Philadelphia English teacher Amanda Pepper worries about the strange change in behavior of one of her brightest students, Adam Evans. In recent days, Adam seems filled with fear and rage, ready to strike out at anyone. Assistant librarian Heidi Fisher provides Amanda's class with a tour of the public library. Not long after, she is found dead, strangled to death. Adam, who was on the tour, is missing.

The police believe Adam is on the run after committing the murder. Even Amanda's significant other, police officer MacKenzie thinks the lad is guilty. Only Amanda believes her student is innocent. She thinks he saw the killing and is on the lam from the murderer. All Amanda needs to do is find the teenager before he becomes victim number two.

With the recent violence in Colorado, ADAM AND EVIL has a sad timeliness that takes away from its dark humor and wit. However, what cannot be ignored is that the amateur sleuthing remains first rate and the problems in modern school systems are handled with dexterity. Amanda is one of the better characters in fiction today and author Gillian Roberts keeps the Philly scene fresh even though it is her ninth Pepper tale. There will be o questions questions of why Ms. Roberts is an Anthony Award winner after the reading of this superb detective story.

Harriet Klausner

In Charisma, Tony Alessandra has pulled all of that knowledge together in one place. After many years in business, and a whole lot of learning about how to be successful in sales, management, and life, I recognized quite a bit of the contents of this volume. I really enjoyed the refresher and reinforcement . . . and I picked up some new advice that I'd missed along the way.

The book starts, appropriately with an introduction to Charisma: "the ability to positively influence others by connecting with them physically, emotionally, and intellectually." From the introductory chapters, Alessandra takes us on a journey through seven fully-loaded chapters spilling over with the secrets of how to fashion and hone that influencing ability.

To enable you to see the framework of this tool kit, I'll list the chapters. Sending Out Your Best Silent Message, Speaking with Authority, Listening Attentively, Becoming More Persuasive, Using Space and Time to Your Advantage, Maximizing Your Adaptability, and Expanding Your Vision and Ideas. As a reader, you'll find yourself asking your author-mentor how he learned all this stuff! Wow! Your respect and admiration will grow, followed by appreciation as you put the many principles to work and start seeing results.

This book should be required reading for every salesperson, every high school senior, every young person starting out on a career. People who have been around for a while, but who have not yet achieved the success they desire, will also benefit greatly from this guidebook. The continual flow of advice and wisdom is interrupted by a self-test in every chapter. You'll be able to see yourself grow page by page.

Hint to make this a better world: Parents, buy this book for your kids.

PS: Alessandra is also author of The Platinum Rule. Read that one next!

Makes you wonder about Hollywood and if Flo Anthony based this on a true story! Get this for yourself and give it as a Christmad gift to everyone you know.

This book is full of Hollywood folks and is real animated. I just adored this book. Get it for yourself and then tell a friend!!!!!

Justine is a book full of awful music and terrible poetry, of helpless posession and excorcism,of bitter truths & life-sustaining illusions. A pained and painful meditation on Love and, ultimately, Life.

For all of Mr. Durrell's masterfully crafted and stirring descriptions of Alexandria, the city soon falls off (like so much dead skin) and, there emerges the Human Face - grimacing.

Although the plot of the story stages around Justine and Darley's love, the ideas put forth are always bringing questions to my mind. For example, I have asked myself repeatedly, what qualities in a human cause them to be so loved by so many? It does not necessarily seem to be strength of character, loyalty, or beauty that entrances and seduces. What is it in Justine that is so enticing?

The book is stimulating and entertaining, but not on a level based on plot.

This ought to be required reading.

Also recommended: FREUD: DARKNESS IN THE MIDST OF VISION, by Louis Breger.

People living in the present always take for granted the world around them. Natural processes are so passé now that hardly anyone thinks about how objects break down atomically, or what makes the Sun burn. We feel we have such control over the world that knowledge of it is really meaningless. 2,600 years ago, the world around man was almost totally unknown to humans. The environment was unpredictable and could often bring about devastating destruction. The stars and the planets defied any explanation that ancient man had to offer. To end this mystery, educated men developed extremely different theories in order to explain simple things, such as what the Earth was made up of or how life began. The development of thinking is so interesting to watch, as people devoid of modern instruments struggled to grasp the mysteries of the natural world. All of these men are written of with great reverence and honesty. Many who are thought to be great pioneers in scientist are taken down a peg by Gottlieb?s extensive research. Others benefit from Gottlieb?s fair and educational descriptions.

The historical process gets even more interesting as thinkers, somewhat tired of the distant enigmas of the Earth, began to concentrate on the state of man. This included many different fields, including religion, politics, and medical science. It quickly became clear to me that no matter how strange the Earth seems, man himself is probably the greatest mystery historical philosophers have had to tackle. Gottlieb methodically describes the development of these ideas, taking the right amount of time to explain extremely complex problems in plain understandable English. I found Gottlieb?s look at Plato?s Republic to be one of the most interesting chapters I have ever read.

This book is perfect for newcomers or serious students of philosophies. An informative and fun read.

Finally, there is book that is both entertaining and informative. In Gottlieb's book I never felt like I was "getting stuck" in minutiae. Clearly, the challenge for Gottlieb was deciding what to leave out, and while I am by no means an expert, from the areas I do know well I found his focus fair and informative. This book is a treat.

Dr. Harris starts off by going into the history of Transactional Analysis and the theories of those before Dr. Eric Berne. The second chapter explains the basic of Transactional Analysis which is the concept of the Parent, Adult, and Child ego states that are supposed to compose each and every one of our personalities. The Parent ego state contains all the information we accept as true that we have gathered from authority figures including our parents. The Adult ego state is the collection of all information that we have proven to ourselves as being true (using some sort of logic). The Child ego state is our natural good and bad side of feelings - love, anger, greed, empathy, etc. The author extensively uses the phrase P-A-C (Parent-Adult-Child) through the rest of the book.

Dr. Harris then introduces the concept of the four different life positions that each of us adopts at any given time. All of us apparently go through four life positions ending up with the last one in a sequential manner except some of us get stuck in the earlier stages (this results in problems that typically need therapy). These four positions are -

1. I'm Not OK, You're OK
2. I'm Not OK, You're Not OK
3. I'm OK, You're Not OK
4. I'm OK, You're OK

The next few chapters of the book focus on the fact that we can change no matter what stage we are stuck in and the theory behind how to change. The chapters after that focus on a few specific types of relationships - with spouses, children and adoloscents. There is then a chapter discussing when treatment is necessary and the book wraps up with a couple of chapters on P-A-C with regards to moral values and social implications of P-A-C. These last two chapters are more subjective and probably the author's personal views at that time. I have typically tried to take the information in these two chapters with a grain of salt.

Overall, this is an excellent book on using Transactional Analysis in improving your relationships with the most important people of your life. I found this book easier to read than 'Born to Win' or some of the original works by Dr. Eric Berne. This seems to be a common sentiment among those who have read and like books on Transactional Analysis. More than most self-help books out there, this book promises to lead to the most amount of positive changes. This is probably due to the systematic approach that is followed through out the book and the fact that it is very easy to follow and implement at almost any age.

Enjoy this life altering book!