I feel that "Gabriel's Girl," is a great story for young minds. Young kids are into love/adventure stories, which is exactialy what "Gabriel's girl" is. It will keep you on the edge of your chair, eagger to uncover the crime.

This wonderful book was nominated ('shortlisted") for England's Booker Prize, a major British literary award. Gabirel Harvey is the son of an elderly, emotionally tyrannical father, and a sprightly young mother. Oswald and Amy are mismatched.The live a scraping-by existence in Postwar Britain, (the novel ends in the early 1980s). until Oswald comes into a fortune.Instead of being delighted with the money, Amy chafes under Oswald's flowering pretensions. She leaves abrubtly just before Gabriel's thirteenth birthday.Gabirel descends into a proverbial decline, but through common sense and wit, collects a great deal of experience, while waiting to hear directly from his mother.Bailey's description of London and its characters is insighful and zesty. We lean about Oswald's secrets. He claims to be an honest man, but it is revelaed near the end that he is anything but honest. This book is a well balanced combination of humor and sadness.

Do you believe you have a Guardian Angel? Chloe does - and fortunately for the accident-prone reporter she's right. But when her stressed-out, over-worked angel decides he needs a vacation from chasing after her and keeping her out of trouble, strange things start to happen. It seems his energetic, young replacement has decided that Chloe doesn't just need a Guardian Angel - she needs a husband! Of course, this young angel knows just the man for the mission: Gabriel. Unfortunately, there are complications: Gabriel is Chloe's mean, moody boss - and he thinks she's more than a little bit crazy! But then again maybe he is too, because he's started hearing voices...

This is something of a departure from Ms. Way's usual novels. It's written more as a comedy and there's not an Australian ranch in sight. But, if you're interested in some delightfully, lighthearted and thoroughly enjoyable escapism, you should relax for an hour or so with this book. It's fun, amusing, and has an interesting twist as to just who Chloe's new Guardian Angel is...

Gene H. Bell-Villada won me over in the first few pages of "García Márquez: The Man and His Works" when he wrote, "to this day I have not forgotten the sheer excitement I felt on first reading Cien años de soledad in 1968, and my utter bedazzlement on reaching its concluding paragraph. Since then the idea of writing on the great South American author for his North American devotees has been one small dream of mine."

To that end, Bell-Villada, a professor of romance languages at Williams College does not disappoint. This comprehensive and engaging book is a well-written study of García Márquez and his work. The research in this two-part book is meticulous. Part one is background on Colombia, the writer's life and his politics. Part two is a stimulating history of Macondo and a strong examination of the works. Both parts are filled with valuable information that helps explain Colombia and its long history of violence.

Bell-Villada is a good teacher. He patiently goes into great detail describing the expert use of fantasy, humor and satire. He also examines literary technique and structure in a simplistic fashion. The bottom line of this beautiful book is that it enhances the understanding, appreciation, and respect of the work of Gabriel García Márquez...the greatest living novelist in the world.

Every book Fr Bunge writes is a little masterpiece, and this is no exception. Here as in his other works he begins with a straightforward concern -- in this case, spiritual fatherhood in Evagrius' writings. He then procedes to explore the writings of Evagrius, which he has obviously contemplated for some time. As the study progresses, he teases out the importance of direction in spiritual life and describes the goal of Christian 'gnosis'. This last bit is particularly worth attention, since somehow the peculiar habit has spread of thinking of 'gnosis' in terms of repressed heresies, Oriental exotica and the like. But of course 'gnosis' was of interest to all sorts of people in the ancient world and it is the signal merit of this gracious little book that it reasserts the claim on 'gnosis' of mainstream Christianity, in Evagrius' time and in ours.

This novel is brilliant in its content and evocative imagery, Collette's eroticism rivals Anais Nin's own erotic literature, and this novel is a superb example of this.Highly recomended!

Gabrielle Colette died in 1954. She is most famous for writing "Gigi" which became a Broadway musical and Oscar winning film. Gabrielle was a talented, gifted writer, with aesthetic skills and a charming perception of humans, particularily the society she grew up in early twentieth century France. A fascinating woman, she wrote mainly short stories, dealing with women coming of age, older women making new decisions, relationships with intensity, and all of her characters have memorable nuances. She may have drawn from personal experience. Colette was clearly a woman with deep understanding of the nature of love and the course of human emotions.

Gigi is the story of a young woman brought up in a decadent, materialistic society. Her aunts have raised her to become a mistress, a courtesan for the wealthy. Gaston falls for Gigi, and attempts to make her his mistress. But Gigi refuses to be a part of the pretentious society in Paris, wanting an honest and open relationship based on love. In the end, she is granted this for remaining true to herself. Julie de Carneilha and Chance Encounters are striking tales of women in love, beautifully written and set in the opulence of Paris. Colette is a cosmopolitan writer, one can almost see her as she writes with a bottle of champagne on her writing desk, a view of the Eiffel tower from her window and a vivid imagination that takes flight.

This collection of one act plays deals with a lot of issues and situations I would rather ignore, such as cancer and dictators. What caught me by surprise, after the eye-catching cover, was how the author was able to mix a number of real emotions and reactions to cancer into a humorous and engaging drama.

Cancer touches everyone at some level. Almost everyone I know either has had or knows someone who has or has had cancer in their family. The author cleverly brings the disease into a human personality (The Goddess), then has different people interact with THEIR cancer, by actually having conversations with it/her!

One of the other plays is about dictators and is called "Dictator's Anonymous". The author seems to have taken the childhood events of well known dictator's, such as Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, and placed these men in a twelve step meeting, where they talk about their childhood experiences. It doesn't justify their behavior, but it was quite insightful and interesting to see the similarities in their personalities.

The third play in the book again has some well known communist figures (Stalin, Marx, Mao and Gorbachev) sitting in a small greasy American diner, discussing how they each didn't understand communism. Again, it seems as if the author has been able to take extraordinary figures, use some of their actual words and place them in a common, everyday environment.

The last section is more of a short screenplay then a play. It graphically shows the spiraling effects of a young man's death on all those who know him, or have any contact with him on the day he's murdered or soon thereafter. There was no humor in this piece in the least, and though it was my least favorite it got its message out loud and clear.

Overall, I'd rate this book highly. I discovered it at a book fair at a small publishers stand. I hope it gets a larger audience.

This was so handy on our long car trips on vacation this summer. The 5-year-old was quiet the whole time, listening. The adults became a bit tired of it, though.

In our modern age of technological sophistication and media-fed rapidly deteriorating attention spans, Gabe Moran's "A Grammar of Responsibility" is a breath of fresh air. Not forgetting (as many of his contemporaries have) that brevity is the soul of wit, not necessarily education, Moran does the unthinkable (at least from a editor's point of view). He writes an entire book on the history and usage of the word "Responsibility". From its use in political pillowfights (I accept full responsibility), to its role in our view of the natural world (all rights must accompany responsiblities, Moran leaves no semantic stone unturned. In a world where the entire Vietnam war is condensed often into less than 20 pages, an in depth look at an often used and rarely pondered part of our vocabulary is a refreshing change. One which Moran has done exceedingly well