by TT reviewer Anita Jo Stafford [full review on our website]

The Black Orchid from Aum is an anthology of stories by Gerard Houarner. "In the City of Aum anything can be bought. But you must always pay the price." All of the stories focus on the inhabitants and travelers through Aum, the reason they have journeyed to Aum and the price they pay for their desires.

All travelers must pay for Aum's tongue, a parasitic bug that works as a universal translator. Without the translator the travelers to Aum cannot communicate and are destined to become less than the human population. People can only travel to Aum when their planets are aligned. When the convergence occurs, travelers can leave Aum for the planet that is aligned with the gateway. The city is dark, violent, decadent and in many ways beautiful. It is a multifaceted world in which danger lurks on every corner.

The first story involving the debt collector draws the reader into the heart of Aum. It is an excellent way to introduce the reader to the realities of Aum. Cray's story shows the reader the first of several stories that provide the reader an excellent view of life in Aum. As collector, Cray settles unpaid debts. After suffering through an abusive marriage, she no longer desires love. While she collects debts for others she is accruing one of her own. As the debt collected from Cray is revealed, the reader is drawn deeper into the book just as travelers are drawn to Aum. Kings, Princesses, rulers of all shapes and form pay for their desires in Aum. The title story, Black Orchids from Aum is riveting. Like the rest of the stories the Princess gets what she desires most. However, the price that Aum takes as payment again has a profound impact.

The Black Orchid from Aum is an excellent anthology and an insightful look into the human condition. The stories are well written with excellent imagery and plotting. This book is a good one to start with as a sampling of the work of Gerard Houarner. It catches the reader's attention. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Aum is a place where anything within the imagination is possible for a price. The price that the inhabitants pay is often everything. This book is unique and ingenious. Depending on what the reader wants to take from the stories, they can be anything from dark fantasies to warnings of what could be in a world with too much excess. This book is highly recommended.

As I prepare to write an academic paper on Matthew 24:30 and Jesus' claim to be the "Son of Man" coming on the clouds with power and great glory, I find no other resource as helpful as Darrell Bock's "Blasphemy & Exaltation."

The scholarship is impeccable. His evaluation of critical scholarship is incisive and largely critical, yet he does not try to "beat something with nothing." He offers his own evaluations of the evidence in compelling ways. His compiling of Jewish views on Blasphemy makes for a tremendous resource for any student of the New Testament to make sense of Jesus' claims.

Do you want to know what Jesus actually claimed at his trial? Do you want to know what was so offensive to the ears of Jewish leaders so as to merit capital punishment? Read this book.

One caveat: if you are not used to reading works of scholarship on the New Testament (i.e. you are a layperson), this work can get very technical. You need to be aware of the tools of NT criticism (form, source, redaction, literary, etc.)in order to understand Bock's interaction with them. In other words, this book is not for everybody. It's not a "popular" treatment. But, if you want a workout, go for it!

I am very grateful to Dr. Bock for this resource.

A strong voice in contemporary poetry. Though his early works deal primarily with factory life, this latest collection deals with life as a father and observer. He captures the situations that go on around us everyday that we are usually too busy to appreciate for what they are. a brilliant collection.

I tumbled into this book with no expectations, except that I'd heard of the poet from word of mouth as being something of a legend in the 60s. I was happily surprised to find the poems direct, lush, exciting, and somehow leaping off the page into my consciousness. This is a poet who's not afraid of flying! And he very deftly takes us along with him, into spaces that are both familiar and exotic at the same time. He sounds conversational, he doesn't approach poetry with overweighted intellectual baggage, and he's a believer in God, but in a way that transcends the usual pieties. Since Rumi is now so popular, it's great to find a homegrown American voice that sings in some of the same registers!

at turns painful and reassuring but always powerful, Daoust's poems are always alertly written. The book's namesake is a poem about the thorny love between the poet at 6 years and a 20-year old, but this potentially repulsive subject is so hypnotically worded as to cause addiction. Several pieces stick out in my mind, like "A New York Prayer", a needy plea for material boon, and "The Sleeping Angel", lush balm for the ear of desire. Buy it - a bewitching compendium of a seductively malign poet's work.

great book for use with the insurance and restoration industry. This book actually reports the price of what the contractors should charge for specific trades. It also contains some very hard to find prices on water drying equipment and hazardous waste cleanup as well as your everyday trades.

Awesome. Does lack a little in contents replacement costs but has all the contents cleaning anyone could want. It is also the easiest price book as far as being straight forward in its costs.

Get this one over means or craftman, its just better and represents the industry a little better.

The Blues in Gray is a very readable account of the Republican Blues service in coastal Georgia with exciting battles taking place on the Ogeechee River at Fort McAllister south of Savannah, Georgia. William Daniel Dixon was 23 when he began his private journal which he kept throughout his Confederate Service. He was a native of Savannah and lived his entire life there. The editor, Roger Durham, has done an excellent job making Dixon's voice heard. I am Dixon's great granddaugher and am delighted that this primary material is available to readers and scholars.

The question of the body and embodiment has become a central issue in 20th century philosophy, and will doubtless continue to occupy thinkers in the years to come. From the phenomenological school (Merleau-Ponty) to current issues in cognitive science (Lakoff and Johnson's Philosophy in the Flesh), we are wrestling with the question: what does it mean for us to be embodied, and how must this affect our view of reality and what we can say about reality and ourselves?

Since Descartes, Western thought has struggled under the illusion that the mind can be separated from the body: that the two exist somehow in different and distinct spheres: one involving pure reason, the other involving corporeality, flesh, embodiment. But increasingly we are realizing that our embodiment affects our thought, and to think about 'pure reason' is often a distorting abstraction. An increasing awareness of Eastern thought - which does not make this body/mind distinction - broadens our (those of us in the West) thinking and forces us to question long-held assumptions. This is being increasingly realized in the fields of sociology, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and anthropology.

All this is dealt with in a funny and easy to read way in Cavallaro's book. It is a subject that too few people know about, yet it affects everything we do: from philosophy, to art, to society. For those who then want something meatier, I suggest the above works: Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception", Lakoff and Johnson's "Philosophy in the Flesh", the journal "Body and Society" and the book by the same name edited by Bryan Turner and Mike Featherstone.

A commentary that does not skim over texts, but goes into detail of each verse (1,400 pages for the two volumes). The two volumes have been my companion now for several months in my morning Bible study, and will be for a few months more.
Though the detail of Hebrew words is gone into, it is done in such a way that the non-Hebrew-scholar can understand. And the "Theological implications" sections at the end of each portion are a mine of spiritual treasures.
Though I am possibly not well placed as a layman to judge, for me it is THE study on Ezechiel to study.

This is a must have for every serious student of the Old Testament. Dr. Block has written the best work yet on the book of Ezekiel. He combines solid Biblical exegesis with practical devotional application.