Attention grabbing from the first page, and just keeps getting better. A must-read. Thoroughly enjoyable with an intricate plot and vivid characters, with plenty of conflict that keeps you on the edge of your seat. It is obvious that Mr. Poulson is very familiar with police procedure and enjoys sharing it with his audience.

Kyla owns a business on a property that Marc Nathan needs for new development. She does not want to move at any price. Marc gets personally involved to solve the problem. This initial plot is entertaining in an of itself, but the real story begins when they marry. Because of Kyla's past (which is not fully revealed until the end of the book), she is very much afraid of men. She believes she will be able to overcome her fear because of her love for Marc, but finds she can't. He feels frustrated and betrayed, and their marriage falls apart.
The ending of this book is one of the most tender, emotional, finishes to any of the romances I've read. It is a very, very moving story, and one that can be read many times.

I was in the Collesium Book Store in Manhattan, poking around. Saw this collection of plays in the drama section. Thought I'd take a look. Really great wrtiing for theater here. This guy has an ear for music. You want to start reading it aloud as you're reading it (which is good for a play, don't you think?). The characters and themes are very "here and now". I could identify with the thoughts and feelings of the characters through my own experience (which is not necessarly that of Crimp's plays). He taps into that "collective conscience" that another great playwrite, David Mamet, has mentioned in his own writings about theater. I highly recommend these plays for folks who want to examine the times we're living in. What more can I say? I think I learned a lot about playwriting just by reading these plays. A lucky find, indeed.

An excellent treatise on the demise of privately owned transit companies is The Motorization of American Cities by David St. Clair, a professor of economics. Mr. St. Clair details how government was largely responsible for the streetcars demise: large taxes (percent of revenue and others); requirements for street paving (6% of revenue in LA) that only benefited the competition; snow removal from street (where applicable); hostility of public staff to private companies; regulation that required uniform fares (could not lower it for heavily used lines), often forced streetcars to subsidize buses, proscribed routes and service, and sometimes even specified inefficient 2-man operation (one man to collect tickets) for streetcars (but not for buses); government subsidized freeways that severed many streetcar lines without compensation for rerouting; the pro-automobile bias of government in street usage (e.g., one-way streets that discourage bicycle and transit usage, including buses); the terms of a renewed franchise (many expired in 1930s) often specified cancellation by government on short (sometimes 90 day) notice (and made risky further investment in streetcar tracks); the Public Holding Company Act (became effective in 1938) forced the sale of many transit companies (for example, the Sacramento transit company which was then bought by Pacific City Lines, a GM "front", in 1938); and finally, the franchise itself prevented another transit company from competing and enabled National City Lines and other GM "front" companies to liquidate streetcar technology (by substituting inferior buses) and prevented competition by much more efficient electric technology that then (after the takeovers) was not allowed to compete. The highest price offered for this legal right to exclusively provide transit (the franchise) was by the one that would profit the most: GM.

The author also details and documents how the interstate highway system (that has primarily an urban purpose in terms of usage), and laws involving government with the highway business, were primarily planned by and lobbied for by the automobile manufacturers, who faced a saturating car market (most car sales were replacements in the 1930s), and wanted to expand into the urban market (where most families did not own cars). The author laments the amount of leverage that business groups can exert on government.

The book is extensively documented by footnotes.

In this highly readable book, Rita O'Clair and her co-authors explore the geology, habitats, and animals of Southeast Alaska and how they interact with each other. I haven't found any other source that puts the basic story of the region together in this way. For those getting started learning about the area, this book provides a framework to organize future observations and learning. Those who already know some natural history of the area may be surprised by the connections this book helps make and the gaps it fills in.

The Norton anthology of Modern Poetry has now been updated and re-edited by Jahan Ramazani, and to excellent effect. The anthology now is split into two volumes, Modern and Contemporary, which here means poets who came of age before or after WWII. Not only has the anthology been expanded, but importantly a poetics section has been added (the last 100+ pages of each volume), which includes Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and Mina Loy's "Feminist Manifesto", parts of Pound's "Blast", and other important works. This is a smart move, and adds much to the anthology's usefulness.

The Modern section begins with "precursors": Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, G. M. Hopkins. It then moves into AE Housman, Yeats, etc. up to Theodore Roethke, Spender and Keith Douglas. The Contemporary volume (slightly thicker, though both are over 1000 pages) takes off from there and includes experimental poets and those of more diversified backgrounds, such as Michael Palmer, Li-Young Lee, and Agha Shahid Ali.

I'm sure many will find disappointments here and questionable decisions - but that holds true for almost any anthology. More people will find something to celebrate here - a remarkable selection of two centuries of great poetry in the English language.

In their Preface to this remarkable book (published to accompany exhibitions in Paris, Montreal, and Barcelona) Guy Cogeval, Jean Clair, and Maria Teresa Ocana assert that all of the art of Pablo Picasso - whether visual or literary - was "guided by a specifically Spanish eroticism, a medley of sensuality and tenderness, of scatology and gluttony." Curator and editor Clair has assembled a group of erudite and sometimes thrilling essayists, and 350 or so plates of Picasso's most obviously erotic topics, whether sketches, paintings, sculpture - from his entire art-producing life (beginning at age 9!). Mythology, religion, linguistics, classical influences, and Picasso's upbringing and circumstances and adult life (among many other things) are all explored in the dozen essays that make this book such great reading.

Clair's own "The School of Darkness" is a heady and passionate appreciation of Picasso. He contributes right off to the decades-old debate regarding Picasso's view and treatment of women. He defends the artist and the man, rejecting portrayals of Picasso as " the ogre, the dark demon, the wife-eating Minotaur," quoting writer Micheline Sauvage's words on Don Juan: "Not the profaner of love, but the hero of profane love." Picasso possessed energy and drive that included prodigious eating, drinking, sexual expression, writing, the production of art, and more art.

Housekeeping out of the way, Clair's essay grows into something remarkable: part biography, part chant. If you read it aloud you might well amaze and delight yourself and your listener.

Annie Le Brun's "Painting in the Bedroom" successfully places Picasso's erotic sensibilities and drive in context and in comparison to other painters, whom she asserts (and proves) shared traits with Picasso. 'Diamond Made of All the Love of the Loves of Blood,' (the title comes from a diary entry of the artist) by Marie-Noelle Delorme is a fabulous compilation, effectively and subtlely organized, that shows Picasso the energetic and larger-than-life diarist - a passionate and powerful writer on love, bodies, intimate landscapes, and much more.

The illustrations - a "Chronological Catalogue of Exhibited Works," fill over 200 pages. The layout and the colors are good and the plates are big enough. There are oil paintings, etchings, drawings in pencil, colored pencil, chalk, ink, and charcoal; aquatint, drypoint, etchings; sculptures in wood, plaster, clay and bronze - and more. The earliest drawing is a copulation scene, "Donkey and She-Ass," done by a nine-year old Picasso - who as a schoolboy was already drawing confidently and well and, it can be argued, had already found his voice.

The works are of men, women, animals together, animals with people, blind men, lovers, voyeurs, brothel scenes, outsized genitalia, mythological beasts and people, nudes in classical poses, Cubist paintings on erotic themes, sketches of solicitude and tenderness and caring, playfully altered pin-ups from the 50's, visions of sexuality altered but undimmed by old age, and much more.

By virtue of its twelve strong, smart, passionate essays, and its 300 plates, this book becomes much more than the sum of its parts. Very worthwhile, and a great read.

This Chip Hilton book was so good to read that I didn't want to finish the last page. I'm glad there are lots of other titles to read by Coach Bee.

Risking-me is really about 2 of the 3 things I most worry about: one is my fear is of ever repeating abusive patterns as I've known them for most of my life.
The other is of putting my emotional self at risk. So, I can say that I found that novel very relevant.
Besides, there's a sex scene in there that set up from the beginning, but ... if you're patient, it'll come to you as a delicious reward. Very sexy.
Myra

I love this book!! Every sentence is suspense filled! Right when one problem gets solved, right out of the blue another one comes!! Right when you think that Antium is caught he disappears and causes even more trouble!! It's one of those books that you are up until 1 in the morning look at the clock and tell yourself just one more chapter, and you are still reading after you finish that chapter. It's one of those books that you buy read it once and decide that you'll want to read every book in the series. Reading it once isn't enough!!!