I think if you'd like to sell this book abroad, you should think "international". Where on earth will I find brownie mix? Or chocolate fudge cake mix?

Okay...so I needed another book to reach $100 for free shipping and I like to cook and bake...but I didn't want a cookbook. Honest! But I figured this would be good and I could use it for a present. Turns out it's a present for me! The recipes look great. The pictures make your mouth water. And, if you need to make appetizers and want something different the Cream Cheese Penguins are absolutely irresistable; they're also fast & easy to make and delicious. From holiday drinks to appetizers to vegetables to entrees to desserts, the book is a gem! You'll get seriously hungry looking through it. Worse, if you're not in the mood to cook, you'll find yourself eager to get into the kitchen and get to work. For yourself or as a gift to a friend who likes to cook, you won't be disappointed with Betty Crocker's Best Christmas Cookbook!

Everyone knows Betty Crocker has been up to cooking great things in the kitchen for years. This book lives up to their standards. The book is laid out well, and has pictures with most recipes. The book gives you great ideas into turning standard things into special Holiday treats. So many of the ideas are so versitile you can use them all year around.

The book has several sections with party foods, main dishes, side dishes, baked good, and a great section full of Children's recipes that you are bound to enjoy.

The book The Ghost of Mercy Manor is a great book. The protagonist is Gwen and the conflict is she keeps seeing ghost and she doesn't understand what they are trying to tell her. It all started when Gwen had to live with a different family because her brother got married and his wife didn't like Gwen, and it never what happened to her parents. So she meets this family and keeps seeing this ghost named Rose who always puts a rose in Gwen's room to tell when she is going to come out. If the book sounds interesting you can read it and see what happens. The last thing is the part I liked. My favorite part was when Gwen first saw the ghost.

I like this book because it is a good mystery and suspenseful. No one I knew had read this book so I wasn't sure if it was a good book. Once I got to the third chapter, I couldn't set it down. The main character is Gwen. Her parents just died in a car accident and her aunt Mary just died. Gwen's brother just married a girl named Liz. Liz doesn't want Gwen to live with them so Gwen goes to a foster home called Mercy Manor. At Mercy Manor she sees a ghost girl. The ghost girl leaves roses in Gwen's bedroom. If you want to find out who the ghost girl is and what connection she has to Mercy Manor you'll have to read the book. Mercy Manor is a 172 pages. It is a 5th grade level book and for ages 8-12. Even though it's reccomended for ages 8 and up.

The Ghosts of Mercey Manor was a wounderful book. I love to read about ghost stories. They are so exciting I can never put them down. The story was about a girl named Gwen who just moved into a new house with her foster parents. She kept seeing this ghost girl with long golden hair, and she was scared to go to sleep because she thought that it would come out and haunt her. Nobody in her family believed her and everybody thought she was insane, except one night her foster brother Jason saw the ghost girl and then Gwen and Jason convinced their parents that there was a ghost girl. Gwen finally got over being scared, and nobody thought she was insane anymore. The only part that I didn't like about the book was that it ended really quickly.

I found this book too depressing. If you are a well adjusted birth parent or adoptee, you won't relate to all the issues the people in this book experience. I know adoption and reunion isn't perfect, but there are degrees of success. I feel this book should have balanced all the negative circumstances with some positives. This one nearly scared me out of pursuing a reunion.

Most Triadians (adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents) know that BJ Lifton is one of the definitive voices on adoption issues, and this book is one of my personal favorites of hers. If you buy no other search/reunion book, this is the one to have IMO.

I began my search for my birthmother in 1986, locating her finally in 1997. "Lost and Found" in particular helped me to deal with a lot of the issues that come up while searching, AND once you are reunited. There are even chapters on birthfathers and on siblings, something most books fail to mention or deal with.

It is important for those who decide to search to carefully consider their reasons for searching, and also to think about what their expectations are. If you are not prepared for the possibility of "anything can happen", you may be highly dissapointed or even devasted by the results.

I am glad that I chose to search, it has made my life complete in a way that wouldn't have been possible before I had the answers to my questions about where I came from, and who "my people" were. Though my reunion has had some major ups and downs, I don't regret my decision and I thank BJ Lifton for her insights that helped me get through the entire process.

~Reunited adoptee and adoptee rights activist Still ISO birthfather

In my life, reunion wasn't reality until my life was my own-so I went about it with some organizational ability. Information and what to do with it was what I wanted and this gave me great help in that direction. Those triad members who believe their status hasn't affected their lives, just haven't figured it out yet. My adoption 50 years ago has colored every relationship since that first one that ended (physically) 3 weeks after my birth. In order to put together the pieces of 'why' I am....important parts needed to be found, so I set about looking. BJ Lifton helped with a compassion I hadn't found before her book. There are many emotions connected with searching-and finding-no matter how pleasant or how ugly-and one Can't anticipate many of them without some help. Help is within the pages of this one. The one piece of information-above all else-she taught me, was that my search was mine. I owned it and could choose to do it, or not, at my level of comfort. After reunion, boundaries need to be built, in order to protect that comfort. The book helped me start that so when the time came, I could hold back until I knew just how far I could go-how far I could allow the others to come. All in all, it was like having a big sister, walk through it with me. She's a good friend-even if she's not aware I'm out here! Thank you BJ!

I like Betty Doll because it is a true story and it has pictures of real people on stands. It is also good because Betty Doll stands out in color because she is the main character and also the people are black with some color for the clothes. This book is about this little girl who makes a doll with her grandmother. The little girl named her Betty Doll. The little girl grew up and had children she gave her little girl Betty Doll. When her little girl was about 10 her great grandmother got cancer and the little girl who grew up and had Betty Doll was really sad. They remembered all there memories about Betty Doll and also how they made her and what they did with her. I recommend that you read Betty Doll because it is a true story and it is also very good

Patricia Polacco has, once again, gone to her family for a story around which to hang her usual marvelous illustrations. "Betty Doll" doesn't disappoint. Polacco opens the book by telling the reader about her mother dying and about packing up her belongings and then finally going through them a year later. In some of the boxes Polacco packed up, she finds her mother's old, handmade cloth doll. Wrapped around it is the letter her mother wrote while dying of cancer.

Now before you decide that this is NOT a book for children, you should know that the book overall has a joyous, shimmering quality. The story concentrates on Betty Doll's travels and adventures, with Polacco deftly portraying Betty Doll in color while all else is in handsome but quiet black-and-white tones. This brings Betty's story to the fore visually, but as far as the story itself goes, she serves as a backdrop for different generations of Polacco's family.

The story is true, and it rings true. A little girl's love of her doll and the happiness she finds while playing with the doll come to the fore, as does the stability of Betty Doll throughout the changes of the little girl's life as she grows up, marries, and so on. This is a fine way to gently ease into discussing the cancer of a family member with any young child, but it is also an absorbing tale in its own right and stands ably on its own, aided by Polacco's usual impeccable illustrations.

I disagree with the other reviews that say this is not a story for children. My daughter will be four next month. This book is one that we both enjoy:I enjoy reading it and she enjoys listening. She understands this is the story of someones life. The book has made it easier for me to approach the subjects of growing old and death of a loved one. I believe we should never shy away from exposing our children to such beautiful literature, which has serious issues to share. It is great to read a book that all family members can enjoy. Rather than parents having to say, "not that one again."

My first attempt at reading this resulted in my putting it down after the "Phoenix" vision; my BS indicator went on full-tilt overload. Later the revelation that Betty Andreasson-Luca's "star language" was actually a phonetic variant of Gaelic (the now dead language of the Celts) caused more suspiscion, and finally the revelation that author Raymond Fowler believes himself to also be an abductee, along with Betty's second husband, Bob Luca, killed whatever shreads of remaining credibility Fowler had in regard to the impartiality that his investigation had.

Other contactees exhibit a strange ability to pull others into their experiences; Betty Hill and Whitley Streiber come to mind. The conclusion that nearly everyone is involved in some facet of the abduction experience is often reached by many UFO investigators, Fowler is not alone.

Fowler writes well and may well be sincere (compare this book with his later work 'The Watchers'). His documentation and impartiality, are, I'm afraid, suspect.

Although some of the facets of Betty Andreasson's abduction experience fit neatly into the common aspects of the phenomenon as it has been described in more recent studies, there still remain several enigmatic, uncommon aspects to her tale that set it apart. At the time of publication (1979) Budd Hopkins and Whitely Strieber had yet to publish their groundbreaking books, and the abduction experience was little known and even less accepted by society as a whole. The Andreasson Affair basically links the earlier account of Betty and Barney Hill with the numerous abduction stories introduced to the public in the years since 1979. The story of an apparent implant removed from Betty's sinuses in her experience seems pretty mundane to us now, but this was an exciting discovery for Fowler and his associates in the late 1970s. It is a little difficult to review this book as an entity in itself because of the series of related books Fowler would publish later, but I want to review the book on its own terms.

Basically, the whole book centers around a single abduction event. On a winter's night in 1967, a number of small, grey, large-headed beings entered the Andreasson home through the solid kitchen door, put all of the family members besides Betty and her oldest daughter Becky in suspended animation, and took Betty alone into their ship. Becky observed some of the events but was eventually "frozen" by the visitors during the ordeal. Betty describes the visitors--how they seemed to glide when they moved, how they seemed to communicate telepathically, etc.-- as well as the ship as it appeared from both outside and within. She then relates the extraordinary experiences she had on board the ship, illustrating much of what she saw and described in a series of excellent drawings she did based on her hypnotically retrieved memories.. Besides getting a physical examination (including the apparent retrieval of an implant and a reproduction-based test), she describes many unique events. She was put into a chair, covered with a human-shaped molding, and given oxygen to breathe while her chamber was filled with some type of liquid. She describes traveling through tunnels into strange vistas. After traveling through a red atmosphere and then a green atmosphere, she experienced an unparalleled event, wherein a phoenix-like giant bird literally burned itself up only to reappear as a giant worm from the ashes, at which point a presence told her that she had been chosen. This presence she finally understood to be God, and all of her fear turned to elation. Betty is a deeply religious person, and her Christianity adds a distinct quality to her experiences--she interprets the events in religious terms, and it is problematic to determine if her subconscious is skewing her experience or if she is interpreting it correctly. The concept of religion tied so closely to an abduction experience makes some people very uncomfortable and makes the Andreasson Affair of great interest and importance in the field of alien abduction studies. This book leaves many questions unanswered, as well, and it certainly provides no definitive answers about the subject at hand. Whatever the merits of the case, though, it is one of the most thoroughly researched cases in the literature, and Raymond Fowler is a long-time, well-respected member of the UFO research community. Anyone interested in the alien abduction phenomenon has to look at this case, and the best way of doing so is in reading this incredible book.

What an amazing story - I can't believe it is entirely true (the Phoenix story), but all else seems to fit into place. It must rank as one of the classics of the UFO world. A very brisk introduction followed by a quick flow into the body of evidence leaves the reader wanting more, much more. Apart from the typographical errors, poor English and annoying American date format - it is a book that can hardly be put down. I can't wait to read the several sequels

Fifteen year old Jenny Joslin and her six year old sister, Allie, have been on the move quite a bit: seven times in five and a half years. But no place has been quite as charming and yet as curious as their new house on the end of Crescent Lane. After all, in what other neighborhood, would a young man and his dog mysteriously appear and disappear. And in what other neighborhood would you discover that odd things are happening not only at your house but your neighbors' houses as well. Finding clues to these disturbances leads Jenny not only to the discovery of a fifty year old secret, but also what it means to be truly part of a neighborhood. The Moonlight Man is a nice read that might give a goosebump or two...

Crazy James

This was a great book to read. From hearing from a person who does not love to read, thats a pretty good book. The book is about a 15 year old girl named Jenny Jolsin and her little sister. Why I chose this book is because it had to do with mystery and its a type of a thriller. In one sentence I would have to say the book is about a girl named Jenny is trying to find out what these shadows are that are hounting in her house. They have moved plenty times and they are wanted to spend time in one house for a while, so they have picked this one. My favorite parts are when the shadows come out and haunt the Jolsins. This book is a very good book to read it really doesn't give the ending away in the very begining of the book. this is a good scary type of book so give it a try.

This book was really good.It was interesting and scary at the same time. It kinda reminds you of one of those late night scary movies that you have never herd of before but whatch anyway... then you get hooked and it stays with you forever. like i said a good read.Espesally for those who are in a mood to get scared... but not totally freaked out(you know what i mean?)REALLY GOOD! i hope you liked it as much as i did!

As a tireless fan of Ruth Rendell who is continually surprised by her ability to juxtapose the traditional British police procedural framework with sharply discerning social criticism, I think Simisola bests even her usually high standard. Rendell has a gift for fleshing out a character in a single line that no other mystery writer (save PD James) can equal, but her writing evinces a nonjudgmental compassion for humanity that is truly unique. While some readers might fault her treatment of race here as mawkish or self-conscious, I think it mirrors the realization that Inspector Wexford continually forces himself to confront -- that we are all complicit in racism. I also applaud her for writing about race in this single book from so many different and nuanced perspectives. This is not simply a book about black v. white but rather a book about the multiple gradations of class and ethnicity that intersect so confoundingly with race -- and this from a woman who has been writing mysteries since 1963! Finally, at a completely visceral level, I was stunned by the last line of the book, which I thought pulled together all that had gone before with the skill of a well-realized musical cadence. I must say that I'm shocked to read comments that people found it difficult to persevere to the end. I've only found one other Rendell novel tough going (The Best Man to Die, and I've sometimes wondered whether it was ghost-written by an inferior writer), but Simisola was absolutely gripping.

As has been pointed out by other reviewers, Ruth Rendell's "Simisola" combines the whodunit with a discussion of social issues. Even though the plot of the former is slightly overworked - an impressive construction, lacking somewhat in credibility - the connection is realistic and effective. Wexford's rather endearing, if unsuccessful attempts at "colourblindness", add neat twists and turns in his (more successful) attempts at solving the criminal problem. Blacks are, for example, not the only group suffering from the effects of prejudice here.

Even though a radical might criticize Rendell for mainly (but not exclusively) dealing with how whites do and should perceive blacks, Wexford's progress should be of interest to members of any race. And if non-British readers believe that the specific form of social evil at the heart of the story is limited to Britain, well, better take a closer look at your own society...

Again, the plot is overworked. Not that the mystery is all that complicated or fantastic, but the number of cleverly misleading clues, likely suspects, and distracting detours is rather too much for me. Clever but slightly artificial. Still, a favourite with me.

In "Simisola" Rendell continues to delve beneath the outer layers of the human psyche, exposing attitudes and perceptions that both animate and lay bare her main characters. Her detectives, the thoughtful Chief Inspector Wexford and the pragmatic Detective Inspector Burden, provide two separate approaches to racial tension, and domestic violence, in our society. When a woman goes missing and two women are murdered issues of race and domestic abuse become the key to the mystery and each detective is forced to rexamine his own perceptions. Rendell moves swiftly to the heart how we often delude ourselves about our attitudes. On the surface this is a fast- paced, exciting puzzle with a surprise solution in the best tradition of the British mystery writers. Below the surface, "Simisola" is an piercing examination of the emotionally charged atmosphere surrounding the integration of immigrants into a small traditional community.

My 8-year-old daughter & I have tried many recipes from this books and they have been delicious! She once brought the macaroni & cheese to a school party & her classmates ate it all up! The design is really attractive to kids, and the spiral binding makes it so much easier to read the recipes. The reason for only one star is I feel there are not very healthy -- too many recipes with meat and cheese.

I had bought this book for my son last year for his 8th birthday, He loved it and had so much fun with it I bought another one for my 10 yr old nephew for Christmas, and it was a hit with him as well! It has great recipes and easy to read directions.

You know if Betty Crocker has anything to do with a cookbook that it is worth the money.
This is a fun book.
I also recommend Awesome Sweet Secrets, How to Create Delicious Gifts and Treats in Minutes ...in the new and used section. It comes directly from the publisher.

While there is some great advice to be gleaned from the book, the majority of the book focuses on selling you on producing a specific type of event. Unless you want to follow their step-by-step advice and create that same event, you will find this book a disappointment as I did. I don't believe that the book lives up to its billing. Unlike the authors, I don't agree that there is a single perfect fundraising event for all organizations.

This book and accompanying disk is a tremendous help to board members and volunteers who are perplexed about which event is the right one for their organization to sponsor. So many times well meaning volunteers and staff come up with event ideas that are not the best use of valuable volunteer and staff time. The comprehensive criteria in Chapter 2 helps lead organizations' leaders to either say, "Yes! Let's do the suggested event -- or Let's go back to the drawing board." An extra bonus is the information about a great event that has been proven to raise NEW money.

I just finished reading this fabulous book and I can't wait to take it to our next board meeting to share the criteria for selecting the RIGHT event for our organization. I can now understand why so many newsletters and magazines such as The Grantsmanship Center Magazine have chosen to write about this book. I enthusiastically recommend it to all organizations who need to understand how to truly make events work for an organization!!!

A LOVE OF HER OWN was written genuinely with compassion, inspiration, and true love. Heroine, Ava Maxwell was indeed cheated out of her true calling, as mother, with so much compassion and love to give any child. She befriends Marcus, a young boy headed for trouble and problems faced by so many children today, poverty, and Hilton White, not realizing the happiness the future holds for the two of them. Ms. Griffin has written a wonderful story, and this reader recommends it to all. Congratulations! Betty

Ms. Griffin did a wonderful job in writing a story like this. She created the characters so well that you felt you knew them personally. I love the way she connected the famillies. I especially think it was wonderful exploring the issues that some women face today. You never know whose life you touch when you write these novels. Ms. Griffin is a wonderful writer.

This is a pure illustration for all the women in the world who are facing infertility, a must read story by Ms Griffin. Ava is faced to come to terms with this major issue when the man of her future, Hilton White, comes into her life. As this relationship develops, she is forced to come to grips with dealing with her problem. The supporting characters of this story helps tremendously, finally allowing Ava to not only gain the courage to accept her infertility but finds the blessing of love brings her alot more than she even imagined. We had not heard from Bettye Griffin since "At Long Last Love", and the wait was well worth it as she puts her heart into this special story. Thanks for showing us the courage this woman endures by fighting the issues of infertility.