ THIS BOOK! Dont get me wrong, but The Scarlet Letter is one of the most boring books out there. Even if it is assigned for a reading in class, dont bother. Your analysis will inevitably be incorrect. I dont care how bright you are.

okay. if you've read The House of Seven Gables, you probably already know how metaphor-happy Hawthorne can be. If not, get ready for page after page of in-depth metaphors. In other words, you get to read 3 consecutive pages about rosebushes, material, colors, etc. If you enjoy description (and there is a heck of a lot of it) by all means, buy this book. If you're like me, and get annoyed with over-analyzation, one-dimensional characters, and obvious plot endings, despite the themes of sin, blackmail, supernatural,etc, you should understand why this book was banned.

Yes, I suppose if you are into WCW "wrasslin" and collecting unemployment this book would not be your best bet. But, for those of us that have jobs and attention spans it is a wonderful novel about the "effects of sin". Something most of the other reviewers only see on Jerry Springer. So do not listen to these reviewers who tell you to "drop the class" if you are forced to read it...look where dropping classes got them. Yes, I WOULD like that super sized.