Books

Perennial All-Stars: The 150 Best Perennials for Great-Looking, Trouble-Free Gardens

Average customer rating:

great for gardeners
One of the best !!
A great reference
Handy reference book to have around
Inspiring and informative

Perennial All-Stars: The 150 Best Perennials for Great-Looking, Trouble-Free Gardens
Jeff Cox
Manufacturer: Rodale Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0875968899

Amazon.com

Jeff Cox provides the information new gardeners want in Perennial All-Stars: how to produce a garden full of healthy, attractive, low-maintenance plants. Cox, the enthusiastic host of HGTV's &Grow It!, has selected 150 perennials, both flowers and grasses, that grow well in North American climates. Each double-page plant entry tells how and where to grow the plant, how to propagate it, and a list of ideal planting partners. In addition, each entry displays a quick-glance sidebar that includes ideal hardiness zones, blooming season, size, color, light and soil requirements, and a substantial list of plant sources (detailed in the back of the book). Cox further assists the beginning garden planner with useful groupings: "Fragrant All-Stars," "Deer-Resistant All- Stars," "All-Stars for Full Shade," "All-Stars 4 Feet or Taller," and so forth. It's in no way intended to replace a complete plant encyclopedia, but novices will be happy with the excellent selection and informative, friendly format of Perennial All-Stars. --Barrie Trinkle

Book Description

No longer must you waste your time or money browsing catalogs or wandering the aisles of your local garden center. How often have you ended up with perennials that dont live up to the breathtaking photos that convinced you to buy the plants in the first place? Garden expert and HGTV host Jeff Cox takes the guesswork out of shopping for perennials by selecting 150 of the most beautiful, top-performing plants based on attributes such as bloom time, ease of care, disease resistance, and fall color. A Perennial Plant Finder helps you find the ideal plants for your garden whether you live in Palm Springs or Portland. Youll also find suggestions for hard-to-plant conditions like heavy shade with acid soil or drought-prone gardens with alkaline soil. This all-star lineup is pictured in 260 full-color photographs that show each plant plus how each looks in garden combinations with other great plants.

Customer Reviews:

great for gardeners.......2007-05-17

I am really enjoying this book. It has given me a lot of good ideas for my garden this summer. I already have some of the flowers it lists, and I agree they are winners. An excellent book for beginning and experienced gardeners looking for new flowers for their yard.

One of the best !!.......2007-02-26

My wife wore out her 1st copy and the yard looks great.

A great reference.......2007-01-11

Keep this book on your counter all spring and summer long - you'll find lots of reasons to refer to it.

Handy reference book to have around.......2006-11-04

Great for the beginner gardener, it's easy to understand and gives a lot of information on planning your perrennial gardens to look great from early spring right into the fall.

Inspiring and informative.......2006-08-19

Many of my gardening books are useful for referencing the occasional problem or plant profile, but "Perennial All-Stars" was an engrossing read from cover-to-cover. The author has a great deal of enthusiasm for his subject--so much so that I think he picked more than 10 'Top 10' perennials out of his favorite 150.

That's okay. I admire his devotion and his knowledge of the perennial flower kingdom. His 150 all-stars also purport to be easy to grow and maintain, which is what I was looking for when I decided to add to my garden this fall. Unfortunately the author was so persuasive, I'm going to have to dig a new bed to fit in all of my choices from his book.

If you have a rough idea of the plant you're searching for, the front of this book is cross-indexed by various perennial characteristics such as 'spring blooming,' 'deer-resistant,' and 'full shade.'

Each of the perennials that was chosen for this book, is described in the following sections: an overall description and photograph of the plant; how to grow it; propagating the plant (useful especially for the more expensive or hard-to-find perennials); the right site for growing the plant; and other plants that go well with it. A 'spotlight' section summarizes the USDA plant hardiness zones, season of bloom, height x width, color, light requirements, soil requirements, place of origin, and where the perennial and/or its seed can be purchased.

The author tried to choose perennials that would flourish in all of the U.S. hardiness zones, but there are some exceptions that can't take the heat and humidity of the Deep South, e.g. peonies, or won't live through a very cold winter, e.g. Broadleaved Bear's-Breech.

"All-Star Perennials" is very useful and interesting. Just plan on doing some digging when you do read it.

Looking for Trouble: Recognizing and Meeting Threats in Chess

Average customer rating:

Good things come in small packages
Good Positions - Decent Organizing
Learn to use the Sword in Chess
Instructive and fun to read
A chess book that's instructive and Enjoyable to read

Looking for Trouble: Recognizing and Meeting Threats in Chess
Dan Heisman
Manufacturer: Russell Enterprises, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Everyone's 2nd Chessbook*
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ASIN: 1888690186

Book Description

This book is written to address an underemphasized area of chess training and study, the identification of and reaction to--threats. For beginner and intermediate-level players, the study of tactics is paramount. Almost all tactics books take the approach of providing a position where there is a forced win, checkmate or draw. However, Looking for Trouble takes a different tack. This book helps players to recognize threats by providing over 200 problems in which players can focus on identifying and meeting threats ranging from extremely easy to fiendishly difficult. The identification of difficult threats û and how to meet them û is discussed in a manner that accommodates players of all levels.

Customer Reviews:

Good things come in small packages.......2005-05-24

I almost passed this one up but I'm sure glad I didn't. As a player rated in the 1600 - 1800 range, I'm often frustrated to see a "crushing" win swept away in one careless move. I get so wrapped up in my own plans that I often ignore those of my opponent. Ugh! Although it is easy to say "always try to understand what your opponent's move was threatening before making your move", I tend to play fast and impatiently (even when not in any time trouble). Heisman's book is great because it forces you to solve the problems in 2 stages - identify the threat, then figure out the remedy.

By working on these, I found that I started to automatically look more carefully at my opponent's moves. Heisman's examples also include some very common themes so I suspect "imprinting" these "tactical images" into my brain will also do me good. Great stuff!

By the way, as an earlier reviewer pointed out, I found that even some of the so-called easy challenges were sometimes difficult.

Good Positions - Decent Organizing.......2005-03-21

Overall I liked this book but found it difficult at certain points. It is not a good book for a lower rated player like the advertizing makes it seem. Not all the patterns found in this book are logically placed. But there are some good positions for understanding.

Learn to use the Sword in Chess.......2004-08-01

I did not think I could ever find a book to learn what chess is about, well at least one of the most important things in the game. Yes, chess is about making threats and stop them, and this book teaches how to do that in a very instructive way. If we ever want to become strong chess players, it is of essential nature learning to see our opponent's threats and meet them appropriately.

What you will find in this book is a very clear explanation about threats and how we can deal with them, and then a lot of excercises to train your mind and eye to find the threats on the chess board. This is the firs book I know that deviates from the traditional way of "White to play and win".

Stop loosing games because you did not see your opponent's threat, get this book and become stronger. I really liked it.

Instructive and fun to read.......2003-12-29

"Looking for Trouble" is a collection of 200+ chess positions that are mostly tactical in nature. What separates this book from other similar works are the extensive and helpful verbal annotations, and the fact that it's not "White to move and win", but instead: "Avoid the threat and find the best move". Working through this book feels more like playing a real game than playing through a normal collection of tactical problems, and is surprisingly fun.

One of the main benefits of this book is that it helps you to establish a better thinking process. After you worked through all the puzzles, your first thought while playing a game will be "What is his threat?", which is exactly how it should be.

The positions themselves are also very instructive: Taken from real games, sorted into openings, middle game and endgame sections and assigned an estimated difficulty (* to *****).

My only criticism is that the author recommends this book to players rated as low as 1200. I'm rated 1700 and found most of these puzzles to be quite challenging. I think a 1200 player would be overwhelmed by the difficulty of most positions, though he will likely still benefit from learning how to think better.

A chess book that's instructive and Enjoyable to read.......2003-12-09

I'll start off by stating that I am a novice-intermediate level player who has several chess books and a training CD to boot!. (Fred Reinfeld, Complete Chess player, Chess for Dummies, Burgess Mammoth book of chess). With the exception of Chess for Dummies, they all look nice on my shelf. Everytime I pick up Burgess or Reinfeld I lose interest quickly. This book by Heisman has me hooked ! To me, it's much more useful than "Find mate in 2 " problems. It teaches you to think about what your oppenent is up to (threat) and how to (and not to ) respond. In essence, play CHESS. My copy is already worn and battered up a bit..like all my other favorite paperbacks.

Looking for Trouble: Sas to Gulf Command-The Autobiography

Average customer rating:

Inspirational story of success from an unpromising childhood

Looking for Trouble: Sas to Gulf Command-The Autobiography
General Sir Peter Billiere
Manufacturer: Harpercollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0006379834

Customer Reviews:

Inspirational story of success from an unpromising childhood.......1997-01-15

In his autobiography, Peter de la Billiere, gives a very exciting account of his military and civilian life. From an umpromising childhood he fell into and found his niche in the British army. There are many interesting chapters covering his various feats in Korea, Malaysia, the Midddle East, Northern Ireland, the Falklands and the Gulf War. I found the details of his various postings with the SAS to be of particular interest. The only annoying area is his insistence on using "I, myself" and "We, ourselves" throughout the book. Also, he speaks of a man being "Hung"! Grammar aside, De la Billiere is clearly a man who enjoys life and a man to be admired. Well worth the read for fans of military history or people who are just interested in a good adventure.

Average customer rating:

nice start
Better than you're probably thinking
Doesn't work for me...
Who Knew!
Just a Baddd Assss book

Outsiders: Looking for Trouble
Judd Winick , Tom Raney , and Ivan Reis
Manufacturer: DC Comics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Teen Titans Vol. 4: The Future is Now

ASIN: 140120211X

Customer Reviews:

nice start.......2006-01-14

I had no idea what I was getting into with this one. I've always been a big night wing fan, but didn't know much about the other team members.
I think this is the beggining of a great run of comics. Team books these days seem to have that feeling of forced interaction, ie the JLA books, the x-men books, but not this one. The diverse characters don't feel forced and neither do thier relationships, or purpose in the DC universe. They have a reason for doing what they are doing and it feels real. Grace is a super cool chick and i really like this new metamorpho, shift guy.
I hope this one keeps getting better and don't doubt that it will.

Better than you're probably thinking.......2005-10-18

Crappy heroes, a crappy idea---who would've thought that it turns out to be a half-decent book. A little too "hip" and "trendy" for my taste, but the campiness makes it fun. I hate Nightwing with a passion, but I actually found him tolerable.

A suprising effort. Nothing great---but suprising.

Doesn't work for me..........2005-09-01

When I heard all the controversy about The Outsiders I decided to buy me an Outsiders graphic novel. And in my honest opinion The Outsiders just do not work for me.

First of all Winnick likes to fill his pages with words. Lots of words. Winnich is like the Chris Claremont of DC. The pages are just filled with words and in the second chapter of the graphic novel when he introduces where we left off, it is just too too long.

Second the cast it just so...off. Nightwing is like some complete control freak bastard, but I can't blame considering his teammates. Arsenal for reason I just can't stand. He's just so...ugh. Grace is an uber-bitch who is just plain annoying, and absolutely does NOT fit in the superhero biz. She should have just stuck with the bouncer gig. Thunder is pretty likeably, but the daughter of BLACK LIGHTING! I have never been reminded of such reference. I really don't care for Metamorpho, and as for Jade she has some potential just not on this team. I can imagine her working solo guest starring here and there or maybe in the JSA. But NOT the Outsiders.

I wasn't offended by the raunchiness of this g.n. because I have read much worse, but to Winnick it seems like in order for a comic book to be mature you must add sex & swearing. This is not always true but if you do add these 2 to a comic book make sure they work well and they cancel each other out, or else you will something completely cheesy like this.

Well that's my two cents so, Ciao

(p.s. shoot I forgot about Indigo! O well...like metamorpho somebody I care about.)

Who Knew!.......2005-03-25

Who knew this "Real World" dude could write? Well, he did get an Eisner nomination for "Pedro and Me," his graphic novel about his RW roomie who died of AIDS.

But this book is... GREAT! Outsiders is gritty, funny, and has a great edge to it. Definitely not a book for young kids. It also has some good ol' superhero storytelling, so it's a great blend of the old and new.

The best part (surprisingly) is the Metamorpho storyline, about what happened to him when he disappeared and how he returned, very cool. Great appearance by the Joker too. Winick really knows how to write for Joker (funny and twisted). The artwork is impressive too.

I can't wait to pick up the 2nd TPB!

Just a Baddd Assss book.......2004-10-07

THe outsiders by Judd Winick (exiles,pedro and me) is a real 360 degree difference from Teen Titans. It's adult style and taylored for teens 18 and up really makes it a more mature book. The story that is done deals with more of a team and less like a family, meaning no one really likes one another. His characteristion is top notch and really makes you laugh at all the adult veiled humor. The really best feature is the art it features people like Ivan Reis and Chris Cross and Tom Raney and has cool digital coloring really bringing the action scenes to life and trust me there are a lot. It is just an excellent read you are bound to enjoy.

Looking For Trouble (By Request 3'S) (By Request 3's)

Average customer rating:

The Lighter side of Anne Stuart!! What gems!!
3 of Anne Stuart's best under one roof!
A Mixed Bag
The "lighter" side of Anne Stuart

Looking For Trouble (By Request 3'S) (By Request 3's)
Anne Stuart
Manufacturer: harlequin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0373201729

Customer Reviews:

The Lighter side of Anne Stuart!! What gems!!.......2002-10-19

This is a reprint of 3 of Anne Stuarts for whimsical series work Harlequin American Romance.

If you missed them, as most did, here is a great way to get three of Stuarts lighter works - her tongue seriously through cheek her; if you MISSED that then you did not have an idea what she was doing!!)

Cinderman - Dr. Daniel Crompton was working on a secret project - at least he thought it was secret - until reporter Suzanne Mallery turns up demanding to know what is going on. And she is not the only one concerned about the project, for while Daniel is escorting Suzanne out of the lab (forcibly), there is an explosion. He, in true hero fashion, covers her body with his to stop the blast from hitting her. They both awaken in hospital, his whole back of his body covered in a green slime ( aka Golden Years - though this was written BEFORE) and her hands were also covered. Later, Daniel began to get a few mysterious powers. Great fun!!!!!!!! and tribute for the Invisible Man.

Cry for the Moon, has widowed Marielle Brandt moving into an apartment house with her small child. Her husband was into big debt for his death and this is the only piece of property left to her. She arrived to find the place like something out of the Adam's Family, nearly falling down and the only thing that is keeping it running is Simon Zebriskie, who has taken on protecting the oddball inhabitants of the ancient building. It is haunted, has the weird crew of misfits, yet Marielle finds Simon and the Adam's Family mansion, her new home and is strangely charmed by it all. As great tribute to the Old Dark House!!

Chasing Trouble is a great funny romp!! Jack Diamond Private Eye, is straight from Sam Spade fiction, but he is what Sally MacArthur needs. He is her fantasy detective come true!! Jack knew he was nutty to get caught up in the web this nutty dame spins, but he cannot seem to resister her, despite the damsel in distress' story having more whole than of pound of Swiss Cheese!! A great tribute to the Maltese Falcon!!!

These are delightfully charming tells, from the super Anne Stuart.

So sit back and enjoy these homages for three wonderful old movies!!

3 of Anne Stuart's best under one roof!.......2001-04-21

I've read and loved all of these books and it's wonderful to see the readers get another shot at these wonderful stories. CINDERMAN is a delicious and sexy fantasy. CRY FOR THE MOON will touch the heart and CHASING TROUBLE is a delightful take-off on The Maltese Falcon. Anne Stuart's soaring imagination is surpassed only by her way with words and her skill at creating some of the hottest heroes ever written in romance or any other genre. Triple the stories, triple the fun!

A Mixed Bag.......2001-02-04

The first book, "Cinderman" is impossible to swallow unless you first realise that it is pure fantasy. It has breathtaking disregard for the rules of basic science (An invisible man? Super-human strength? Gimme a break ...), not to mention disdain for common sense (a famous scientist's bosses, financial backers and lab assistants have absolutely no idea what he's working on, not even whether it is in the field of chemistry or of physics?) Once you get over these little, um, intellectual challenges, the story is pretty much your bog-standard romance, with moderately interesting characters, though not much of a plot.

By the time I get through the second offering, "Cry for the Moon", I begin to worry about myself - how have I developed a taste for such dull fiction? This heroine has few discernible charms, and a prominent fault in that she bursts into tears at every conceivable moment. The hero is self-absorbed and tends to unnecessary self-flagellation. The supporting cast of eccentric characters is, one supposed, meant to charm us, but I can't help feel that they undermine an already weak-ish story. And since the bag of story lines and characters is so ill-sorted, why not throw in an element of the supernatural. I feel this one is scraping the creative barrel.

But just when I'm about to give up on this genre (and myself), the last story, "Chasing Trouble", reminds me why I read this stuff. The plot comprising gangsters, the poor little rich girl and (you must be joking) an ascorbic private detective, is no more realistic; but it's not so much the story as how it is told and the characters that save the day. This wise-cracking, compulsively lying heroine is truly no shrinking violet. The hero manages to rise above the corny Private Detective persona by not taking himself too seriously and by facing up to PI stereotypes squarely. They trade insults, engage in delightful double-crossing, and agonise only a little. All good fun. The writing displays more wit and charm, the pace is good, and I fancy even the vocabulary used is more adventurous than in the previous two offerings. Ms Stuart's muse was paying full attention when she wrote this one.

The "lighter" side of Anne Stuart.......2000-03-18

Looking For Trouble has "3" reprints of Ms. Stuart's Harlequin American stories. CINDERMAN is an unusual story--a reporter (Suzanne) tries to interview a scientist (Daniel) and ends up in an adventure with an "invisible" man. Romantic, funny, and so very different--this book is a worthwhile investment for this one-time HTF story, itself. CRY FOR THE MOON has Marielle inheriting a haunted? apartment building in New York city. Naturally the apartment inhabitants are strange and unusual. And, of course, there's a man...well, it's a romance and an adventure. CHASING TROUBLE might be the Anne Stuart-version of Bogey and Bacall, or a romantic caper. An heiress, hires a detective (Jack Diamond) to find a missing jewel and a missing sister. All three stories are Anne Stuart on the light side--and lots of fun. (And, there is a little dark, in each one too!)

Average customer rating:

A curiously bloodless look at some of our less savory history
Indiana Jones' Well-Bred Sister
Don't leave for Baghdad without it...
Better than Ian Fleming, Tom Clancy, et. al.
Good stories, but ...

Looking for Trouble
Leslie Cockburn
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0385483198
Release Date: 1998-02-17

Amazon.com

From the war-torn jungles of Nicaragua to the inner circle of Russia's black market, Leslie Cockburn (One Point Safe) recounts in vivid detail her experiences of being one of the first women to break into the old boy's club of Third World reporting in Looking for Trouble. While living on a houseboat on the Thames River in London and studying the finer points of Gambian oral poetry, Cockburn was convinced by a friend who had recently befriended a NBC filming crew in Morocco to pursue a career in journalism. Lured by the excitement and glamour of television reporting, Cockburn left academia and landed a job as an NBC News correspondent. Within a short time, she found herself face-to-face with Momar Quadaffi (an interview she almost missed because she overslept) and hobnobbing with the world's key political players. Cockburn's account, from the dredges of Haiti and Papa Doc's gruesome regime to the Sunni-Muslim coup in Afghanistan that barred women from working and seeing male doctors, is a bizarre behind-the-scenes look at Third World reporting. For example, when Cockburn and her husband Andrew befriended Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar, the most powerful crime lord in South America, he used to sign his letters to them with his thumbprint. Or how about the time she braved the wholesale destruction of Somalia when she was six months pregnant? Her documentaries have gotten her blackballed from the Pentagon, the State Department, and a couple of White House reigns, but they have also changed public opinion, moved policy makers, and helped correct injustices around the world.

Book Description

News correspondent Leslie Cockburn has dined with the Cali Cartel, marched with the Khmer Rouge, hunted down the Black Turban in Afghanistan, pursued the Russian mafia to the Arctic Circle, shared pomegranate sauce with the Ayatollahs, and stopped a small Kurdish war, but she has never told these stories in a book-until now.

Cockburn was one of the first women to break into the tight fraternity of combat and third-world reportage when she began work at the London bureau of NBC News in 1976-where successful news gathering required "unorthodox tactics, stamina, and, for best results, a criminal mind." By the time she moved to CBS's "60 Minutes," Cockburn had interviewed Muammar Qaddaffi and Margaret Thatcher, been arrested as spy in Gambia, and effectively eliminated whatever doubts her colleagues might have had about a woman's ability to tackle the news business's most dangerous assignments.

A mother of three who has made a career of breaking down barriers, Leslie Cockburn has exposed the tobacco lobby in Washington and human rights violations in Cambodia, and her impact on foreign and domestic policy has been as powerful as her impact on the rights and prerogatives of working women. In an industry in which, as late as 1973, women had to lobby to wear trousers to work, Leslie Cockburn was determined to combine a strong family life with a strong professional life, sacrificing neither.

With a cast of generals, drug lords, rock stars, and kings, LOOKING FOR TROUBLE is the incredible story of a career that has spanned the history-making news events of the last two decades.

Customer Reviews:

A curiously bloodless look at some of our less savory history.......2007-04-05

This could have been a very important book. Cockburn's personal courage and her commitment to exposing the truth landed her in many political hotbeds worldwide. She was never afraid to go the additional step or to ask the right question, and her reports helped change history by revealing the seamier side of U.S. foreign policy in the 1980s and 1990s.

However, Cockburn's chapters are formulaic: she gets an assignment, lands in the country, braves various insults and injuries, meets the famous revolutionary or dictator, and completes her prize-winning documentary. Her writing is curiously bloodless. Often the book reads more like a travelogue than like a journalistic memoir. Cockburn has had a path-breaking career (about which I had known relatively little) but this book does not leave the reader wanting to know more about her.

Indiana Jones' Well-Bred Sister.......2001-07-06

The narrator is one of the strongest female characters I've read in a long time---intelligent, well-read, daring, tactful, witty, and with good taste in everything. Her adventures through the most dangerous political areas put a new spin on what you hear in the newspaper, from rather ridiculous dictator families to the horrible living conditions of villages in countries that have declared martial law. It's a fast read.

Don't leave for Baghdad without it..........2000-09-13

Well-written, fast-paced account of a smart, savvy female journalist's rise to power in the male-dominated media area of combat coverage & "sensitive" foreign issues. It offers inside stories on a number of the world's political hot spots (and some of the US's nastiest foreign policy decisions). The book is structured engagingly too. The first chapter covers one of the author's more recent assignments -- and a journalistic pinnacle, as the Taliban story Leslie produces is co-anchored by Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer; the latter, not Walters, went with her to Afghanistan. The subsequent chapters chronicle her some of her career's hairiest moments from its start two decades ago. Leslie's vivid descriptions of what she sees, as well as the acerbic comments she drily inserts, make her seem personally likable and as though she'd be an extremely entertaining dinner guest (though possessed of an excellent political BS detector). More on her family would have been nice, but this book is focused primarily on her work and how she does it; snapshots rather than the full-length autobiography with full-fleshed auxiliary characters. Still, riveting and hard to put down.

Better than Ian Fleming, Tom Clancy, et. al........2000-05-02

I have not been so enthralled with a journalist's memoirs since the first half of Theodore H. White's "In Search of History." This book was fascinating from cover to cover. When I told my wife about it she would open up the book at random and read for several pages, totally engrossed. She almost read the entire book through this sporadic grazing.

My enthusiasm for "Out of Control" is so complete that I am biased to the point of not being able to find anything wrong with it. I think readers who opine that there is not enough detail are missing the point. This is a personal snapshot of one person's 20-year professional life, not a treatise on the dozen-odd events that she has covered, each of which would require a couple of books to adequately detail. I also think the reader who complains about name dropping also misses the point. This does injustice to Ms. Cockburn's immense talent for using wit, a biting writing style, and a well-earned license for subjectivity to tell a fascinating story.

Good stories, but ..........1999-06-30

What makes this book great are the stories and characters Cockburn meets up with, not Cockburn herself or her writing. There's no doubt that she's covered a broad array of international incidents. But while the stories themselves are interesting, Cockburn sweeps through them too quickly, leaving you asking, "What just happened?" She also does some name-dropping, which grates on the nerves because most of them aren't relevant to her stories. At one point in the book she manages to point out that she had Mick Jagger at her dinner table before going on an assignment. A good read for some recent international history. But don't expect too much.

Looking for Trouble (Uptown Downtown Series)

Average customer rating:

Looking for Trouble (Uptown Downtown Series)

Manufacturer: Globe Fearon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0835910938

Looking for Trouble: Invitations to Seduction (Harlequin Blaze, 92)

Average customer rating:

Alec and Rory-SPOILERS
Wow, just loved it
However make up your own mind...
Leto sparkles in the first of two books on twins!
Miss Innocent meets Bad Boy

Looking for Trouble: Invitations to Seduction (Harlequin Blaze, 92)
Julie Elizabeth Leto
Manufacturer: Harlequin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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Brazen & Burning (Bad Girls Club)
Show & Tell (Harlequin Blaze, No 81)
Truth or Dare: Men to Do (Harlequin Blaze, No 88)

ASIN: 0373790961

Book Description

An innocent looking for adventure.

A bad boy trying to change his image.

And a book of sensual invitations that will make them forget everything but each other…

Rory Carmichael is finally free! Free from her suffocating small town, free to experience what the world has to offer…and free to experiment with all the sensual fantasies that have been teasing her, tempting her, tormenting her, at night. And when she discovers `Sexcapades', a book of naughty but very, very nice scenarios created for lovers, she realizes she has exactly what she needs to turn all those fantasies into reality. Especially since her new landlord, sexy Alec Manning, looks like he would be very nice to be naughty with…

Customer Reviews:

Alec and Rory-SPOILERS.......2006-07-03

Favorite scene with Rory-
When Rory spots Micki on the street and runs after her, only to lose her.

Favorite scene with Alec-
Alec telling his boss about who he really is, then coming face to face with Rory's twin.

Together-
Their heart to heart after Rory sees Micki on the street. Rory's not ready yet to admit she loves Alec. Rory can't tell Alec everything she's thinking and feeling.

What did you like about Rory-
No matter what happened, she would never stop loving Micki. Her love for her family. Wanting to be independent and free.

What didn't you like about Rory-
Being a virgin, she was willing to throw caution to the wind for sex. I don't like women who give it up just for the sake of sex. I don't like women who only have sex on the brain.

What did you like about Alec-
I liked that he lived up to his big mistake. He worked hard to get his career back. How he cared about, and fell in love, with Rory.

What didn't you like about Alec-
We all make mistakes. We all pay for them and move on. If Alec hadn't made this mistake, there would have been no book. But I didn't like how he almost ruined his career by sleeping with the dean's wife. I like bad boys, but I don't like stupid, reckless men who don't give a crap about what they do and who they hurt.

If I had to cast Alec, I'd cast Julian McMahon.
If I had to cast Rory, I'd cast Alyssa Milano.

Wow, just loved it.......2005-10-09

I couldn't put this book down once I started reading it. Finished both stories, this one & the sequel (Up to no good) in 1 night. After reading "Essence of midnight" I had to get the other books linked to it.

Rory & Micki are twins who haven't seen each other in 10 years. Rory moves to Chicago to find her missing sister, with her landlord's help. What she gets is a fantasy straight out of the famous "Sexcapades" book & does she put it to good use on Alec.

For 10 years Micki has lived on the streets of Chicago, helping her friens Danielle break her drug addiction. She finally meets her twin & she also meets Sebastian Stone, Danielle's brother. Before Danielle & Micki take a flight to Paris, France Rory gives Micki a "sexcapades" fantasy she took from the book at work "Devine events". When she metts Sebastian she knows she has found the perfect partner to live out her fantasies.

A fantastic series.

However make up your own mind..........2004-02-20

Personally I thought that this book was totally unbelievable. Whilst I am aware that it is FICTION I just could not get into it.

The main character Rory is 25 years old and has never, well lets say "explored" herself. Give me a break! Then suddenly she is some sexual minx so sure of herself and what she is doing - I don't think this has ever happened to anyone!!!

Leto sparkles in the first of two books on twins!.......2003-08-08

Julie sets up the good girl/bad girl flip of the coin in a brilliant study of twins - women who are the same outside, but are polar opposites in life styles. A genius turn of the screw examination of women's inner desires. She is not afraid to rollerblade along that envelope and does so with the grace and deftness of a magician.

When I picture Julie Elizabeth Leto in my mind (having seen her picture and been a big fan for a couple years of her steamy, sizzling books for Harlequin's Blaze series), I see her in a t-shirt with the words "Good Girl's Do" emblazoned across her chest and Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" blaring in the background!! I don't think there is a writer anywhere that touches the cord of women long told that good girls don't, but knows secretly in their hearts and fantasy THEY DO!! She gives the reader an empowering okay to indulge in being the aggressor - not that the males she creates are wimps, quite the contrary - but Julie's newly liberated females push the envelope. Maureen O'Hara said in THE QUITE MAN she was not a woman to be honked at and to come a running. Well, Julie picks up that banner and lets her characters wave it proudly! As you might've experienced, often the envelope gives paper-cuts, but what the heck...they heal quickly! It's the challenge and the risk, that skating on the razor's edge, which makes her books so sexy and distances her from the pack of other Harlequin writers. She creates very down-to-earth females, flesh & blood women that jump off the pages and introduce themselves. Whether the bad girl who is sooooo GOOD or the nice girl cutting loose, Julie believes in GIRL POWER TO THE MAX!

In her current book, LOOKING FOR TROUBLE, June 2003 Blaze #92 (and its sequel UP TO NO GOOD, August 2003 #100), Julie has the chance to use both the Bad Girl and Good Girl as the focus of both stories. Twins, they are raised by their grandmother, an overly repressive woman determined to see Rory and Micki not follow in their mother's footsteps. Mama was the "bad girl" of the small Southern town; hurt by this shame, strong-willed Nanna is determined to make sure her granddaughters remain "nice" girls. As often happens, the harder you try to prevent something, the more you drive that person to rebel, and that is what happens to Rory Carmichael's twin sister, Micki. She ran away from home when they were fifteen, leaving Rory to be the "good girl". Rory loves her grandmother, and willingly stepped into the "good girl" mold to please her, but she is twenty-five now and she wants to have so fun in life. Rory knows cutting-loose from the nice girl image in the small town would be impossible, so she takes a stand and moves to the big city where she can be a little wild without poor Nanna having a heart attack. Rory might be out of sight, but not out of mind as Nanna is still trying to control her life. She arranges for Rory to get a new apartment with the son of her doctor, thinking this will keep her in a safe spot. Only, Nanna had not locked eyes with Dr. Alec Manning!

Never been one to stand back from the invitation in a woman's eye, Alec is a to-die-for hunk. However, having lost his job because of an indiscretion with his Dean's wife, he has taken a vow of celibacy to prove to himself there is more to life than one woman after another. However, he did not count on Rory turning up to live under his roof. To kick off her new life, Rory tore two pages from a book called Sexcapades: Secret Games for Wild Adventures for Uninhibited Lovers. The book is housed where she gets her new job and it is 1001 exciting ideas to jazz up a steamy romance. Created so you cannot tell what the fantasies are beforehand, they are sealed in plastic and you're instructed to open them only when you are ready to put them to use. Rory's were called STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT and SLIPPERY WHEN WET. Determined to kick loose from that nice girl image, she cannot imagine a better target on which to hone her feminine wiles than her new sexy landlord. Alec's vow is suddenly having a hard time standing up to the breathy sighs, tight jeans and come-hither looks of sexy Rory.

Miss Innocent meets Bad Boy.......2003-06-10

Rory Carmichael has spent her whole life living the life of a good girl to please her grandmother who raised her and her twin sister after their mother abandoned them. But her twin ran away as a teenager and now Rory has a lead on where she is and is determined to find her and to finally live her life the way she wants to. When she finds Sexcapades, a book of sexual fantasies meant to be shared with your lover, in the lobby of her employer she knows that she has found the perfect tool to help her bring out the bad girl in herself.

Alec Manning, lost his credibility as a Sociology professor after having a very indiscreet affair with the department heads wife. He is in the middle of a research project that he hopes will gain his re-entrance into the academic world but in order to do that he feels that he has to loose his bad boy image permanently. He has no problems until Rory rents the upstairs of his home that he has turned into an apartment.

This was a fantastic book with a near perfect combination of seriousness and fun. Alec is determined to resist Rory and maintain his new image and Rory is just as determined to get what she wants - Alec. Fun, sexy, and the perfect lead in to Invitation to Seduction.

Looking for Trouble: The Life and Times of a Foreign Correspondent

Average customer rating:

A Riveting Page Turner from A to Z!

Looking for Trouble: The Life and Times of a Foreign Correspondent
Richard Beeston
Manufacturer: Tauris Parke Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

Now published in paperback for the first time, this is a vivid account of 35 years in journalism by a former foreign correspondent and bureau chief of the Daily Telegraph. Richard Beeston describes what the nomadic life of a foreign correspondent is like, providing colorful and lively portrayals of daily life in Fleet Street and communist Moscow; of his years in the Middle East; and of his acquaintance with the notorious Soviet agent, Kim Philby.

Customer Reviews:

A Riveting Page Turner from A to Z! .......2006-02-14

I am surprised that Richard Beeston's "Looking For Trouble", published, 1994, in England, and 1997 in the US, is not more widely available (judging by the fact that mine is the first review and that there are only a few copies listed on the Amazon Marketplace). Fast paced and more exciting than any novel, "Looking for Trouble," presents a journalist's-eye view of some of the most thrilling (and dangerous) events in the 25 years that followed World War II. From Afghanistan to Zanzibar (but in reverse order), Beeston, a foreign correspondent for London's "Daily Telegraph," witnessed the crumbling of the British Empire, the disintegration of the French Colonial system, and many other pivotal events of which we are still feeling the repercussions. Beeston also chronicles the rise of nationalism in what are still the hot spots of the world (e.g. Lebanon and Iraq), and the reactions to these movements on the part of the major world powers. In other words, in a style that is both entertaining and witty, Beeston's memoir explains how we arrived "here," historically, from "there."

Beeston's hazardous adventures begin during the EOKA crisis in Cyprus, where he is broadcasting on a SIS-run radio station; then, as a foreign correspondent, he takes us with him to Jordan (and the perilous beginnings of the reign of the young King Hussein), to Lebanon (where he and his family used to go on picnics with fellow-journalist--and Soviet spy--Kim Philby), to the Congo (where his pre-Telegraph London Newspaper folds in the midst of a bloody revolution, leaving him jobless), Aden (where he finds himself in the midst of another bloody revolution), and Baghdad (ditto). Then after a stint in London, where he joins the "Daily Telegraph," he takes us to Yemen (guerilla warfare and gas attacks), East Africa (more revolutions), Vietnam (no need for explanation), back to Lebanon (civil war), and then on to Washington (Watergate), Moscow (where he accidentally meets his old friend Philby at the Bolshoi opera, after which encounter the Beeston family's problems in finding an apartment are suddenly solved), and finally to Afghanistan (where his career as a foreign correspondent almost ends in a Mujehedin ambush during the Soviet-Afghan war).

The narrow escape in Afghanistan is only one of Beeston's brushes with death, all of which he relates in an entertaining manner that allows the reader to experience the dangers along with him. The book is appropriately named, for Richard Beeston's journalistic career not only had him looking for trouble, but also finding it!

Average customer rating:

I did it!
Laura and Richard Return to Byerly for a Wedding
No murder until after page 100

Trouble Looking For A Place To Happen
Toni L. P. Kelner
Manufacturer: Kensington
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1575660075

Customer Reviews:

I did it!.......2006-09-14

I figured this one out way before the end! I'm so proud of myself!! Good luck to you!

This is another installment of Kelner's Southern series. There is a lot of humor in this book. The Burnette family themselves could make a book! I tend to get involved with the characters as much as the mystery, so this matters to me. Laurie Anne and Richard even have really cute quote contest going on throughout this one. I think this is a series for you if you really like good characters with lots of little quirks.

So what's the story this time? Well, Laurie Anne and Richard are in town for her Aunt Ruby Lee's marriage (the fifth) when Tom Honeywell gets murdered at the big country music Jamboree. Laurie Anne's cousin, Illene, is accused of the murder and so in come Laurie Anne and Richard to try to get Illene off. Lots of twists and turns to get the final conclusion. Definitely one to get your mind working.

Laura and Richard Return to Byerly for a Wedding.......2001-12-30

Aunt Ruby Lee is getting married for the fifth time. Second time around to Roger of Rogers Ramblers. Their daughter Ilene is rebelling big time. She wants a career in music, but her father thinks it is no place for his daughter. She enters the local Music Jamboree with the assistance of her sleazeball boyfriend. The boyfriend ends up dead on the Rambler's bus and Ilene is accused of murder.

This is a good addition to the series. Laura and Richard have to use their wits and Laura's pack of relatives to solve the crime and the reader has alot of fun in the meantime. A mystery from the past is solved also, which adds some dimension to the plot.

No murder until after page 100.......2000-10-01

This is such a warm and cosy book I feel bad saying anythingnegative about it. I have to warn the squeamish that somebody says "rats", that one character might like men instead of girls, and someone appears on stage in a mini-skirt with a bare midriff (but her father drags her off). A married couple unplug the phone for a hour to do something. There's a lot of nailbiting tension about the plans for Aunt Ruby Lee's wedding. If you can stand all that sex and suspense the mystery is quite well plotted with fairly placed clues. It's set in North Carolina with thick local atmosphere but no mention of race problems (everybody seems to be white if their physical appearance is described). A good-humored blend of "Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood" and Agatha Christie. A neat joke in the acknowledgements.

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