This is a wonderful anthology. Top-notch mystery writers and their children (and, in some cases, grandchildren) collaborated on a variety of entertaining stories.

Pay particular attention to "Releve", the story contributed by Patricia Wallace and her daughter. This story introduces us to Sydney Bryant, the private eye that Pat Wallace has featured in a terrific series for adults. The titles in the series include "Deadly Devotion" and "Blood Lies".

Other outstanding stories include those by Wendy Hornsby, Scott Turow, Stuart Kaminsky, and Sharyn McCrumb (and their collaborators). This is a book that parents can read and enjoy with their children. It might inspire them to collaborate on some mystery stories of their own!

I look forward to reading the companion volume, "Great Writers and Kids Write Spooky Stories". I

American Impressionists and Realists were farther apart in time than they were in what they painted. In fact, with both groups their art grew out of training in Paris; liking for modern French painting; and building an American art that would support American nationalism by faith in the future, the present, and the good old days. They both went outdoors, to the growing system of parks and places for holiday outings, as in Impressionist William Merritt Chase's brightly colored "Prospect Park, Brooklyn," with its Gustave Caillebotte-type compressed backgrounds, exaggeratedly converging spaces, and splayed foregrounds; and in the rugged "Central Park in winter," where Realist William Glackens painted sharply contrasting light and dark side by side and wavily-formed lively children into vigorously brushworked snowy chill. Both groups chose personally meaningful, over nationally significant, places to paint, as in Impressionist Childe Hassam's "Late afternoon, New York: winter" brilliantly light-touched and delicately paint-stitched in one overall tone and Realist Robert Henri's energetically darker-toned "Street scene with snow." Or historical landscapes, such as "Gloucester harbor" through Impressionist Willard Metcalf's dazzlingly wide-banded high-key color for bright summer sun-lighted skies and under Realist John Sloan's late afternoon powerful glow, low sun-cast strong shadows, and storm clouds over Fauvist-type intensely colored and heavily pigmented industrial cranes and wharves. In fact, they both tended to be city painters, as in Childe Hassam's "Rainy day, Boston," with its "Church of St-Philippe-du-Roule" plunging perspective, empty central foreground, masterly controlled narrow tonal palette, and two streets panoramically joined; and in "Bleeker and Carmine Streets" by Impressionist George Luks, as the intersection for overcrowded immigrant slums, ramshackled cold-water flats, and boardinghouses in heavy impastos and somber palette. Both were also aware of how nature was part of doing business in the city, as in the hothouse flower sales of Childe Hassam's lightly brushed "At the florist" and John Sloan's gritty, realistically colored, and vigorously brushed "Easter eve." Both groups were concerned, too, over how industrialization was changing American life, but with Impressionist J Alden Weir's Willimantic Linen Company's "Factory village" naturally fitting as a picturesque river valley industry in the middle of lushly fresh fields while George Luks hunched his driver over the reins to a horse-drawn "Butcher cart" on a slushily dark Manhattan street. Both cared about how people fit into the changing American life so they likewise went in for portraits, as in William Merritt Chase's "James McNeill Whistler," with the sitter's style of broadly applied paint, low-key palette, and thin washes; and in Robert Henri's "George Luks," with the sitter's coarsely provocative painting style of crudely bold slashing strokes and richly dark colors. Both groups had similar concerns about how people were interacting with each other, as in the children playing at Childe Hassam's privileged "Lake for miniature yachts" under the gaze of near-by adults and at John Sloan's "Backyards, Greenwich Village" around the beckoning responsibilities of hanging laundry. Or as in adult time out, with the music of the James Whistler-type sobre paletted "At the piano" by Impressionist Theodore Robinson and of the Honore Daumier- and Francisco Goya-type exaggeratedly expressive "Spielers" shown frenetically dancing by George Luks. Or with a French-styled drawing viewers into the woman in black's box as a figure leaves the upper left corner box in Impressionist Mary Cassatt's "At the opera" and up along with craning spectators at the acrobat inching along the tightrope in "Hammerstein's roof garden" by William Glackens. Or with a surprising sympathy for the performer passed down from Jean-Antoine Watteau's "Gilles" to William Merritt Chase's hunchbacked jester pouring a bracing drink and John Sloan's harshly lit clown making up. So authors H Barbara Weinberg et al's book, with its gorgeously illustrated and nicely organized text, trailblazes looking at the similarities in the art by the 26 artists participating in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's traveling exhibition on AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM AND REALISM.

This fully-illustrated hardback has come out to coincide with the like-named exhibition at Telfair Museum of Art. It may be the largest retrospective show of Frieseke's work to date (it is certainly NOT the first). Many well-illustrated catalogs of his work have been published in the past - I have six of them on my shelf - but this is by far the most comprehensive. The primary author, Nicholas Kilmer, also wrote the highly-acclaimed _A Place in Normandy_ and the Fred Taylor mysteries (_Harmony in Flesh and Black_, etc.). Contributions by David Sellin, Virginia Mecklenburg, H. Barbara Weinberg, and Linda McWhorter (coordinator of both exhibition and catalog) flesh out the text. The reproductions are magnificent. Do a web search on Frieseke, and see how many paintings you recognize. It is high time that this painter of well-known images should gain "name-recognition"!