I am a new fan to Arthurian legends. I read this book and it hooked me. I have since read many books, fiction and non, about the life and legends of Arthur. This book provides detailed descriptions of all the players in the legend.

I have long had an interest in Arthurian legend and myth. This book, with its beautiful illustrations and wonderful recount of the myths that surround Arthur, was one of the most enjoyable texts on Arthur I have read. Not only did it include the myth, or legend, as it is told, but detailed how the myth came about and/or how it has changed through the years. Anyone who has ever been interested in Arthurian legend, history, or popular myth should own this book. It will become one of your favorites!

Simply put, the best daily devotional I have had the pleasure of reading. I look forward to taking a few minutes each morning reading the words of wisdom that Susan Kaye shares with her readers. I would recommend this book to anyone who was looking for a devotional.

Kay is an incredible author. There are many good devotionals out there, but Kay's "Search My Heart O God" is wonderful. I look forward to starting my day with Jesus and Kay's writing. I think you will be blessed by her daily devotions.

Arthur Rimbaud is one of the great poetic geniuses in the canon of world history. His brilliance manifests itself in his iconoclastic criticism of the world at large, a world which condemns him in his relentless pursuit of truth. These poems are a vision of personal truth, one rooted in pain and experience, in the lessons of a life which was bled out of him in the streets of Paris and the crumbling cities of the Old World. Rimbaud, like Baudelaire, is a decadent genius, offering insights into the human soul and its relation to a world which offers nothing but alienation. His verses are strange and unfamiliar, breaking conventional poetic forms to such an extent that it cannot be considered rebellion; it is almost as though he disregards the work of every poet before him to find a perfectly honest form of expression. And the results are striking. If sometimes a bit obtuse, his poems have the feeling of a revelatory hymn: each word conveys layers of meaning, and when taken together they form a sort of gestalt for the human spirit. Rimbaud, like those he inspired--from Jim Morrison to Alan Ginsberg--is voice of suffering and redemption that should not be ignored.

It's been well over a century since Arthur Rimbaud penned "A Season in Hell" and "Illuminations" in his native French. It is said by many that "Illuminations" was the most complex collection that Rimbaud wrote in his short span of writing, but this translation by Mark Treharne truly captured the essence of Rimbauds work. "A Season in Hell & Illuminations" embodies Rimbauds thoughts and state of being at the time with his amazing use of metaphors and grasp of the written word. This book is definately a must have for the most zealous Rimbaud fans and new readers alike.

If you love to read before you go to bed you will enjoy delving into this book. Arguably the most infamous and recognizable fictional character, Sherlock Holmes shines in this page turning anthology. Narrated through the words of Dr. Watson, he accounts the more adventurous cases of his well-esteemed colleague. Sherlock Holmes transcends these pages and into our consciousness. When reading this you cannot help but admire his amazing deductive reasoning and his flare for solving the most impossible cases. He appears larger than life. Cleverly and meticulously written, Doyle leaves no stone unturned in writing great bedtime stories. Another aspect that I enjoyed about this book is the introduction. Here we learn the beginnings of Doyle's career in writing, his unsuccessful medical practice and the sudden and profound effect that Sherlock Holmes has had on his time. Over a hundred years later time has not made him obsolete. Probably the best aspect of the book is that it only takes an hour to read and you can pick it up later and never miss a beat. I started this book over a year ago and casually read it. I decided to pick it up again and now I couldn't put it down....

This book is good with select mysteries about the great case-solver of all times. When you read any Holmes case, you must keep in mind that these were the times when technoloy was so much behind what it is now; there was no way to even type fingerprints... only Holmes and his arch rival knew the art! This makes for good reading when you want to a refreshing break. Young kids can also follow the language, in fact I bought this one for my niece but ended up reading it myself... took me back a good 15 years. There's nothing like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. A good buy, worth every cent it costs.

A fabulous treasure dogged by murder. A trans-racial oath of loyalty. A greedy major, a cannibal pigmy, and a peg-legged convict. Mix in a pig-headed police investigator and a brilliant-but-flawed amateur detective, and you have the makings of a first-class mystery.

Miss Mary Morstan, the recipient of yearly gifts of pearls from an anonymous benefactor, receives a summons declaring her a wronged woman and promising riches if she replies. She enlists the aid of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, and finds herself in the middle of a locked-room murder mystery. If the mystery can only be solved, she will become the richest woman in England.

Holmes, in a virtuoso performance, solves the murder, finds the missing treasure, brings the killer to justice, and learns the strange tale of "The Four." Did I mention that Dr. Watson winds up married to Miss Morstan?

The format of this sequel to "A Study in Scarlet" follows basically the same pattern as the original Sherlock Holmes story. Holmes visits the scene of a baffling murder, draws amazing conclusions from his inspection of the scene, and relentlessly tracks down the villian, who then tells his story and turns out to be not such a bad guy after all.

I first read "Scarlet" and "Sign" as a pre-teenager, and they made an indelible impression on me. In my job I frequently visit murder scenes, and I believe that these two books are what have influenced me to perform inspections outside the crimescene tape.

Merrison once again gives an admirable rendition of Holmes, and Michael Williams turns in a creditable Watson. Brian Blessed is a treat as Jonathan Small. The radio play is enhanced by the fact that it gives greater attention to the Morstan-Watson romance than Conan Doyle did in the book. The BBC productions of the Holmes stories always seem to pay more attention to Watson's romances, and it works quite well to make the stories more enjoyable.

This is a very faithful rendering of this story! Right up on par with the movie starring Jeremy Brett.

Clive Merrison, as usual, gives us a lively interpretation of Holmes, and yet he captures some of his darker passions, too, running more of the spectrum of Holmes' emotional life than many of the actors who have portrayed him onscreen.

Williams gives us a warm Watson - the Everyman we can relate to - and shows us how he was frequently the calm eye in the center of the Holmes hurricane.

The story maturely explores Holmes' drug addiction, his misogyny, and something of his neurotic nature as revealed in the excruciating amount of importance he placed on solving his "little puzzles."

One unexpected gem was Brian Blessed's performance as Jonathan Small. His engaging read added much life to what can be a somewhat tedious part of the story: Jonathan Small's narrative of the history of the crimes being investigated and his revelation of who The Four are.

But best of all, this production gives us access to scenes of the budding romance between Watson and Mary Morstan which in the novel take place "off stage." These scenes are rather touching, actually, and add just the right flavor to counter-balance what is really a horrible little story of greed, murder, and the ease with which humans can be corrupted.

The Single Parent Resource is one of the most practical and comprehensive guides available today. With an easy to navigate table of contents, the book lends itself as a ready reference guide. As a single parent, I was impressed with the amount of information packed into it. It covers many of the issues that I have encountered and provides solutions that work. Single parenting is not easy but Brook Noel's book gives me more tools to deal with real life, day to day challenges. Thank you for giving me this help.

The author, Brooke Noel, was raised in a single parent home so she understands from firsthand experience the type of trials and support needed by single parents.

The book covers the top concerns problems and challenges facing the single parent based upon a survey of 500 single parents:

Household management (cooking, cleaning, chores, etc.), balancing work and family, finances, childcare, emotional health for children and parents, and much more.

Although I'm not personally a single parent, I found the guide helpful for any busy parent. Many of the categories and tips are applicable to anyone.

I just wish Amazon.com didn't offer this book by special order only---it's definitely the type of resource single parents need to get into their hands right away.

In detective literature Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with his Sherlock Holmes series is undoubtedly one of the best authors ever. His character Sherlock Holmes has a remarkable power of observation and his deductions from minutest details are plainly stunning. I feel there never is a dull moment in his stories; which are concise to the point. This compilation of six stories is no exception. My favorite from this list is "The Adventure of the Empty House"; in which Holmes busts the remaining group of Prof Moriati's gang. I will not divulge further for fear of giving up the plot.

For less then the price of a cup of coffee, you can own a copy of what I consider to be Sir A Conan Doyle's best Sherlock Holmes stories.

This book contains 6 stores. A Scandal in Bohemia. In this story you see Holmes pitted against a female that may just be his equal.

Next is The Red Headed League. This is the weak story in this collection. Still worth a read, but not a very thoughtful one.

Next is The Adventure of the Speckled Band. Holmes and Watson visit the countryside to examine a death most foul.

The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb is a short tale of a young mans missing digit.

Next is the final problem and closes with The adventure in the Empty house. I will give no plot away on these since they are my favourite Holmes stories.

Overall for under a buck, a GREAT value!

The author skillfully manages to make learning relatively advanced statistics easy through stories, examples and anecdotes. Where the skills comes in is the wide range of complex topics that are introduced and clearly explained. To a highly technical reader this may come across as either condescending. However, the fact is that all of the important details and techniques are covered in great detail, and are wrapped in friendly prose. This ensures that hard-to-learn concepts need not be hard to learn, nor the learning process intimidating.

What I like is the systematic coverage of key concepts and knowledge areas, each of which builds upon the preceding topic. The book starts with compelling business reasons for embarking on a 6-Sigma initiative, and what 6-Sigma entails. It them introduces an approach for reducing cycle time and improving quality in a 2- and 4-step process. After establishing that framework, the book shows how to sustain the improvements using key indicators for process stability and capability, and how to effectively employ statistical process controls to proactively track them.

The foregoing alone would make this an excellent introductory book on 5-Sigma, but the author goes on to tackle advanced topics such as design of experiments, quality function deployment and benchmarking. These are certainly integral components of a complete 6-Sigma initiative, but I didn't expect to find them covered in an introductory book. I also liked the complete coverage of basic TQM tools and techniques at the end of the book.

If you need to either learn the fundamentals of 6-Sigma or train a non-technical workforce this is an ideal book. If you are going to teach or facilitate a 6-Sigma workshop you'll also want the author's "Six Sigma Instructor Guide" (ISBN 1884180140), which provides a syllabus and learning objectives that use this book as the student text.

It's so refreshing to review a six sigma publication that doesn't pretend to be "rocket science", I particularly enjoyed the extremely simple application of the six sigma methodology and the de- mystifying of the six sigma methodology that tends to be extremely mystified in the majority of six sigma publications. This publication would be an excellent addition to any internal training initiative endeavouring to educate and inform employees of the intentions of this quality tool in a non intelectual way that allows for the integration of more complex mathematical methods of data collection, the clear way that the selection and use of control charts were presented was even understood by my colleauges who admit to being affraid of math. All in all this publication is a practical handbook for breaking the uninitiated into the six sigma philosophy.

In 1916, American poets Witter Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke had it up to wherever with Imagism, Vorticism, and several other minor isms that they thought had infected the literary world. They set out to concoct an ism to end all isms, and devised "Spectrism," a new school for experimental poetry. To that end, they published "Spectra: New Poems," with an unintelligible preface purporting to explain the name of the new ism. Each of the Spectric poems was pretentiously titled with an opus number, like a piece of classical music.

Witter Bynner wrote as "Emmanuel Morgan." Morgan's persona was full of bacchanalian, bardic blatherskite, a rhyming Whitman. Here is the opening of his "Opus 6:"

If I were only dafter
I might be making hymns
To the liquor of your laughter
And the lacquer of your limbs.

Arthur Davison Ficke wrote as "Anne Knish." The name was meant to be vaguely exotic and Eastern European; apparently not many Americans had heard of knishes in 1916. Knish is the archetypal poetess, sensual and enigmatic, vaguely scandalous. She writes free verse. Here is Opus 118:

If bathing were a virtue, not a lust
I would be dirtiest.

To some, housecleaning is a holy rite.
For myself, houses would be empty
But for the golden motes dancing in sunbeams.

Tax-assessors frequently overlook valuables.
Today they noted my jade.
But my memory of you escaped them.

By now, the basic flaw of the hoax should be obvious. Having endured much worse in the way of poetic experiment between now and 1916, the Spectric poems aren't that bad. In fact, they are rather consistently entertaining, and contain some pretty good lines. They rank among the more memorable work by Bynner and Ficke, and both writers acknowledged as much after the hoax had been exposed.

I first read this book when it came out in 1961. Its great value lies not so much in documenting the amusing history of the hoax, but in reprinting Spectra in its entirety as a lengthy appendix. Yes, the "hoax" poems are parodies, but they're careful ones, and contain some of Ficke's and Bynner's very best work!

"Asparagus grows feathery and tall; The hose lies rotting by the garden wall."

What a couplet! Buy it! Read it! Give it to your teenager as an introduction to modern poetry. Before long he'll be reading Pound.

It's too bad that most people will recognize the title only from Irwin Allen's Golden Turkey Award winning (for Most Badly Bumbled Bee Movie) adaptation rather than from Arthur Herzog's excellent source novel. A plausible feeling blend of fact and fantasy, The Swarm tells of the aggressive Brazilian Killer Bees (derived from the misguided cross-breeding of domestic Brazilian Bees with African Killer Bees, which are quite ill tempered) mistakenly getting introduced into the New York area. Quickly they spread across the country and begin posing a serious threat to the nation's safety. Can the bees be destroyed without harming the citizens or the enviroment? If you are looking for edge of your seat suspense then forget Allen's movie (which is good only for a laugh, believe me - it's my biggest guilty pleasure) and read this book, it is one of the best animal (or in this case insect) attack stories ever written.

Moves with speed and thrills. Even reading it now, with killer bees a real threat, it is still highly effective. The movie version by Irwin Allen in 1978 was a travesty compared to this horror/sci-fi classic. Killer bees in this story come into the US via container ships, spreading havoc and famine across the country, and it seems it is up to scientists and the military to stop it. THE BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN!