After fifteen years of marriage, her husband, taking all their cash and running off with a waitress, leaves Virginian Nora Preston humiliated. Adding to her worries, the FBI seeks her spouse for big time tax evasion. Nora has taken up calligraphy to supplement the money she sometimes receives from her fugitive husband. Meanwhile their son wants to spend the summer with his absentee father and her mother walks around with an "I told you" smirk.

When out of the blue her college roommate Simone calls and offers her a free vacation in New Orleans, Nora grabs the invitation like a drowning person clutches a life preserver. Nora arrives to learn that their other roommate Poppy is there too. Though happy to see Poppy, Nora can tell her college friend is radically changed. The three college friends have come together because Simone needs their support through the ordeal of a rape trial that occurred a year ago.

In the tradition of Belva Plain and Barbara Delinsky, Barbara Hall has written a thought-provoking novel that will appeal to fans of contemporary women's fiction. The ex spouses are actually human and even likable, as the audience understands and condemns their self-indulging motives. The female trio learns much about one another and themselves as they spend time together in New Orleans. It teaches them and the reader life's most endearing lessons and how not to repeat past mistakes.

Harriet Klausner

Information is presented in a clear and concise fashion with good graphs and charts. Easy reading makes this a quick review.

Pym's novel is beautifully written from the point of view of a thirty-something single clergy-man's daughters' point of view. Barbara Pym's characters are realistically drawn and thoroughly believable. Tea is forever being made, references to post-WWII London rations are skillfully described and the comedy is genuine. The heroine hasn't a self-pitying bone in her body. She's impossible not to love.

Don't leap to the assumption that a book written fifty years ago about an unmarried do-gooding gentle woman would have nothing for a contemporary audience. Despite its London church parish setting well populated with the spinsterish "excellent women" of the title, Pym's book delivers sharp observations about men and women, together and apart, and society's expectations for all. Her truths are pungent a sexual revolution later.

Relevancy aside, this is a good read. Pym lays out her well-defined world much as Jane Austen does, providing a critical and always witty tour. The characters are drawn as sharply as any Austen delivered. The novel is entertaining but rewardingly complex as it probes not only gender and social mores but also asks if Mildred Lathbury, the protagonist and narrator, is choosing the life of an excellent woman or if she is saddled with it. To use a contemporary phrase, it is about having a life, and this deceivingly gentle-seeming book is asking questions that are as rugged and significant as any asked in our less regulated times.

Mildred Lathbury is a hilariously sharp but kind observer as she becomes embroiled in the romantic messes of both the Father at her church and her exotic new neighbours. Along the way, Mildred reevaluates her own role as one of the "excellent women" who can always be relied upon for a hot cup of tea or help polishing church brasses.

Excellent Women often had me cackling out loud, though sometimes it was the kind of laughter that comes from giving the funny bone a solid whack on the table. The subject matter and understated humour justify comparisons with Austen's Persuasion though the tone and style remind me rather more of Rose MacAuley's Towers of Trebizond.

Barbara Holland writes about her experiences in moving out to "rural" Loudoun County and about the effect of the encroaching development on the country lifestyle.

I grew up and worked on a farm in western Loudoun. As one of the "locals", I enjoyed her account of the old way of life and it was fun to read about places and people I knew--it brought back a lot of memories. I also enjoyed (and shared) her obvious distaste for the suburbanites who have invaded and taken over Loudoun. That being said, I found her book overly simplistic and highly embellished.Despite her apparent love for the "locals", she understands them only on the most rudimentary level, which is why her analyses are often simplistic.

Readers should be aware that the book is half fiction and half fact. The "Mountain" where she lives is not nearly as inaccessible and remote as she portrays it. Her towns of "Pikesville" and "North Hill" are actually literary conglomerations of several real towns. In addition, Ms. Holland moved to Loudoun in the 1990's. By that point, the County had already been under transition from rural country to suburban life for almost 10 years. Many of the old-timers and old families had long since moved on or passed away. Which is perhaps why she felt the need to embellish the story. However, it was still fun to read about my High School and to recognize the few people and families that she names. All in all it was an enjoyable read. Potential readers should just be aware that it is a work of fiction, with its setting in reality.

In Bingo Night, Barbara Holland tells the story of how she came to love village life in western Loudoun County, Virginia. She reports precisely on events that take place there---a county fair, a fund-raising rummage sale, an election, winter in the mountains. Her prose style is as clear as fresh water.

Perhaps because of her insider/outsider status as someone "come from away," Holland writes perceptively about the encroachment of the Washington, DC, suburbs on village life in western Loudoun County. Loudoun County is filling up with well-off suburbanites, for whom the small-town rural life is irrelevant. Some villagers have sold out and moved on, and more will follow. Yet the book is not grim. Rather, it is brimful with the pleasures of fine writing and a real feeling for the life she has chosen. You taste, touch, smell, see, and hear this life - quite specifically - as you read. And you feel worried, as she does, at the threats to its survival.

I live across the Potomac River in Maryland, closer to Washington (about 25 miles) than Barbara Holland is (about 60 miles), and I can vouch for the honesty of her comments.

It's hard for me, emeshed in the metropolitan area's urban sprawl, to believe that places like the one Barbara Holland writes about even exist, much less just sixty miles from downtown Washington, DC. She lives in a town with a country general store, where keeping a chainsaw is a necessity in order to remove felled trees from one's driveway, where backyards overlook mountains and orchards.

Yet Holland does more than celebrate her small town in this book, a sparkling, lively account of her adjustment to small-town life in northern Virginia after years of big city living. She is also sounding an alarm, because, increasingly, the orchards are giving way to housing developments and the country stores to Wal-Marts.

There is a sadness underneath Holland's light, subtle tone. Though she writes entertainingly about the hazards of life in a rural area (a mouse nest in her car's engine provides one typical example), she embraces its virtues with an unmistakable fondness. There is something to be said for a place where neighbors have known each other for generations, where community means lending a hand in a time of crisis, not arguing over properly mown grass and building anonymous gated fortresses.

Let's hope that Holland's terrific tribute is not also an elegy.

Essentials of Firefighting is one of the books that will make a firefighter's career easier. So much is covered in depth. The chapter's are larger and in greater depth than IFSTA's 3rd edition. New Chapter's including building insrtuction make this book easy to follow. The book does lack Hazardous Materials, Auto Extrication and any Aircraft firefighting infromation. Other than those topics, all grassroots firefighing is covered very well.

Every fire service that I know of uses this book as the core to its training program. This book contains the Firefighter 1 & 2 level knowledge. For those that are more advanced in their careers, you will need to go to IFSTA's job specific books. This book is the "core values" of the fire service that every firefighter needs to know. Even paramedics should at least own this book to understand what firefighters do because they work so close together. IFSTA has really done a quality job with this book. It's too bad that there isn't more rescue, Haz mat and auto ex in this book, but then we'd have a 1500 page book. The medical system has to suffer with huge texts, we don't really need to continue that tradition into the fire service. 700 pages is enough. It would be nice if there were 2 volumes. That way the weight is reduced per book and there can be more information.

If you want to be a firefighter, you need this book. If you are a paramedic or police officer it would be good to know some of the information in this book because at a scene we all work so closely anyway. We need to understand the roles that each of us has and the capabilities of the people we work with. You cannot be in emergency services and not own this book. The information is too valuable.

After studying this well written publication from front to back I can professionally say that all NFPA standards are demonstrated and tactfully explained. All levels of firefighters can use the information in this fine book to build on from "rookie" up to "Chief". The book has easy to read and follow information, and very basic graphics and easy to comprehend diagrams. As an instructor I can not recommend a better textbook for the modern firefighter.

Im just starting out with my FF1 classes and the book is a lot better then the third editon, more picture, deeper explenations, and most important more topics, the state requres the Essentials of Firefighting 3rd or 4th edition The fourth edition is by far the best, it covers allmost everything you MIGHT encounter on a scene......This is a breat Firefighter book, although it doesnt cover any medical ops it just as good.

This is one of the most sophisticated mysteries in years, and intitated a whole series of superior psychological novels from Ruth Rendell under the nom de plume Barbara Vine. The work begins with the sensational headline-grabbing state hanging of Vera Hillyard; the rest of the work is preoccupied with why she was executed and whom she murdered. Although Vera's victim becomes apparent earlier than halfway through the book, the whys of murder are much more intriguing: indeed, the novel purposefully begins with a knotted web of familial Hillyard relations for the reader to enjoy sorting through until it all makes sense.

The tale Vine has to relate is a complex one, extraordinarily deftly told: one has only to see the well-meant expensive botch made of it on British television to see how extraordinarily subtle Vine's art is here. The sense of wartime and postwar atmosphere is marvelously evoked, and the particular attention given here to WWII makeup and glamor (a favorite preoccupation of Barbara Vine's) is an especially intriguing and enjoyable detail.

A DARK-ADAPTED EYE is the first Barbara Vine book, the first of a long line of excellent novels that showed Ruth Rendell's ability to craft stories superior even to her more conventional mysteries. In this haunting tale of bitter sibling rivalry, Vine makes it clearly known from the beginning that Vera Hillyard brutally murdered her younger sister, Eden. Unlike many mysteries, however, this early revelation, usually reserved for the conclusion, only makes the story more compelling and suspenseful. Rather, the real mystery, the mystery that Barbara Vine is concerned with, is the question of what can drive a human to madness and murder. The final climax is truly riveting and moving, which is quite an achievement, considering that I anticipated it throughout the entire story, and that the main action had already taken place thirty years ago. However, Vine's characterizations are so deftly woven that I found the climax to be heart-wrenching, gripping, and disturbing. The plotting is subtle throughout, but it is only at the very end, after a series of deliciously twisted revelations, that one comes to appreciate the intricacy and complexity of Vine's plot, which does not resolve itself, but leaves the reader hanging with a number of unanswerable questions. This is a wonderfully written novel likely to leave some impression on the reader for some time. From first page to last, a masterpiece.

If not for sexism and genre-snobbery, Ruth Rendell, alias Barbara Vine, would be recognized as one of the greatest living writers, and this book is her masterpiece. Vera Hillyard undoubtedly committed a murder and was duly hanged for it. More than thirty years later, Daniel Stewart, a writer researching a "re-examination" of the case, approaches Vera's niece, Faith. In helping Stewart, Faith is drawn back into the past. It is Faith who has the "dark-adapted eye" and can see murky things in the past (both about society and about her own family) that her modern-day grown children can't begin to comprehend. The book is replete with symbolism and secrets: secrets springing from the repressed sexual mores of the forties and fifties, touching on homosexuality, illegitimacy, adultery, and supposedly virgin brides. The richness and complexity of the narrative, the bell-ringing realness of the emotions described, and the capture in amber of mid-twentieth century attitudes, make this a book to read over and over, and to recommend to everyone you know.

There is probably no other writer with as cold and bleak a vision as Ruth Rendell. Even in her slightly warmer incarnation as Barbara Vine, her take on human foibles and on matters of love tends to be chilly and steely-eyed. (Some people dislike her for this reason -- not me, I think she's amazing.)

Rendell has said that she created the new "Vine" line to be able to take a more human, personal viewpoint than she did in the Rendell books -- well, perhaps so, although the main character Tim Cornish, from whose viewpoint this is told, is vintage Rendell, i.e., hard to like. Tim is not evil but confused, self-absorbed, befuddled by emotions, weak and fumbling.

That said, this haunting novel stands out among Rendell's/Vine's other superb works -- and that's saying something, as she is probably the finest writer in the mystery/thriller, bar none.

Like her other books, this one features a sinuous plot that keeps springing subtle and believable changes on you, and characters that are just odd enough to be interesting yet still realistic, and throughout, her elegant and poetic writing.

It's also her only real love story. Yes, many of her novels feature the theme of obsessive love -- that's one of her recurring favorites -- but rarely does love do anyone any good in a Rendell or Vine novel. But, without spoiling the ending, let me note that when I finished this novel I was shocked to discover that for the first time, she'd actually written a book where she gave love a chance to succeed. That in itself is remarkable, and the way she pulls it off, even more so.

If you've never read Rendell or Vine, this is a terrific one to start with (personally I don't think the Vines, other than this and "The Brimstone Wedding" ever came up to the Rendell quality). If you're already a fan, well, there's nothing I need to add.

I love Ruth Rendell, I think she is the best current day mystery/thriller writer. I've read most of her books, including the "psychological thrillers", but I've only recently started reading the Barbara Vine books. I literally could not put this book down, and I finished it in one day. I can't remember the last time that was the case. I think it's one of her best books, it just hooks you. It's not fast-paced, but it keeps you guessing, she unfolds the story at just such a pace that you can't stop, you have to know more. I absolutely recommend this book, especially if you're already a Ruth Rendell fan.

After reading the very first chapter, i knew i was going to love this book. I was mesmersised by the first chapter, and already felt so involved in the story that it was unbelieveable. I've long been aware of Rendell's genius, but this was a shock even for me.

The story actually moves pretty slowly, but the suspense and tension is just unbearable. You know very well that cataclysmic events are going to occur, but of how and when you know nothing. The sense of wonderment you feel at Rendell (in any of her incarnations) is simply awe-inspiring. You read and read and read, completely unable to tear your eyes from the story, even though its moving with a slow pace. Its thrilling, suspenseful and tense. And i loved it.

Barbara Vine is slightly more literary than her Rendell books, i have found. (Just an observation)

The plot is simple, but very strong. There are good, strong, simple, sensible, realistic twists. They turn the story once or twice, adding just the right amoung of freshness and surprise.

The characters are superbly well drawn and believeable. and quite likeable, despite their flaws. The completely unsettling thing about Rendell's books are the fact that all the people are quite, quite normal. Tim is just a normal, young man, struggling with his identity and sexuality, experiencing the world for what it really is. He's nothing special. Has no psychological abnormalities, is not in any damaged And yet he is driven to murder. This novel is a bravura display of how circumstances can drive people to commit horrible deeds. Quite sane, normal people, slowly taken hold of.

THis is a wonderful book. A masterpiece. The writing is just first class, and the descriptions of the places in which this novel are set are simply stunning. I have never been to Alaska (in particular) but through her descriptions i found myself transported there. And now, my window to it is closed, i want to visit it. It's a desire that should pass in a few days, but its a powerful thing to feel simply after reading a book. (I felt the same after reading "The Empty Chair" by Jeff Deaver, wanting to visit North Carolina. Guatemala after reading about it in Kathy Reichs' "Grave Secrets", and the middle east after reading Jack Higgins' "Edge of Danger" and "Midnight Runner")

I would reccomend this to everyone. I have in the past held of reading Barbara Vine, because i assumed that they would be something very different. SO different as to need publishing under a different name. My, though, was i wrong. After all, a Rendell by any other name is still a Rendell. These books still contain the intensity of subtle plot, great characters, good twists, and all the things i expect from Rendell. It has been months since i've read anything new by Rendell, and now i have discovered this new rich casket of wonders, my future in reading looks very bright indeed.

Sorry but I just didn't like Three Wishes, I like Barbara Delinsky and think she's a terrific writer but I just didn't enjoy Three Wishes and thought it was a very weird story!

This was the first book I've read by Barbara Delinsky, on a recommendation of a co-worker. I thought the beginning was slow going, and found that some of her wording throughout the book was a bit redundent, (I've never seen the phrase What with used so many times in one book). Maybe thats just being nitpicky, but I found it to be a bit dull.
As for the characters, did anyone else want Jane or Bree to punch Dotty right in the face. I mean, that lady was just evil! It was very unsatisfying for me when Verity finally dropped off her baby gift for Tom, and was made to leave the house by Dotty. Someone should have told that woman wher to go. I also had Julia figured out during her talk with Tom in the garden.
The ending did make me cry, how could it not? But I'm not sure I would try another one of her books for a while. I think I need something really funny to bring me back up.

That is what a Delinsky novel reminds me of. I have yet to read one that hasn't brought tears to my eyes. THREE WISHES is set in a small Vermont town where the inhabitants are like family. It is here that the author quckly pulls you into the lives of the characters that will soon step from the pages of this book right into your heart.

Bree Miller is the beloved daughter of the town, with no living family to speak of, and she is about to meet with a near fatal occurrence that will leave her with three wishes. Our story takes off from here with unsuspected twists and turns that brings happiness as well as sadness to all involved.

Written with a bit of mysticism and a what if sense to it, this book was quite enjoyable and sentimental in a Nicholas Sparks sort of way. Kelsana 6/9/02

It could have been great, but the middle just dragged and dragged with the same conversations over and over and the same spooky happenings over and over. I think she just wanted to pad the book. If 100 pages were cut, it probably would have been great. But, it was too slow as is.

After the other books by Ms Erskine, I did not think her writing could get any better but she has proven us wrong I thoroughly enjoyed House of Echoes from beginning to end. The story of Joss who inherits Belheddon Hall from a mother she never knew. All that Joss knows about the house is that two young brothers died there many years ago, but local townspeople whisper darkly of a curse on both the house and Joss's family. Joss and her husband and small son Tom move in, thinking the house is an end to all their troubles, but little do they know they are just about to begin, Joss start's to hear the laughter of two small boys and her son Tom start's too go into hysterics at the sight of a tin man. Intrigued from beginning to end this is a book that can be read again and again!

I didn't think any book by Ms. Erskine could come close to "Lady of Hay", but this one did.
I was on the edge of my seat and truly could not put this one down.
If you like Ms. Erskines books, you will love this one!

This is the first novel by Barbara Delinsky that I have read and I must say that I am impressed!

This tale of suspense centers around Laura as she finds her perfect world shattered when her husband disappears. After many years of a marriage that she thought was blissful, she begins to question her life and those around her. For instance, did her husband, Jeff, meet with foul play or could he possibly have orchestrated his own disappearance? Are her friends really loyal? Is Laura, herself, as capable as she once thought?

As the story progresses, the web of intrigue begins to unravel, starting with the whereabouts of her husband, what he has been up to (I will leave that a secret for you to find out) and what role his brother, Christian, plays in Laura's life.

The story is about illusions and that they are just that-illusions.

This is the story of what happens to a family when the husband/father one day fails to come home from work. Worried sick, Laura imagines the worst. Turns out it could be worse than an accident or kidnapping: her husband of 20 years, Jeff, actually willingly walked away; the IRS, who had been investigating him, then freezes all her assets and she has no money or credit history of her own. Sure, eventually the love of her life comes back to her rescue, but this book carefully analyzes the relationship between lovers, friends, parents and children. Sometimes it's highly predictable, but it certainly beats the usual damsel in distress, one note soap opera. There's even one additional couple in the story. My only regret was that the kids, who were so much present throughout the book, are barely mentioned at the very end.

It's not very often that I get so caught up in a story that I have dreams about it. But this time it happened. I got very little else done during the time I was reading this novel. I could not put it down. And then at night I'd have dreams about the main characters----Laura and Christian especially. I am a true romantic.He was her "knight in shining armor"------came to her rescue. But the way Ms. Delinsky told the story, it was done in such a way that you were unable to put the book down, unable to go to sleep at night, unable to stop thinking about the story----the betrayal, the hurt, the strength in a woman---so many facets of this story. I truly loved the book. I hated to see it end, even though I can now get work done---finally. It's a story that will stay with me forever. This was a novel. However, it's a story that has been true in real life. And for many of us, escaping "real life" is also a dream at times. Maybe we don't want to escape a crime---but to just get away, start over somewhere else, as someone else. But reading this lets us know the mess and hurt that it leaves in the wake. And that will haunt many forever.I'll never forget it.