Amanda Stevens's other 'vampire romance' for Silhouette Shadows, The Perfect Kiss, was better. Vampires are evil and horrible in it too but it takes a more unique approach with a female vampire looking for redemption and a love she can't have. I would recommend it if you can find it.

I started leafing through this book before recognizing it was by the same group and the same editors plus one. But I found listed in the contents several names I recognized from my reading about Sherlock Holmes in other books even if along with some of the pseudowriters from the other book. Many of these essays were of far more interest than the earlier volume. It even had some fiction and some humor. And a third editor was listed, the first one listed here, though he came last on this book's title page. But his name should come first alphabetically as here. Curious. On the strength of the other editor and the listed topics and because it was priced cheap, I bought it. I still didn't expect much. I was pleasantly surprised.

Besides a pompous, overwritten, self-glorifying introduction by a man listed as president of the group publishing it, who probably broke his arm patting himself on the back, and a woefully inadequate and trite rehash of Sherlock Holmes's film career, a lot of the stuff in this book is good and some really good. I really like a story explaining what happened to Dr. Watson's wife, written from Watson's perspective like the original Holmes stories. It was well-written and heartfelt. Probably one of the best I've read, and worth the cost of the book alone. In fact everything in this book was better than the other, which I think was published later than this one. Why the difference? Besides many different writers than the other book, I deduced like Holmes that it was the third editor, the one who had no involvement in the other book, that made the difference. Like the dog in the nightime, he did nothing in the other book. So logic dictates he must have done much for this one. Further investigation uncovered that this editor is a professional writer. His name turns up many times if you search for it here. The others don't, not even for the other book they edited. Case solved. The third editor must have done a lot of writing behind the scenes on this book. He also wrote one of the stories. So maybe he did just too good and that's why the other two no longer work with him, or he with them. His being listed last in the book while his name comes first alphabetically suggests some ulterior motive for the listing and later disassociation. Jealousy maybe on the parts of the less talented editors. If they had any sense they'd have hired him to help with the other book and would get him back if they plan to publish further anthologies, especially if they only use the same people from their own club again. They need real writers and real editors if they want to sell much outside their own circle of friends. Fortunately this book has some real writers and one real editor and is mostly very readable and enjoyable.

My advice. If you find this book in a used book store with a price in the low teens or less like I did, buy it. Look too for anything else by the first editor listed alphabetically here. Same for anything by the author of the Watson story, John Burrows(?) I think. Avoid like bubonic plague anything by either or both the second two editors especially if published under their club name "the Illustrious Client's". There's too much over priced poorly written and edited books in the Sherlock Holmes small press world. Thankfully except in part this is not one of them.

Part 2 (6 chapters) - Discusses on SOAP, UDDI and WSDL. The code discusses using a Older version of Apache SOAP and Apache Axis. The code needs a complete rewrite.

Part 3 - Discusses on JAXP, JAXB, JAXR, JAXM and JAXRPC. Good introductions but the JAXB chapter is based on DTD (which is obsoleted in the latest specs). JAXM and JAXRPC chapters just reproduces the Sun JWSDP tutorial...not much value addition.

Part 4 - Security, WSFL, WSIF (based on IBM Specs) currently these specs are obsolete no further releases.

It might've been a good book during 2002. The code and content needs an update to the latest specs and SOAP implementations.

The title of the Book is "ASP XML", and from this title I choose this book, because I wanted a book that would help me to use XML in ASP. That wasn't the case in some of the book examples.

The book content (without the case study) is only 15 chapter that spans 366 pages covering all different aspects of XML and XML integration of ASP. The information presented is very basic and lacks basic knowledge of XML, for example XSL was covered very poorly in the book ( MSDN was more helpful to me than the book). Chapter 11 through 14 were very useful though, especially chapter 14 that covers useful XML procedure libraries.

The case studies spans around 180 pages, there are 6 case studies. They were very confusing to me and none of them helped me solving any of the business requirements I was tackling.

The rest of the book contains appendices that are useful to have them all in the same book, but you can get them over the Internet for free.

Last word to say is that I was disappointed with this book.

You want info on UFO's? Rent seasons 1-9 of "The X-Files" on DVD or the X-Files movie, "Fight The Future". At least you'll be able to stay awake, and it won't cost you nearly as much money.

CE-5, the newest book by internationally acclaimed UFO expert Richard Haines, Ph.D. (with Steven Greer, M.D., and Mark Rodeghier, Ph.D.), is a professional, riveting, and in places, mind-boggling resource for serious UFO researchers.

For me, reading CE-5 was an absorbing and engrossing experience.

In 435 pages, in two major parts, CE-5 chronologically presents abstracts of 242 of the world's most fascinating UFO sighting reports. Part I discusses apparent communications between witnesses and UFOs; Part II discusses apparent communications between witnesses and alien beings.

But what exactly do you get when you read CE-5? A lot.

Case 14: A disk 1,000 feet in diameter and 12 feet thick was seen by multiple witnesses as it crossed 150 miles of Minnesota countryside over a period of five hours. The moment a witness switched his truck's headlights on, the object changed color from white to red.

Case 35: A witness ran to within about 20 feet of a landed UFO. Two days later he became very ill - reduced body temperature, black vomit, diarrhea with blood in the stool - and two weeks later he died, supposedly from gastroenteritis, although a nearby scientific organization said his symptoms were similar to those caused by a lethal dose of gamma radiation.

Case 39: Two witnesses shined their flashlights at a mysterious aerial object that had landed. The flashlight beams bent up 90 degrees about 18 inches in front of the object.

Case 49: The crew of a US Army tank in Germany, at night, saw a bright UFO flying beneath the overcast. When the object approached, the tank driver flashed the tank's searchlights, and the UFO echoed the flashes. At one point the UFO appeared extremely bright but even then it did not illuminate the clouds above it or the ground beneath it.

Case 75: A medical doctor flashed a 500,000 candlepower spotlight at a UFO, in sequences of three, two, and five flashes. The UFO echoed each sequence, and this apparent communication was witnessed by 39 bystanders.

Case 110: Russian jet fighters intercepted a UFO, fired their machine guns at it, but the UFO zig-zagged and out-maneuvered the interceptors.

Case 183: A police officer drove up to within 40 feet of a landed UFO and saw red lights inside the object. When the police car's headlights finally illuminated the object, the red lights began flashing. Then the police car's engine died and the officer's flashlight failed to work. The officer was unable to account for about 30 minutes of his shift around the time of the sighting.

Case 207: A priest and several dozen other witnesses waved to human-like "people" standing on a UFO that hovered near the mission. The "people" waved back. This apparent communication continued for about three hours.

(Another report in this Part of CE-5 describes a man who jabbed his knife at a "creature's hairy body," only to feel the knife glance off as if it had struck a rock. Still another UFO-related fight involved a young man and a being the witness said "felt like metal." And a South American truck driver fired his pistol at three 13 to 16 feet tall "beings in human form" that exited a landed UFO.)

Case 216: In Italy, a farmer saw a UFO land and then saw three "dwarfs" emerge from it. The farmer, who heard the "dwarfs" talking to each other in an unknown tongue, got his shotgun. It failed to fire when he attempted to pull the trigger, and the gun suddenly felt so heavy that he had to drop it. He felt paralyzed. The "dwarfs" took some of the farmer's rabbits, jumped back into the UFO, and as it flew away, the farmer fired his shotgun at it.

Case 218: (This event is too frightening to describe here, but it is one of the most well-documented UFO-alien-gunfire cases on record.)

Case 223: (This event is also too frightening to detail here. It culminated in the witness' death from leukemia two months later.)

In spite of its often terrifying content, CE-5 reads quickly and easily because its abstracts are short and concise. Abstracts are followed by citations, and often by rhetorical questions or comments. (Those comments helped me see a couple of technical subtleties I'd overlooked.) More references and citations are given at the end of chapters and major parts. The book is indexed and has tables of statistical data.

CE-5 is clearly the best review of the world's most intriguing communications-related UFO reports, all condensed to essentials and accompanied by photos, sketches, and diagrams. (Even though I've been an avid UFO researcher since 1947 and have read about 125 books on the subject, most of CE-5's reports were new to me.)

But while I think CE-5 is vital reading for most adults, I also think its reports are too frightening for elderly people susceptible to stroke or heart attack, and for children.

(To underscore my concern here, please understand that I'm a military veteran, a pilot, I'm well grounded in the physical sciences, and I'm a technical researcher and writer -- see http://www.principiapub.com -- but I confess that I found myself _quite_ disturbed by several CE-5 reports.)

In summary, CE-5 is more than a compelling and often stunning series of UFO reports. It is also more than an enormous feat of technical research by Drs. Haines, Greer, and Rodeghier.

My hope is that the public and the scientific community will soon recognize CE-5 for what it really is, the most professional contribution yet toward understanding and solving this century's greatest scientific mystery.

Bob