If your a big fan of Joey Bishop you will devour this book. Michael Seth Starr does an outstanding job chronicling the life and career of this legendary entertainer. You will join Joey as he climbs the show biz ladder from small clubs in Philadelphia, to the Copacabana and the Sands, to movie sets, tv studios, and to Broadway. Frank Sinatra dubed him as the "hub of the wheel" performing with the Rat Pack. You will not be able to put this book down. "Mouse in the Rat Pack:The Joey Bishop Story" is a great read and a must have for his fans.

This is a well-put-together biography of Augustin Verot, third Bishop of Savannah, Ga., and first Bishop of St. Augustine, Fla. The book shows Verot was a character, as the author says in the best sense of the word. One does not get the idea that he was episcopal timber from reading about his career as a teacher in Maryland, but from Apr 25, 1858, (when Archbishop Kenrick consecrated him as Vicar Apostolic of Florida) on, one cannot but be impressed with the self-sacrificing and devoted way he performed his arduous tasks. Putting up with what he did must have been what enabled him to play such a tough and outspoken role at the first Vatican Council, where, inter alia, he called for the rehabilitation of Galileo--which was finally accomplished during this pontificate. His discourses at the Council, which seem to have been quite numerous and frank, cannot have been very persuasive but contained a lot of common sense. One wonders how he could fail to be cowed by the scene, being, as he was, a very minor bishop from a poor diocese. It was during the Council that he was appointed Bishop of St. Augustine. This is great work on a great bishop.

Bishop takes us for a wild ride in this book. Combining meta-fiction (making the text of the book self-reference itself) with outrageous parody of the horror genre (it gets awesomelly surreal!), he comes out with an absurdist comedy that manages to be scary at the same time.

The story in few words: Writer and recent widow Stevie Crye's electric typewriter breaks up, leaving her without the tool of her trade. She gets her machine fixed by a creepy thecnician, and she gets an unexpected extra oomph when the typewriter begins typing by itself. At first, the machine transcripts Stevie's nightmares. Gradually, it CONSTRUCTS her nightmares, and provides her with hallucinations that taint her waking hours. (Or are the hallucinations the real thing?) When Stevie reads these compositions, they are the chapters of the book, verbatim.

If you read the Animal Man comics during Grant Morrison's run, you might have an idea of what to expect on the matter of trippiness. If you didn't, suffice it to say that you may experience the same confussion as Stevie when Bishop reminds you that all you're reading is just fiction, and yet the ficticious characters fight to show their free will within the constraints of plot.

One probably still can't imagine what it was like to serve time in VietNam even after all the high budget Hollywood attempts to bring some understanding of that war home. Mr. Bishop brings us closer however than any war movie could with his brief yet poignant memoir of his time "In Country" He states early on he is not a writer but this serves him well as his emotions ring true and heartfelt. One hopes this book provides the author the catharsis he seeks as well as for any Vets who read it who struggle to this day with their service to their country. I heartily recommend it.

This book should be required reading for all active military personnel, families, Viet Nam veterans and their families. The book has the ANSWER to all of our problems, both past and present. As a Viet Nam vet, this book addressed my hidden problems that I have been denying. Life is better for me now. All vets need to experience this awakening. MUST READ

This story tells the true horrors that these young men have gone through and still go through even after the war. The fact of the matter within the book is the story of one mans struggles with life before, during, and after the war. If only the real story of the life of a war VET was easy. However the war is never over in there minds. Maybe some day he will find the peace that he needs to live a so called normal life. This book had me on the edge of my seat I couldn't put it down.

Somewhere somewhen PKD is morphing into Michael Bishop, classical music rolling into words on the keyboard. If you've read all of PKD's works and are jones-ing for more, check this out. And as our media crazed society increasingly resembles one of PKD's novels, don't we need all the help we can get?

Excellent pastiche on P.K. Dick and some of his characters. Though undeniably liberal and anti conservative in political overtones, it can be forgiven because the story is cute.

This is not only a tribute to Philip K. Dick - my favorite author - but also written in his exact style. It's uncanny.

Andy Duncan writes brilliant stories.

That's all I need to say. He puts words down on paper and they look beautiful! This collection, from the magnificent Golden Gryphon press, collects all of Andy Duncan's early published work. The stories are by turns, beautiful, poignant, and sometimes horrific.

My favorite story of the collection is 'The Executioner's Guild'. This incredible novella is set in a small Southern town. The town is abuzz because the Execution wagon is coming to town. The Executioner is a young man whose job it is to perform Executions for the state. The story becomes really interesting when the Executioner's mysterious mentor unexpectedly arrives in town and the Executioner must come to grips with the true importance of his job. This story will leave you thinking long after you've put the book down.

There are other stories in this collection of equal quality: 'Liza and the Crazy Water Man', 'Fenneman's Mouth', 'Grand Guignol', 'From Alfano's Reliquary', and the title story 'Beluthahatchie', set in a suburb of Hell.

It's a genuinely exciting experience to stumble across a relatively new author. If you're not familiar with Andy Duncan, you should definitely check out this explosive new author. Duncan's stories remind me a lot of those by another Southern author, Howard Waldrop. Whatever their similarities and differences, both are incredible authors. Duncan's published stories since this collection have maintained his very high level of excellence. I have every reason to believe that Andy Duncan will be a very big name in short speculative fiction. Don't miss this collection. Highly recommended.

Andy Duncan is a delight, a surprise, and an original. If you haven't yet sampled his work, in "Beluthahatchie and Other Stories" you've got the pleasure of discovering a huge new talent ahead of you. And if you're already familiar with his beautifully written and crafted stories, "Beluthahatchie and Other Stories" allows you to re-read, rediscover, and relish them as often as you wish -- and if you're like me, you'll find yourself dipping into this wonderful collection again and again.

This book just won the World Fantasy Award and for good reason! My favorite story is "Fortitude" an alternate history fantasy about George Patton, but every story is unique and remarkable. And if you buy this book, don't let it sit on your shelf unread. Read one story at random and you will fall in love with Duncan's writing style and will probably finish the entire book in one sitting (I know I did!).

There is a copy of this book for auction on ebay, a great place for out of print books. Amazon has several out of print books in their auctions too.

I read this book when it was first published. I only read it once because my copy vanished. Over the years, the book haunted me - but I couldn't remember the name! Then today I thought I'd search for it using "Unicorns" and "Aids" only to find that it's gone out of print! How can that be? It's such a long time since I read the book that I can't honestly remember how well written it was - and Aids was so new in those days - but the unicorns still resonate...

I don't usually just unconditionally rave about a book, but this one deserves 5 stars and heaps of praise. The human relationships are drawn so well, the strains of Native American culture still surviving in modern society are sensitively and convincingly depicted, and we get a well-rounded portrait of an AIDS victim drawn when the disease was still somewhat new . . . all these things are wonderful, and that's not even counting the main character and the magical unicorns. Also, the device of the TV broadcasting channels from an alternate dimension -- sounds like a silly convention, but it works, as does just about everything in this marvelous, affirming book. I must find more by this author!

Michael Bishop, Nebula Award-winning author of No Enemy but Time, has just released Blue Kansas Sky, which collects four of his short works - one never before been seen in print - in a single volume. These stories showcase his mastery of different genres, and provide the reader with an sampling from various phases in Bishop's writing career.

"Blue Kansas Sky" is a moving story of a young boy in 1950s small-town America, who struggles between his love for an uncle just released from prison and loyalty to his mother (who blames the man for her husband's death). Bishop incorporated many details from his own childhood to make this tale come alive. There's no science fiction here at all - just an engaging tale, extremely well written. Michael Bishop is adept at incorporating fresh words and unexpected turns of phrase without making the reader scramble for a thesaurus.

In "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thurbana," a well-to-do Afrikaner "ghosts" in and out of reality after a freak auto accident and is forced to watch as the security police interrogate two black laborers - one who plays around with cosmic string theory as a hobby; another who receives pirate radio broadcasts courtesy of a metal plate in his skull. This story is very difficult to get through - not because it is poorly written (indeed, just the opposite); but because it captures in chilling detail the horrors of the old Apartheid system.

"Cri de Coeur" (Cry from the Heart) tells the story of a man who must cope with the responsibilities, and revel in the joys, of raising a son with Down's Syndrome aboard a generational starship seeking to colonize another star system.

"Death and Designation among the Asadi" deals with a human anthropologist living in the wilds of an alien planet, struggling to understand the enigmatic rituals of its lion-maned hominids - without losing his sanity. [After reading this story I asked the author what I should do if I didn't fully understand it - read it again, or embrace the mystery? His answer: "Death and Designation" is my Solaris (a novel by Stanislaw Lem). Real aliens, Lem implies, defy comprehension because they ARE alien. On the other hand, you could read my novel Transfigurations, which incorporates the novella, and which more than one critic badmouthed for explaining rather than embracing the original mystery. They may have done so with some justice.]

Blue Kansas Sky is a wonderful collection of stories that I heartily recommend. It's published by Golden Gryphon Press (a small firm specializing in anthologies).

Blue Kansas Sky is a collection of 4 novellas spanning 3 decades and the full spectrum of Bishop's talent. The title story is a sweet, poignant coming-of-age story set in Bishop's semi-fictional Van Luna, KS: it's all about life and growing up and the random difficulties of doing so. The last line is guaranteed to send you reeling. "Cri di Coeur" and "Death and Designation among the Asadi" are stunning morality tales in the guise of science fiction; as usual, Bishop's characters, no matter where or when they are, portray humanity at its most believable, wanderers who find hope in the most fragile of circumstances. The ringer for me, though, is "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana," a magical-realistic look at the horror of racism, the sin of inaction, all neatly and convincingly tied up with the Theory of Everything. Quite simply: amazing.

This is a collection for fantasists, for realists, for anyone who enjoys one of our best unsung writers at his very best.

Michael Bishop is a Nebula and World Fantasy Awards winning author. Blue Kansas Sky showcases four of his best novellas under one cover. These superbly written stories include Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thuban; Cri De Coeur; Death and Designation Among the Asadi; and the title piece, Blue Kansas Sky. This outstanding anthology is enhanced for the readers with an informative introduction to Michael Bishop and his writing by James Morrow. Blue Kansas Sky is "must reading" for Bishop's legion of science fiction and fantasy fans.

I had seen this book at the library, and being a fan of Dante's Inferno, I checked it out. I was a bit disconcerted when I realized not all the stories take place in or near Hell, as the title suggests. Most of them occur here on Earth, where the characters are in a metaphorical hell. Surprise! Only a handful of the stories are worthy of note, including Gene Wolfe's and James Longrove's. The stories take place either in Hell, Chicago, or London. I found this last fact sometimes discouraging--i.e., I ended up skimming the story.

I recommend you get this book from the library before you spend the cash at a store.

Can't put it down. The intro promises that all the stories will be related to Dante's Inferno theme of Hellish portals on Earth, but they aren't all on that theme (in fact, one is a remake of the Christmas Carol). Scary and thought-provoking none-the-less.

I can't agree with the other reviewer. I found many of these stories scary precisely *because* they were based in metaphorical hells - hells we might actually live in, rather than encounter after death. Also, many stories were set in hells that were not on Earth but were also far from the fire-and-brimstone stereotype. The story "Office Space" alone makes this book worth buying.

I just read this lovely little book, having not read it as a child.
The pleasure of reading it transported me back to a time when I enjoyed the simple, uncluttered pleasures of imagination and dreams.
This is a truly ageless tale - one that can just as easy be read by an adult for one's own childish enjoyment, as it can be read TO a child, for theirs.

Tips for Teachers, my student's loved Wind in the Willows. They enjoyed the great characters and the humorous stories. However, use caution when using this book any earlier than 6th grade. The language can be difficult and discouraging for less advanced readers.

This is a tremendous piece of literature about talking animals, but it's much more serious than it sounds. It has many adventures in it, and it's fun to read. If you liked it, check out the sequels by William Horwood. He's also a great author.