The Franconia, New Hampshire, farm of the American poet Robert Frost was turned into a museum and center for poetry and the arts in 1976. From that time, "The Frost Place" has been annual event wherein an emerging poet has been invited to spend the summer living in the house where Frost once lived and wrote some of his greatest poetry. The Breath Of Parted Lips: Voices From The Robert Frost Place, Volume One is a remarkable anthology of twenty-four poets, each of whom won that honor of a summer's residency and document the success of the original concept as a means of generating outstanding poetry while nurturing the poet's muse in the rooms and views that were once the inspiration of the great Robert Frost. Poem At 40: Windwashed--as if standing next to the highway,/a truck long as the century sweeping by,/all things at last bent in the same direction./An opening, as if all/the clothes my ancestors ever wore/dry on lines in my body:/wind-whipped, parallel with the ground,/some sleeves sharing a single clothespin/so that they seem to clasp hands,/seem to hold on.//And now that I can see/up the old women's dresses,/there's nothing but a filtered light./And now that their men's smoky breath/has traversed the earth,/it has nothing to do with them./And now that awkward, fat tears of rain/slap the window screen,/now that I'm naked too,/cupping my genitals, tracing with a pencil/the blue vein between my collar bone and breast,/I'll go to sleep when I'm told.

I am new to David Morrell's works, but that will soon be remedied, after I listened to the unabridged version of his short stories.

Not only are the stories EXCELLENT, but I imensely enjoyed the author's commentary before and after each one.

And he makes his points, plots and story lines, with little vulgarity, which is becoming much too common in the latest Stephen King works.

Kudos and I will be hearing more.

There have been several times that I have bought an anthology like "Prime Evil" so that I could read an otherwise unreleased Stephen King or Clive Barker story, and ended up being blown away by the stories of David Morrell. Finally, K-Tel-like, everyone can enjoy these powerful, imaginative stories without having to buy a dozen other books.

While this collection does not contain all of Morrell's short fiction, it does contain all that I had read in other anthologies, most notably the powerhouse novella "Orance is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity," one of my all-time pieces of fiction, short or otherwise. I am a fan of author notes in collections, and Morrell doesn't disappoint. While he doesn't expound the way that, say, Harlan Ellison does, there are short notes before each store in addition to a Foreword and Afterword, and these add a texture to the book that I think makes your first read more enjoyable and increases the re-readability. Plus if you've already read a couple of these in anthologies it is nice to see the author's perspective instead of the anthology editor's perspective before the stories.

I read this during a particularly hot summer week and found it to be perfect for this setting...the stories are engrossing enough that I forgot about the heat, and a few times I caught a genuine bit of a chill! Anyone who enjoys dark stories or speculative fiction should give this great book a read.

Ordinarily I am not a huge fan of horror stories, but I can honestly say that Black Evening is frightfully fantastic. This spine-tingling collection of sixteen tales explores the dark side of greed, power, and madness. Morrell is able to pack a lot of punches and twists into his short (but not so sweet) stories. Moreover, his writing expresses his compassion and intelligence like that of an accomplished literary great.

An added bonus to this book is the foreward at the beginning of each story. Morrell discusses his development as a writer and shares with the reader his personal tales of triumph and tragedy: from his meeting with his idol, writer Stirling Silliphant, to the death of his teenage son to bone cancer. Each story seems to be weaved around an event that touched Morrell's life. This authenticity makes for a more eerie read. For example, "But at My Back I always Hear," is about a professor who is stalked by a female student infatuated with him. Morrell himself faced this dilemma while teaching at the University of Iowa. Other scary topics covered include an art historian who follows his subjects' break with reality and ultimate demise; an amateur writer who becomes a best-selling novelist with the help of a ghostly typewriter; and a high school football team that is victorious because the coach is dabbling in witchcraft and produces an evil good luck mascot.

Two of the stories in Black Evening won Best Novella, Horror Writers of America Award. One story was a nominee for this same award and one other story was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Morrell stated that the first piece of advice he received as a young writer was to write about what he feared most. Obviously he took that advice to heart and left us with some chilling entertainment.

My mother was recently diagnosed, and I bought this book hoping it would be an informative summary of treatment methods, statistics, and coping strategies. Unfortunately, it is not. It contains pretty much the same general information that can be found on the American Cancer Society web site, and I would recommend the National Cancer Institute's PDQ service for much more comprehensive clinical information. Also, my mother's oncologist provided several pamphlets that were just as good or better on treatment side effects and coping strategies. As far as I can tell, this book's main merit is its case studies, all of which have positive outcomes. These may give patients more hope. However, the price of the book is a little steep if that's all one gets from it. I would recommend that patients and families do their own research: it's more empowering, it's free, and the information is better.