This is a return to the old Mitchell, though more of a 'cosy' than Mitchell used to be. It deals with witchcraft (three witches - Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, the Chaucerian Aunt Eglantine, and the mysterious Gloria Mundy, half her hair red, the other half black, her ancestor burnt as a witch). Gloria Mundy arrives unannounced at the house of her former lover, various accidents happen, and Gloria Mundy's body is found at the dower house - a red wig lying on the corpse. This is good mystification - but the next event is superb. Gloria Mundy, now deceased, is seen working in a dress-shop by a young journalist narrating the story. If Gloria is dead, how did she manage to come back from the dead? This is good Mitchell - good mystification, bizarre events, and a good plot. While similar to Helen McCloy's classic THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, the book is distinctive - and the ending is excellent: surrealistic and dream-like with witchcraft, voodoo dolls, and ancient British barrows mingling... The only reason that the book does not have 5 stars is that better Mitchells exist: COME AWAY, DEATH; THE RISING OF THE MOON; DEATH AT THE OPERA; THE 23RD MAN; ST. PETER'S FINGER.

Good novel, great Chinese woman writer. Don't miss it.

This was a good Mandie Book. It wasn't an actual numbered part of the series, but I still consider it a Mandie Book. It didn't seem relevent with the series, character-wise. Mandie was mean, and Celia was really quiet. I didn't like how the characters were portrayed, but it was a good book with Mollie chasing first leprachauns, then angels. I liked how it was half story half play. All-in-all, it was a good book, but not the best.

this new book is great and full of adventure. you can meet mandie while she was younger. This book is great for kids who can't read the older series. both series are great!

I am ordering a replacement copy for a book that has been "Read to Death". I have used the patterns in this book for many sweaters; it has a wealth of knit/purl and crossed stitch patterns for people who design their own knits. The sweater patterns themselves are less usefull, as they are knit very tightly in a much finer guage than most knitters would be interested in. Maybe if you have a machine that will do k/p patterning easily (mine won't). The Seahouses pattern is very lovely; I recommend it. It's also a good read for historical information on the history of these garments in the British Isles, and the author's search for information.

This book has also been published by The Commercial Press under the name, _Records of the the Historian_. It is a translation, by Hsien-yi Yang and Gladys Yang, of selections from one of the great, classic works of Chinese history.

Szuma Chien's _Records of the Historian_ is a huge work. The selections in this translation are biographical accounts of famous figures in early Chinese history, including Confucius. All of the figures whose biographies are included lived very interesting lives. So, although not every story is breathtaking, this usually makes for pretty good reading.

I think both the general reader and the scholar will enjoy this work. (For broader selections from the _Records of the Historian_, see the translations by Burton Watson. For more on Szuma Chien, who lived a tragic life, see Durrant's _The Cloudy Mirror_.)

This brief but thorough biography of Henry VIII's six wives is simply and effectively written. I first read it as a junior high student, and it has stayed in my mind as an eminently readable, but historically sound analysis of those unfortunate women.

The author, Gladys Malvern, was one of the most prolific writers for young readers in the middle of the 20th century, and wrote a wide range of biographies and historical novels, from Queen Esther in the Old Testament to the lives of actors in the 18th and 19th centuries. Her historical novels, in particular, were mainstays of my childhood, and I would dearly love to see some of them come back into print for my children as well.

If you want to teach yourself some Spanish or review your Spanish with simple grammar explanations: this is it! As a Spanish Language School we do recommend this book to students who want to improve or check their Spanish after a course when they're back home. We can also easily recommend it to anybody who wants to study by himself. Exercises are nice and you learn where your weak points are. Now careful: if you're a beginner you have to start with ... the second part!

The story is set in a convent, dealing, once more, with death by drowning in a bathroom - though not with the same denouement as "Speedy Death" or "Death at the Opera." The victim is the child heiress to an Irish-American millionaire, whose two other heiresses are also at the convent-school. Despite the fact that the school is a convent, the children are not annoying, though there is a trifle overdose of sentimentality, but the incidents and the story are interesting and well-told, with the search on the cliff especially well-done. There is a good grasp of psychology, with one of G.M.'s best-depicted psychological portraits. Not a cosy, despite the fact that all of the characters (with the exception of Mrs. Bradley (the eldritch detective)'s son, her chauffeur, and a priest) are women. In short, good atmosphere, good detection, but a bit too much sentimentality for my taste.

The Chinese communist party likes to claim Lu Xun as a precursor to later social critics who wrote along party lines. He definitely does not belong in that category. The cover of the English translation, published by the Foreign Languages Press Beijing,(not this edition) claims that his story, set in the China of 1911, reflects "the sharp class contradictions and the peasant masses' demand for revolution". Nothing could be farther from the truth. There are no peasants in Lu Xun's story who demand a revolution. On the contrary, when revolution "arrives" in the towns, it is the officials of the crumbling Ming Dynasty in the village who try to jump on the new train first. The peasants are dumbfounded, but essentially, they do not care. Ah Q is a day laborer who lives on the odd jobs he gets from time to time in his small village. He is an optimistic, naive peasant inclined to turn his daily humiliations into imaginary "victories" When he commits the mistake of confessing his love to a lowly female employee in the household of a wealthy official by saying "sleep with me", he is ostracised by the whole village and forced to steal in order to survive. Finally, he leaves the village. He returns as a man with money, and suddenly gains the respect of the villagers and the local officials. Later, however, he commits another mistake. He tells that the gained the money by selling stolen goods. In the end, he is executed because the officials decide that he has robbed the house of an official.

Lu Xun tells the story in a very detached manner, never interfering with comments of his own. He is very sarcastic: the final chapter which tells of the execution of Ah Q is titled "The Grand Finale". Ah Q is depicted as a likeable fool, stumbling through life and thrown about by chance events and his own clumsiness. The world of the village is one of pettiness, slander, envy, opportunistic cowardness, intellectual tedium, and everyday muddling through. The revolution never has any meaning to the village, other than an interference of the balance of power, an external event to which the poor and the less poor have to adapt in order to survive. Ah Q seems to me to be a symbol for China in the early years of the 20th century: a naive peasant who dreams of great things but finally stumbles helplessly to a bitter end.

The cover text of the Chinese edition concludes that it "was the author's sincere hope that the broad masses of peasants, victims of feudal oppression and imperialist aggression, might be aroused and rise in resistance against them." My own overall impression of the atmosphere in Ah Q's village is one of stifling inertia where everyone was caught in a net of inhibiting relationships and only looked for his own (and his family's) improvement in social status. No masses, no arousal. A sad story, but a true one, I guess.