Barbara Avers, after her lifelong friend dies, vows to quit smoking and begins to gain weight. As her weight climbs from her starting 105 pound frame on up the scale, she tries every diet there is out there, makes a new friend, and discovers a lot about herself, her family, and her husband. Her discoveries will leave you laughing, crying, concerned, and sometimes angry. But never bored, not with Barbara! Susan Sussman writes about Barbara's journey with such humor that this book is a 10 star, can't put it down, must have addition to anyone's library.

I have loved this book for years. I first stumbled across it in the grocery store when I was in high school...the title called me because I was starting to feel the sting of being a fat girl...i read it again in college and shared it with a friend that time, too...for some reason I remember it as I browsed to fiction ailes of the library last week. I took it home and got reaquainted with a favorite character and a familiar story.

Any woman who has ever had a weight problem or a problem with burrying her feelings should be able to relate to Barbara Marlow-Avers. There's also a hilarious chapter for anyone who's curious about sex shops but just doesn't quite have the nerve.

Read this book. it is truly a delight!

I felt like I was losing a friend when I was finished with the book. It was such a personal and real experience.

Finally, a book that takes on the Earth Systems instead of a collection of unconnected Earth facts. Dr. Art's talent for describing the big picture through an interconnected systems approach provides the tool I've been waiting for as an educator and as a citizen of the global community. This readable and beautifully illustrated book is going to be the guide my students use as they travel the Earth Systems. With Dr. Art's guide my students will learn about why the Earth is so extraordinary and what Earthlings can do when they think globally. I can't wait to share Dr. Art's Guide to Planet Earth with my fellow teachers and my friends. Thank you Dr. Art.

This book is a rare gem! The concepts are described both visually and textually--even an adult could grasp the principles expressed here. It is a book every child in America should read or should read to his/her parents. Armed with this information, I now know how global warming occurs and how matter is recycled. If all of the adults governing our planet would read this easily understood manual, the world would indeed be a better place. Art Sussman, I thank you, my kids thank you and the world thanks you. Dr. Sussman is truly the Art of Science.

There are 11 major reviews of animals, and over 20 minor reviews. In each of these reviews I found at least one thing that I believed about the animal that was not true. Usually these are major believes which are wrong.

I found the writing style very easy to read and understand. The photographs were very good and very unusual. And the layout of the book was very pleasing to look at and invited the reader inside.

This is a terrific book for kids. I have had it out on my coffee table and children always pick it up and read it.

Thanks for a job well done.

I thoroughly enjoyed this delightful, funny story... Asher and Sarah Rose grew up together in Chicago. Sarah's best friend was Asher's sister Martha and Sarah was always trying to get Asher to pay attention to her, but he thought she was too young.....Sarah toured Europe after she graduated and wrote letters to Asher describing Paris and London to him.....When she returned to Chicago, Asher finally realized that he loved Sarah very much and they got married and had two children.....After the children were grown and gone, Sarah landed her dream job of designing wardrobe for a movie.....Asher sold his soup company for 20 million dollars and he dreams of travelling with Sarah......Sarah's mother Fannie is sick and Sarah feels that she cannot get away at this time...... Both Asher and Fannie put many demands on Sarah's time causing her to be very stressed even though she loves both of them very much...Asher's adult siblings also put a lot of demands on his time and he feels responsible for them because he helped raise them because his mother was sick for years...........The changes in their lives threathen to tear them apart.....They had to spend time apart in order to find each other again.......Very good book

I thought this book had too many loose ends. What's going on with Uncle Leo? How did the person trashing Morgan's room get in? What's with the stalker in Chicago? And others I won't mention so I don't give anything away. I thought the "wrap-up" regarding why the victims were killed seemed a little quick and didn't really offer a plausible enough reason. All that being said, however, it's a quick, clever and well-written mystery. I loved "Audition for Murder" and hope there will be more Morgan Taylor mysteries. Maybe even one that answers questions about Uncle Leo and the stalker!

"Cruising for Murder" is a great second installment in what apparently will be a series of mystery novels centered on the adventures of actress and compulsive crime solver Morgan Taylor. In this case, Morgan finds herself talked into a stint as a song-and-dance performer on a cruise ship where pretty young entertainers keep turning up dead. Self possessed, yet down to earth, Morgan is a warm and enjoyable character and a treat for any reader seeking a sleuth who is also a good friend. The authors do a great job of building a sense of foreboding in a cruise ship setting, and a big part of the fun is getting an inside look at the life of entertainers on one of these floating hotels. I'm looking forward to the next installment of Ms. Taylor's adventures.

This story is unlike most mysteries in that the narrator is not a hardened detective but a compassionate person who stumbles on the murder. it offers much more than a typical murder mystery

Not bad for a mystery. There is a bit of humour thrown in, the premise for the murder is nicely twisted and the whole investigation of it throws up lots of red herrings. We are certainly given all of the clues but it is hard to put them together because Sussman has some of them as quite innocent incidents right at the beginning of the book and unless you have the memory capacity of an elephant (or at least a reasonable reader of crime fiction) you will probably be like me and not be able to figure the thing out by the end.

I found the main character - Morgan Taylor, a bit grating at first but she definitely grew on me as time went on. I think I disliked her because she is an actress and so has to be a bit pretentious. However she definitely has more to her than a bit of play-acting and she does prove to have many layers of character beyond her acting persona which was nice.

The whole thing starts when an actress is found dead in the toilets during an audition - and in fact there is no suspected murder until someone tips the paper off that the death might have been less than above board. So Morgan becomes one of the chief suspects - and in fact quite possibly a future victim as well.

There is a bit of romance in this, and while not Evanovich it definitely has enough sass in it to be an enjoyable side trip.

This is must read for anyone who's interested in the theater. The author captures all the joy and pain from the auditions to actual performance. While there are murders galore, the characters are so enjoyable that they distract the reader from solving the crimes. I loved the romances and family conflicts that fill out the plot. And Grandma Belle is like a cherry on the ice cream sunday.I adored her and the book.

Although this is a very difficult book to really get into, it's well worth the struggle for the reader. The writing is crisp and witty, and first person narration in a mystery (or in anything, as far as I'm concerned) makes for wonderful reading. Theatre drips from every page, and it's obvious that the authors know a good bit about that world. So what makes it so difficult? It's in present tense! Makes for a very strange reading experience. In fact, I think it must be the first book I've ever been able to complete, written in that tense. ('We walk down the street', rather than 'We walked down the street.') It's a perfectly valid method, but it does take some getting used to.

Any mystery lover who persists, however, should find the experience well worth while. And a mystery lover who also loves theatre will find it an absolute delight. One can only be thankful that most theatres are not quite so murderously inclined. Morgan Taylor nee Miriam Tiersky, is an Equity actress plying her craft in Chicago, with its abundant theatre life. Beginning with her audition for the part, and continuing through opening night and then some, we're introduced to all the hangers-on, the veterans, the novices, the entire panoply of the biz. The atmosphere is wonderfully detailed. Morgan's wonderfully ditzy family isn't ignored, either.

When the aging actress who is Morgan's audition partner is found dead backstage, the cases is assigned to Detective Frank Roblings, and Morgan's life begins to perk up. It is sometimes a bit confusing as to which one is the real detective, but Morgan's theatrical bent stands her in good stead, as she slowly but surely figures out who dunnit.

This is a must-read for theatre buffs, especially, as well as cozy mystery fans. I'm off to find the next book in the series.

"Do you have your tree yet," Heather asked Robin. "There it was! That question. Only this time it was worse, because of what Sandy Goldstein had done." Sandy's family had put up a Christmas tree and called it a Chanukah bush.

This nub of the first pages in this 9-chapter, 48-page easy reader captures the conflicted feelings of Robin, the main Jewish character whose best friend Heather was Christian. Heather naturally wanted Robin to share the joy of Christmas. Robin wanted to share it too. But of course, being Jewish, her family did not have a Christmas tree, and she had to tell her friend, "There is no such thing as a Chanukah bush."

Things got worse in school, when Robin's teacher directed the children to construct holiday decorations and Sandy Goldstein sat next to Robin, making the ugliest paper chains she had ever seen. Then all the other children started talking about their tree decorations and Santa Claus. Robin felt so, so, left out.

At home, Robin had a conversation with her mother about different ways of being Jewish. Robin's mother finished by saying that if Sandy Goldstein's family had a Christmas tree that was their business, but she would not have one in her house. They lit Chanukah candles.

Then Robin's Grandpa entered. His union was holding a Christmas party and he wanted Robin to go. The story travels through another five chapters and 28 pages before the girls reach an understanding about one another and their holidays. And that understanding is truly magnificent.

This book shows children the respect that they can and should have for others of varied faiths. Children (and people) can be different, but nevertheless help and love one another, deeply.

And PS, this book is not just for girls. Our copy was a gift from a relative whose son loved the story too. Alyssa A. Lappen

Dear editors, I am writing re: my review of 1-25-99. There is a one-word error in the fifth line that changes the meaning entirely. It should read, ".....insight for NON Jewish adults...", not "insight for now Jewish adults." Would you kindly change this wording. As it reads now, it is misleading for your potential future customers, and embarrasing for me. (p.s. I actually AM Heather's mother. Susan Sussman wrote the book using our two daughters as the models for her characters Robin and Heather.)

As a Christian who's best friend was Jewish in elementary school (and to this very day) the two of us found this story to be such an entertainment that we joke about it to this very day, some nearly twenty years later. It helped to bridge a gap in understanding about what Hanukkah means to the faithful, and even now I fondly remember feeling so special being the one Christian invited to light the candles and "tell the story of God and His glory and how precious freedom was won." Even now, I tell people I was raised by a Jewish mother too, with much pride, and look forward to the festival of lights year after year.

We rent this from the library every year and hope to find a copy of our own. The stories are short, well-written and easy to relate to despite the very different lives these children lead. Exposes kids to other cultures & traditions w/o the gratuitous politically-correct overtones and stereotypes that ruin so many holiday books.

Another great Hanukkah book for the 6-10 age group: The Trees of the Dancing Goats by Patricia Polacco. A warm story of neighborly concern that leads to deeper understanding & subtly highlights the common underlying theme of the 2 December holidays. Also not a 'formula' story.

Maybe the author understands what she is talking about, but I sure didn't!!

For anyone seriously interested in realizing what the "new age" is all about, I would say--read this book. The author not only talks about the shift that is "coming soon," she gives you an experience of it here and now. Her style of writing is unique, to say the least, and is not easy reading, but I found by not trying to understand the words intellectually, I was able to allow the words to penetrate to a deeper level. At that point something in the brain shifted and a whole new multidimensional reading experience opened up. It's kind of like those 3-D pictures that are totally impenetrable in 2-D, but if you relax the focus in a particular way, a whole new three-dimensional experience opens up. I would suggest reading the introduction first. It gives a good perspective on how to read the book.

Timeshift has as its basic premise an idea similar to the main thought of Secret of the Golden Flower: That we grow not by keeping our attention exclusively on what's in front of us, but by turning our "light" or consciousness around and shining it back at its source. Related also is one of the keys to energy work with the human body, that nothing comes into the physical that does not first appear in finer bodies up the line, and that incipient infirmities can actually be more easily worked with on these more etheric levels.

Consciousness goes in a great cycle or loop, according to the author's direct insight, from its source down through the levels into manifestation and then back to reconnect with unmanifest energy. So long as the reconnecting continues, the process stays open and free, and new forms can easily evolve. When, however, consciousness neglects to revisit its source, the forms of the past begin to weigh it down and evolution's options become increasingly restricted.

The author brings her information from a point very close to the source, so her descriptions are necessarily abstract-so much so that her prose often gives the reader an experience similar to that of reading poetry. You do not get the point on a simple one-to-one relationship between sentence and thought. Rather, you will get a flash of an image a couple of times on each page. This is enough. I could feel myself growing as I read! An example:

"Time causes all matter to move as pearls on a thread arranged in a spiral . . . If you shake the pearls at the center, the two ends will also jiggle.

"When we understand our interconnectedness, time can open us to its rendering value-the creative influence of time on the unmanifest. Probabilities spread themselves throughout our individual and collective universe. Interactions occur that heretofore we did not think possible. When we are no longer attempting to escape time but climb within it, the vaults open and the possible links between our venturesome spirit and our creative intelligence can come into play."

If you can relax the need to "structure" this information flow as you read it, you will actually find yourself with the author, close to the source, and prior to the formation of the hardened mental structures we create and then hold onto for dear life because we have temporarily misplaced our connection with the source.

The book has four parts or focuses: the first is the most general, dealing with the dimensions, including space and especially time. Second is a brilliant perspective on the human mind and on psychology. Third, the author goes into the bodies physical and energetic, and finally, a deeply connecting view of the changes the planet itself has initiated.

I personally feel that Timeshift is the most important book I have ever read, and I am no longer easily impressed. This book explains how we construct reality and shows us why and how to clear away the rubble from the matrices we call our minds. It also shows us in a very specific way how to then re-open the heart.

The Whole has evidently decided to become Its own healer, Its own therapist, and Timeshift is Its first book. All thoughtful and open-minded people will gain immensely from reading it.