I think this book would also be great for parents suffering through paranoia and depression to see what their kids really go through.

1) Say that your parents are away on a business trip.

2) Or say that your grandmother just died, and now really isn't a very good time for your teacher to call home. You can use this excuse twice, and twice only. Keep track.

3) Or say that your phone is out of order, but you will deliver the message. (Yeah, right).

Kara has her lists down to a science. She has to, or people might find out about her home life. Kara's mother suffers from mental illness. Most days her mother stays in bed with the curtains closed and the covers up over her head. Kara's mom has been like this for almost as long as Kara can remember. She has her good days as well as her bad, but ever since Kara's father left them, it has only been one bad day after another. Kara tries her best to take care of her mom and to keep everything looking normal. When her lists don't work, Kara retreats in her mind to "Lonely Island," a place based on her favorite book, "Island of the Blue Dolphins." But sometimes even that doesn't help. She knows that eventually her mother will get past this, but when? Cracks in Kara's carefully constructed façade are beginning to show and people are starting to get suspicious. What if they find out? What will happen then?

Told over the time frame of one day, this engrossing novel delves truthfully into the reality of a child whose parent suffers from mental illness. The author does an excellent job of conveying Kara's conflicting emotions concerning her mother and the situation she is in. As a reader you not only sympathize with Kara for all that she is going through, but also admire her for the strength she has to deal with everything that is thrown at her. Strongly recommended for EVERYONE.

My 3 year old daughter recieved this book as a present from a pre-school mate who loved it. She can't read it enough. She never tires of this book. And she has unbounded enthusiasm every chance she gets to read it, again.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part explains what are the components, who are the players, what an ideal industry would look like, etc of an electric industry. The second part is dedicated to the US electric industry.

The author does a wonderful job of explaining the basic fundamentals of the industry. At times some concepts get hard to comprehend because the concepts are unusually complicated. For someone new to this industry, it might require more than one reading and I can bet that it is worth their time.

This is a great book for anyone interested in learning about the industry.

The information is detailed enough in terms of native habitat, water, and sun/shade requirements and growing habits that we could build a great "hit list" of plants that we took to the local native nurseries. We found almost everything on our list, so the plants covered seem easy enough to find, at least in Los Angeles.

The best feature of this book can be found under the "Other Value" subhead for each plant listing: whether the flowers are used by hummingbirds or bees; whether it's a larval plant for butterflies or moths; and whether the seed or fruit is eaten by birds. I wish all books had this essential information for the wildlife gardener.

Unlike specific intervention texts, it does not lay out particular lesson plans but reviews methodological principles and best practices. As one would expect from the authors, the book is superb on descriptions of Autistic Disorders and prognosis. It has less advice on specific intervention strategies than one might like, but it does offer reviews of approaches.

So what does this book offer over the many others on the same bookshelf? Well it's horses for courses. It's avery balanaced book and certainly it doesn't understate the difficulties. I think that professionals and researchers will get a more out of it than others. However, there just isn't a whole pile written on AS and adolescence. Hence parents with a research interest will also gain a lot. Ultimately it is a slightly more 'high brow' book than notional equivalents. I have certainly found myself going back to it rather than the others over the past few months.

The positive suggestions offered in this book will be inspirational and educational for parents, and should be shared with those in the schools, colleges, and even the employment fields--in other words to anyone dealing with an "aspie". The reader will have many positve ideas to try, as well as an increased understanding of AS. Since AS is increasing at alarming rates, it would be an excellent book for anyone in Special Education to read this book.

This book contains something for managers, particularly upper management who needs to not only endorse the P-CMM, but also need to commit to it and sponsor it in order to make it happen. The chapters of the book that apply to them are:
1 -The Process Maturity Framework, portions of 5 - Interpreting the People CMM (Organizational Factors, and commitment and Ability to Perform), and 7 - Experience with the People CMM).

For technical line managers the entire book will be relevant because it covers the reasons, structure and key process areas in great detail. In addition, once a P-CMM initiative is given the go ahead, the implementation team and all primary stakeholders will also benefit from large portions of the book because it also covers implementation issues and an approach in detail.

Overall, this book presents a maturity framework that contains goals for any organization that understands the relationship between the morale and management of a technical workforce and the resulting impact on the business bottom line. I'll go so far as to state that if this book is followed and a successful implementation of the P-CMM results, attaining the corresponding level of the SW-CMM will be relatively effortless.

If you have previous experience with the older versions of P-CMM, or CMM-SW, or the newer approaches as set forth in later versions and CMMI, you'll note that there are two implementation models: staged and continuous. The staged approach is the only supported implementation for P-CMM version 2.

The book goes into extraordinary detail about the P-CMM and how to implement it. You can easily use this book as a roadmap to achieving levels 2 through 5 of the P-CMM, or as a resource for improving the people part of the people-process-technology triad that defines IT. As such you need not have certification as a goal to gain value from this book. If you do decide to pursue certification at level 2 or higher, however, I strongly recommend that you also get a copy of Kim Caputo's 'CMM Implementation Guide'. That book, while focused on implementing the CMM-SW, contains sage advice and a sound approach to dealing with the real problems that you'll encounter: organizational inertia and resistance, training and implementation issues and obtaining they key ingredient - commitment to perform.

Intriguing plot and characters. A fine setting. And a decent mystery to boot!

I had never thought of Scotland as a possible travel destination. Maybe after her depiction I might consider it. Not that she romanticizes it, she obviously just loves it because it is lovable. Plus there were so many amusing and beguiling Scots that I had the pleasure of meeting. Not to mention the depths of the human heart that I had to ponder when reading this (I thought I knew who the murderer was, but I really didn't want to believe it was who I thought it was--so I had to ponder my own heart's depth as well).

I rarely reread mysteries, but I will return to this one again sometime. There's more to this than I could get on one time through.

Alex believes that someone deliberately murdered his friend as the bees were found inside Jonathan's picnic basket. Alex is happy that another friend, intelligence officer Ben Reese is coming to Balnagard to appraise his heirlooms. When Ben arrives, he agrees to investigate Jonathan's death. Ben soon finds several viable suspects, but never anticipated that the killer might want to make him the next victim.

Although the story line occurs less than four decades ago, there remains a surreal atmosphere, as if the events occurred in a previous century. The plot is compelling as PRIDE AND PREDATOR focuses on a monster wearing the respectable mask of sane civility that fools everyone except the likable hero. Sally Wright has the right stuff as she shows her story telling abilities to turn a mid-twentieth century who-done-it into a grand novel.

Harriet Klausner