The third book in the Martin Beck detective series. This one focuses on the mysterious disappearance of a Swedish tabloid journalism in Eastern Europe. Beck is called off his August family holiday to investigate, but is secretly glad to get away from his overbearing wife.

One of the weaker entries in the series. The story never really held my interest. However, I did appeciate the reverse intuition of the plot; though Beck gets involved with criminal underworld and international gun smugglers, things are ultimately much more simple than they first appear.

If this one doesn't capture your interst, keep reading; the series steadily improves from here.

congratulations on stumbling onto one of the best crime/satire series of the 20th century. If you didn't like this one, read some others, especially The Locked Room. Great writing with a moderate slant (they slam liberals and conservatives) makes this a wonderful series.

A series of meant to be erotic stories. However, they're told as though by people who are ashamed to talk about sex, which wasn't much of a turn-on. All phallus were "big". How imaginative is that?! If you're someone who can't talk about it with your partner, this may be a place to start. There is a lot better material out there. Go, get it.

I read the previos review of Nice COuples Do and bought the book anyway. I was delighted. Having been written in 1991 it's a bit less than some of the more overt stuff now, but the suggestions were great and the short pieces of erotic fiction were fun to read aloud and share with my husband. I got a great deal out of it.

After having read a number of Hess' "Arly Hanks" books, I decided to give Claire Malloy a try. I was disappointed with the characters and, in particular, this story line. Both were much too predictable. I had to keep checking the cover to make sure it was the same author as the one I've always found enjoyable in the Arly Hanks series.

Joan Hess is loads of fun to read and this is one of my favorites. Her characters are delightful and the heroine is someond you can really identify with. Highly recommended

I bought the Nightingale Connant edition of this title, thinking that I would get some scientific information about mind-body healing. Instead, it was full of New Age metaphysics about past lives, reincarnation, spirit guides, angels, out of body experiences, and the like. If I had known this in advance, I would not have spent the money.

As Joan Borysenko has said, "Thank you, God, for my mind, for it is through it that I know you!" Indeed, she is a powerful teacher of Truth, possessing what is a rare quality of balance of both heart and mind. Thinking with feeling! Joan Borysenko is right on in this book, because I used some of her techniques to heal myself! If you doubt me, how otherwise could I go in 6 months from being ready for heart surgery to being given a clean bill of health? How did I go from congestive heart disease to no sign of heart disease? Simple: I followed my doctors to a point, but I then went the extra mile with God, by looking to Spirit for healing, through prayer, meditation, visualization and affirmation. THE MIND DOES HAVE THE POWER TO HEAL! Thank you, Joan, for a wonderful book (which I loaned away and am re-buying today through Amazon) and a BIG "Thank you, God!" for this miracle in my life! The mind of God is perfect, the essence of God is perfect, and as an expression of God, I too experience perfection! How about a big "AMEN!" everybody! :)

If you're new to market gardening and looking for solid info on how to run a CSA, this is *not* the book for you. For example, the chapter on harvesting and processing is only 2 1/2 pages long and boils down to "it can't be explained in a book, you need hands on experience". The majority of the book is self-congratulatory prose about how CSAs are saving the world. I support the CSA concept, but found this book a big disappointment. There are a few useful charts for determining share size and how much to grow, they are the only thing that prevents me from giving this book zero stars.

This book describes many problems of the current food production & distribution system. More importantly, it provides a solution using Community Supported Agriculture. The book outlines the steps necessary to set up a CSA, discusses options and issues for each step, and includes examples from CSAs all over the country. Many references and a resource list guide readers to other sources of information in a variety of media. I am a CSA consumer, not a farmer or an organizer; I enjoyed the book and am much more optimistic about the power groups of individuals have to change the system

This pricy but slim volume (126 actual pages of text and photos), is written like a freshman essay. There are facts, but little that illuminates or gives insight into this unusual personality who founded the silver industry in Taxco. It is neither insightful or clever and a biography must have one of these characteristics. Much research seems to have been done, but with little result.

Don Guillermo, as he was known in Taxco, was an American architect who came upon an impoverished if beautiful Mexican village in the mountains of the state of Guerrero. Stimulated by financial desperation and a challenge from a friend, he hired a silversmith from nearby Iguala and kicked off the renaissance of Mexican silverwork- initially from a table in his house, and ultimately a large workshop turning out exemplary tin, copper, weaving, furniture and, of course, silver. Almost all the smiths who carried out the Taxco tradition were trained in the Spratling workshop.

This eminently readable book tells the tale, though it is certainly not one of those comprehensive 600-page biographies, nor does it become overly speculative about a man who was respected and loved for his creativity and for giving impulse to a craft that made the community relatively wealthy, but also made some mistakes and enemies. (Yep, he was special, and very human!) That is, in my opinion, part of its charm.

This book is a bit topical, yet it manages to convey the excitement of the resurrection of a Mexican village that became an entrepot of artists, writers and would-be revolutionaries, and- for good and for bad- a huge tourist destination. It gives more than a glimmer of the many facets of Don Guillermo / Bill Spratling, a man who intended to find respite and refuge, resuscitated a community and gave many livelihood, and largely withdrew from that same community in his last years.

This is written from a perspective of someone who was privileged to know Taxco, since as a youngster I hung around the talleres- especially of Hector Aguilar and the Castillo family- developing a love of Mexican silver and some rudimentary smithing skills of my own.

What does reading these essays do for me and for other readers in their twenties? Like Sr. Joan, these writers point the way to the past, not the future. All right, the 60's happened. Get over it. Puh-leaze. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to figure out how to live the faith here and now, stuck in the middle of this scandal-ridden Weak-Land called "american cathoicism" They may aspire to be a Catholic mod-squad, but they come off more like the Flintstones. Perhaps they should have all gotten themselves ordained by the Peace Corps.

Spiritual Questions for the 21st Century - edited by Mary Hembrow Snyder - is a collection of fascinating essays by contemporaries of Joan Chittister OSB. The book is not a gushy tribute to Joan but an incredible, thought provoking, and nourishing tribute to the questions that each essayist believes is the defining spiritual question for her/him for this new century. Joan herself, a purveyor extrordinaire of spiritual questions throughout her own life, offers a timely and eloquent 'Afterword' entitled: The Power of Questions to Propel.

Twenty-five contemporaries of Joan's including Diana Hayes, Dan Berrigan, Richard Rohr, Edwina Gately, Rembert Weakland, Sandra Schneiders, and Thomas Gumbleton were asked to address this: "What do you think is the most important spiritual question of our time?" The diversity and richness of the responses illuminate the darkness that has become so representative of the times in which we are living.

I highly recommend the use of this book for peace and justice study groups as well as for all people of good will who are beginning to see the connection of the 'consciousness of the sacred' and 'action on behalf of justice' for the least among us, including our endangered earth.

I have read a few of the author's works, but this one took almost 300 pages before the characters got together. Also, the last minute mini-intrigue with Cassie and Elizabeth's daughter was ill-contrived and poorly written into the plot.

For Richard MacAllister and Brenda Henderson, their friendship was the best thing in their lives. While they both search for their soulmate, the last thing they suspect is to find him or her in each other. So one night, when Richard goes next door to comfort his ailing best friend, they turn to each other in a fit of unexpected passion and are afterwards determined to keep their friendship the way it is. Unfortunately, due to the effect of antibiotics on her contraceptive, Brenda finds herself pregnant with her best friend's child. So determined is she that they are not meant for each other, Brenda refuses Richard's offer of marriage for the sake of their friendship.

This is the premise off which the rest of Pickart's latest installment of the Baby Bet series is based on. I must confess that I was actually looking forward to this installment because for the short appearance they made in the preceding installment, Richard and Brenda showed some signs of promise. Unfortunately, their story is a major disappointment. The style is a problem in this story because even more than the preceding installments, Pickart's use of dialogue seems rather meaningless at points. Her characters ramble without a point and it is supposed to be endearing. At first, perhaps considering the unexpectedness of the baby, it is. But because it continues, it becomes irritating and overly saccharine. In addition, through it all, I found Brenda's obstinacy to be a deterrant to any growth in their relationship. Pickart also sticks to form concerning the hero's occupation putting him out of the heroine's way for long stretches of time. This makes it hard to write a credible romance between the two. Of the two friends,however, Richard is the more admirable because the baby actually manages to instigate a development in him as a character while Brenda continues to stagnate up to the bitter end.

In his introduction to Battling for Manassas, former NPS historian Ed Bearss correctly notes that this book ought to be "must reading" for public officials, developers, and preservationists who will eventually find themselves on opposite sides of debates about the preservation of land for historic sites, especially controversies that affect land near the nation's battlefields. Joan Zenzen has done a fine job of researching and writing this administrative history of Manassas National Battlefield Park. She has not only made sense of the paper records that flourish luxuriantly around government agencies, but she has also interviewed key players on both sides of the more recent of the many controversies that have swirled around the park. Zenzen's prose is serviceable if unexciting. A heavier editorial hand might have reduced the number of awkward phrasings and passive voices. Still, in literary style it ranks in the top five percent of National Park Service administrative histories, a notoriously pedestrian genre. A more serious criticism is that the book does not compare the land-use controversies at Manassas with those at other American historic sites, at least beyond limited analogies to Gettysburg and Fredericksburg/Spotsylvania. Perhaps that is just as well. Because it lies just outside the Beltway in an area inhabited by the rich, famous, and the politically potent, Manassas is hardly a reliable model for what might happen in similar circumstances at other American battlefields.