This is a dangerous book for anyone who doesn't have the time and money to travel to Brittany--after perusing it, you won't be able to resist. The excellent text and marvellous photographs were a great help to us in planning our too-short, 10-day visit to that very special place.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has any interest whatsoever in both upper and servant class life at the turn of the century. It is an extremely insightful book, written during the 1970's, when many of the servants were still alive. In the book, the author includes many excerpts from interviews and letters received from former servants. It covers virtually every base in-depth. The chapters are well divided. There is a chapter on servants' uniforms, pay, recruitment, heirarchy,living conditions, duties, and sexual relationships. It covers the lives of servants who lived and worked from about 1870 to 1930. It is extremely detailed, filled with facts, yet it is written in a charming manner that makes it a delight to read. I had a difficult time putting it down! Not in Front of the Servants is a must read for anyone with any interest whatsoever in servants' life.

Then this is the book for you! Bert Monroy shares techniques on how to create realistic digital paintings in Photoshop 7.0. This book has a wealth of information demonstrating techniques such as smoke blazing off a red stiletto shoe, weather precipitation such as fog hanging in trees and rain pouring down on buildings. In chapter 5 you will learn how to create weathered wood, bark on a tree and metal objects along with a host of other realistic textures. The chapters are well thought out and organized with corresponding screenshots throughout.

This book will best be served by the novice or intermediate user. Nonetheless, novice or expert you'll come away with a new fresh perspective on digital painting and an ability to express yourself in those paintings like never before.

Bert Monroy is probably one of the most talented Photoshop users there is. If you've ever seen him on TechTV, you've seen how effortlessly he uses PS.

This book is full of amazing artwork Bert has done with Photoshop, along with a lot of tips and techniques from the master himself. You'll have a hard time believe that this book isn't just a collection of photos. Bert style is so photo-realistic it's jaw-dropping.

Definitely a must-have book for any PS enthusiast. Even if you don't plan to use PS for Photoreal artwork, there are techniques here that are applicable to other uses for PS but the book itself is worth the price just for the awe factor of Monroy's work.

I normally sell off older versions of books as I buy updated ones from the same authors since so much is repeated. With Bert Monroy that is NOT the case. If he wrote a book a week I would keep every one, but he would never do that unless he had something of substance to write about.

This book not only gives fantastic examples of how to use advanced illustrative techniques in Photoshop 7 but also goes into Illustrator techniques. What makes Bert's writing so important is he shares the things that make his own work stand out, and he shares it with the reader in a fun and easy style.

For instance, he suggests you always create paths in Illustrator. This gives you much more delicate and precise lines as opposed to the line tool in Photoshop which can never give you a line smaller then a pixel. Then, instead of placing or opening the path in Photoshop, he strongly recommends pasting between the two programs.

Here he is passing on a lesson that is so simple yet so powerful it will change the look of your work from this point forward. That is just Mr. Monroy's style.

Good luck in your future work, with this book by your side you will not need much luck though!
Leslie

Fans of Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series are in for a treat with Scarpetta's Winter Table - a novella and cookbook that picks up where the last Scarpetta book, Point of Origin, left off.

Cornwell brings Kay, Lucy, and Marino together at Kay's house on the day after Christmas. It's interesting to see how each of these characters struggles with the ups and downs of the holidays. Readers get a rather rare glimpse of Kay's softer side in a domestic (and very charming) holiday setting. And aside from this book's unique look at some of the Kay Scarpetta series characters, it's also a wonderful cookbook with great recipes, many of which will delight year-round. After all, Pete Marino's last-minute chili isn't just for Christmas!

The suggested retail price seems a little steep for a novella, but this just might be the perfect gift for Scarpetta fans. So fix yourself one of Lucy's Bloody Mary's, and give Scarpetta's Winter Table - and the chicken soup recipe in particular - a chance this holiday season. With this heartwarming and delicious combination, you won't be disappointed.

Just in time for holiday shoppers seeking that perfect gift for the legions of adoring readers of author Patricia Cornwell's crime novels featuring Virginia's intrepid Chief Medical Examiner Dr.Kay Scarpetta, this absolutely beguiling little cookbook (in the form of a warmhearted novella) is jampacked with "shoot-from-the-hip" recipes. The opening chapters are set around a traditional day-after-Christmas gathering of Scarpetta's small "adopted family" consisting of niece Lucy Farinelli, special agent of the ATF, and Captain Pete Marino of the Richmond police. This garrulous party features MARINO'S CAUSE-OF-DEATH EGGNOG and SCARPETTA'S HOLIDAY PIZZA. One of many things that make this happy-go-lucky little collection memorable is that the pizza, omelet, soup, stew, pasta and dessert recipes are flexible and diabolically plotted to utilize the cornucopia of leftovers commonly overflowing shelves of post-holiday refrigerators. These savory dishes are mostly down-home, mouthwatering table fare, well-calculated to delight any number of unexpected-but welcome-guests who are the lagniappe of the wintry season. While Aunt Kay is fulfilling her annual seasonal duty with a visit to her mother and sister in Miami, Lucy whomps up a pitcher of LUCY'S BLOODY MARYS as the apertif for an eggy brunch of LUCY'S FRIENDLY GRILL which she serves the merry gathering of her off-duty ATF buddies. For dinner, she cooks the ravenous snowbound agents a kettle full of SCARPETTA'S WHOLESOME CHICKEN SOUP. Scarpetta's brief annual Miami pilgrimage rekindles painful vestiges of familial dysfunction which find healthy outlet in SCARPETTA'S BAD MOOD PASTA PRIMAVERA, a palatable pourboire of kitchen psychotherapy. The episodes recounting Marino's adventures as the unwitting overnight surrogate father of a 10-year-old male snowball terrorist, inadvertently-abandoned by his harried, snow-marooned single mother, are highlighted by a macho supper of MARINO'S LAST MINUTE CHILI and breakfast of MARINO'S SOUTHERN-STYLE NEW JERSEY OMELET. Serendipitously, we encounter SCARPETTA'S CHILDHOOD KEY LIME PIE and a to-die-for batch of LUCY'S FELONIOUS COOKIES...and Kay's super-secret cappuccino bread. In this fashion, the lighthearted little narrative gambols merrily through ten chapters ending with SCARPETTA'S FAMOUS STEW, which the kindly forensic pathologist concocts to celebrate her homecoming just in time to sabotage the gang's best New Year's diet resolutions. Reviewed by Brewster Milton Robertson

I can't believe all of the other comments. I absoutely love Kay Scarpetta and the others. I've read all her books. I found Winter Table in the library and was thrilled to see it. I went home, read it in an hour and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was fresh and fun. I called a fellow Cornwell fan and recommended it highly to her. Can't you others take a moment and just relax? Kay's stories are great...but they do get a little grizzly once in a while. This sweet book showed Marino to be human; Lucy's "friends" as you're all so concerned about are co-workers who risk their lives every day and had some time off and were "chilling" together. Not necessarily life long friends...just people who are in the same line of work who needed someone to spend the holidays with. If they have the same lifestyle as Lucy, they may have "lost" their families and need someone they can be real with. Lighten up everyone. It was a great book!!!