Greg Campbell, coauthor of the bestselling Flawless and Blood Diamonds, presents a compelling, close-up investigation of a hot-button topic: America’s schizophrenic attitude to the legalization of pot.

Campbell, a suburban father whose biggest vice is a cold beer, seems like the last person who would grow weed in his basement. But his attitude changed in 2009, when his home state of Colorado led the nation in mainstreaming medical marijuana. Watching with fascination as above-board and financially thriving dispensaries popped up everywhere, Campbell wondered, “Why not me?” Pot, Inc. chronicles Greg’s journey into DIY ganjapreneurialism, as he learns how to cultivate marijuana, examines America’s often unduly harsh laws, and unearths ignorance about pot’s centuries-old therapeutic value–ignorance the government is desperate to maintain. Along the way, he also gains a very personal insight into the drug’s medicinal value that shapes his opinion about legalization.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Greg Campbell

GREG CAMPBELL is the author of Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History (a Denver Post, Globe & Mail, and Library Journal bestseller), Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World’s Most Precious Stones (the source material for the Leonardo DiCaprio movie of the same name), and The Road to Kosovo: A Balkan Diary. Campbell is also an award-winning journalist whose his writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal Magazine, The Economist, The San Francisco Times, Paris Match, and The Christian Science Monitor, among others. He lives in Fort Collins, CO.

Three books on illegal, or not, drugs

The Washington Post Book Review – May 16, 2012 (Excerpt)

Pot, Inc. (Sterling, $22.95), by Greg Campbell, author of “Blood Diamonds,” is a brisk, clear-headed survey of a complicated topic. That the author managed to write this evenhanded book while running a small (and arguably legal) grow operation in his Colorado home is a testament to his skill as a reporter. Campbell begins with the so-called “Obama Memo,” released by the Justice Department in late 2009. The memo signaled to many users and ganjapreneurs that marijuana would be tolerated by the federal government and therefore was on its way to some form of legalization. The confusion that followed paved the way for an expansion of medical marijuana use and raucous political debate from the city-council level on up. Campbell weaves in a fascinating history of the drug in the United States, including the legal and political story of how marijuana came to be classified as a Schedule I narcotic — more dangerous and less useful than Schedule II drugs such as cocaine and opium. Campbell is a friendly skeptic, largely convinced of pot’s benign nature, but he’s willing to subject the culture of idealists, dropouts, mercenaries and outright criminals that surround it to a healthy dose of sunshine. [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

“First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.”

Then fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons’ parents rob a bank, his sense of normal life is forever altered. In an instant, this private cataclysm drives his life into before and after, a threshold that can never be uncrossed.

His parents’ arrest and imprisonment mean a threatening and uncertain future for Dell and his twin sister, Berner. Willful and burning with resentment, Berner flees their home in Montana, abandoning her brother and her life. But Dell is not completely alone. A family friend intervenes, spiriting him across the Canadian border, in hopes of delivering him to a better life. There, afloat on the prairie of Saskatchewan, Dell is taken in by Arthur Remlinger, an enigmatic and charismatic American whose cool reserve masks a dark and violent nature.

Undone by the calamity of his parents’ robbery and arrest, Dell struggles under the vast prairie sky to remake himself and define the adults he thought he knew. But his search for grace and peace only moves him nearer to a harrowing and murderous collision with Remlinger, an elemental force of darkness.

A true masterwork of haunting and spectacular vision from one of our greatest writers, Canada is a profound novel of boundaries traversed, innocence lost and reconciled, and the mysterious and consoling bonds of family. Told in spare, elegant prose, both resonant and luminous, it is destined to become a classic.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Richard Ford

Richard Ford is the author of the Bascombe novels, which include The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day—the first novel to win the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award—and The Lay of the Land, as well as the short story collections Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins, which contain many widely anthologized stories. He lives in Boothbay, Maine, with his wife, Kristina Ford.

Editorial Review

This is Ford’s first novel since concluding the Frank Bascombe trilogy, which began with The Sportswriter (1986), peaked with the prize-winningIndependence Day (1995) and concluded with The Lay of the Land (2006). That series was for Ford what the Rabbit novels were for Updike, making this ambitious return to long-form fiction seem like something of a fresh start, but also a thematic culmination. Despite its title, the novel is as essentially all-American as Independence Day. Typically for Ford, the focus is as much on the perspective (and limitations) of its protagonist as it is on the issues that the narrative addresses. The first-person narrator is Dell Parsons, a 15-year-old living in Montana with his twin sister when their parents—perhaps inexplicably, perhaps inevitably—commit an ill-conceived bank robbery. Before becoming wards of the state, the more willful sister runs away with her boyfriend, while Dell is taken across the border to Canada, where he will establish a new life for himself after crossing another border, from innocent bystander to reluctant complicity. The first half of the novel takes place in Montana and the second in Canada, but the entire narrative is Dell’s reflection, 50 years later, on the eve of his retirement as a teacher. As he ruminates on character and destiny, and ponders “how close evil is to the normal goings-on that have nothing to do with evil,” he also mediates between his innocence as an uncommonly naïve teenager and whatever wisdom he has gleaned through decades of experience. Dell’s perspective may well be singular and skewed, but it’s articulate without being particularly perceptive or reflective. And it’s the only one we have. In a particularly illuminating parenthetical aside, he confesses, “I was experiencing great confusion about what was happening, having had no experience like this in my life. I should not be faulted for not understanding what I saw.” – Kirkus Reviews

‘Canada,’ by Richard Ford

The Washington Post Book Review – May 15, 2012 (Excerpt)

Toni Morrison, John Irving and now Richard Ford.

The month of May is turning into a catwalk of America’s greatest senior novelists. Ford’s new book is the best of the lot, though, a magnificent work of Montana gothic that confirms his position as one of the finest stylists and most humane storytellers in America.

He’s well known, of course, for his Frank Bascombe trilogy, whose second volume,“Independence Day,” won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. As rich and durable as John Updike’sRabbit quartet and Philip Roth’s Zuckerman series, the Bascombe novels are an insightful chronicle of middle-class life, infused with the economic and cultural anxieties of the late 20th century.

Now, Ford has left the suburbs of New Jersey two thousand miles away and delivered his most elegiac and profound book. “Canada” may strike recent fans as a departure, but it’s actually a return to the plains of his first celebrated story collection,“Rock Springs” (1987). Here in Great Falls, Mont., the author lays out a tale of one unexceptional family’s disintegration.

“First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.” [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

The Catholic Church has never given up creating new Saints.  Sir Thomas More was canonised on 19 May 1935 by Pope Pius XI.  In 2000 Pope John Paul II declared More the “heavenly patron of statesmen and politicians”, although the prudence of commending to politicians as an example a man who declared his incinerated Protestant opponents to be “well and worthily burned” is open to question.  In 1955 Pope Pius XII established the Feast of “St. Joseph the Worker”, to be celebrated on 1 May. This date coincides with May Day; a union, workers’ and Socialist holiday. This reflects St Joseph’s status as what many Catholics and other Christians consider the “patron of workers” and “model of workers.”  Joseph is a counter-attraction to Karl Marx. I do not suppose that a “heavenly patron of gay men” will be nominated any time soon, but there is a suitable candidate in the person of Philippe, Duke of Orleans, the younger brother of King Louis XIV of France, who is known to have been a very pious and correct Catholic.  Other aspects of his life are more controversial.

Philippe was the younger son of King Louis XIII and his queen-consort Anne of Habsburg. Philippe became Duke of Orleans upon the death of his uncle Gaston, Duke of Orleans. During the reign of his brother he was known simply as Monsieur; the traditional style for the King’s next brother. Unabashedly camp and notoriously homosexual, he nonetheless fulfilled his dynastic duty by marrying twice and begetting numerous legitimate children. He also appears to have fathered some bastards by one or more mistresses. He was the founder of the House of Bourbon-Orleans, a cadet branch of the ruling House of Bourbon, and the direct ancestor of King Louis Philippe I, who ruled France from 1830 until 1848. Through the children of his two marriages, Philippe became an ancestor of most modern-day Roman Catholic, and some Protestant, royalty. His modern descendants include the two Pretenders to the imperial throne of Brazil; and the Comte de Paris and Prince Napoleon, both of whom have an historic claim to the throne of France. Through Prince Albert, he is also an ancestor of the British royal house. He truly earned his nickname of “the grandfather of Europe”. Philippe’s other achievements include his decisive victory as military commander at the Battle of Cassel in 1677.

Philippe had some excuse for the life of decadence for which he is chiefly remembered. His mother, who was a far stronger character than Louis XIII, had decided that the younger son should not be allowed to outshine his elder brother in any respect. Although he showed distinct military gifts, he was not allowed to develop these fully. Instead, he was encouraged to enjoy frivolous pleasures, which included acting and cross-dressing. As a young man Philippe would dress up and attend balls and parties in female attire. His inclination toward homosexuality was not discouraged. According to scandalous gossip Cardinal Mazarin, the Prime Minister, may even have arranged Philippe’s first homosexual contacts with his own nephew.

As the “official out gay” at the French court Philippe became in effect the protector of French gay men in the seventeenth century.  In theory homosexuality was a capital offence. Louis XIV is known to have hated gay men as much as he hated Protestants and would have been happy to “purge” France of them also. However this was too difficult; all the trails led ultimately to the elegant Chateau of St-Cloud, where Philippe lived with his court of painted cavaliers. With all his faults, Louis XIV was fond of his brother and Philippe lived for most of Louis XIV’s long reign. As a result, nothing was done; there was no gay equivalent of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which sent Protestants fleeing from France to enrich France’s enemies with their skills, and which brought both the Industrial Revolution (in England) and the French Revolution a step closer.

Philippe, Duke of Orleans was in some respects a caricature camp homosexual; dressed far beyond the height of Parisian fashion and heavily made-up. It should however be remembered that at this period most aristocrats of both sexes were heavily made-up in the evening and often during the day as well. However his intelligence and accomplishments have been underrated.  His vanished Chateau of St-Cloud was considerably more tasteful than Versailles with its threatening magnificence; he was a genuine connoisseur, unlike Louis XIV. Philippe was also deeply pious, always donning his Order of the Holy Ghost (le saint-esprit) before attending Mass or Benediction in the Chapel Royal.

1658 appears to have been the year in which Philippe’s sexuality became clarified. Court gossip suggested that Cardinal Mazarin’s nephew, the Duke of Nevers, had been the “first to have corrupted” Philippe with “the Italian vice” – contemporary slang for male homosexuality. This however remains unproven and might reflect Mazarin’s political unpopularity, rather than historical fact. Philippe certainly did make his first contact that year with Philippe de Lorraine, known as the Chevalier de Lorraine; the male lover with whom he would establish the closest emotional attachment throughout his life. The Chevalier’s cousin was the ruling Duke of Lorraine. Around the same time, Philippe met the famously vain, arrogant and handsome Armand de Gramont, comte de Guiche, with whom he fell in love. He also showed an interest in the Duchess of Mercoeur, Mazarin’s niece. She may have become one of his mistresses. Another lover of Philippe at this time was Antoine Coiffier, Marquis d’Effiat. The latter stayed in his household until Philippe’s death.

Philippe’s first wife was Princess Henrietta, or Minette, the daughter of Charles I of England and his French wife, Queen Henrietta Maria.  Unfortunately Henrietta was more enamoured of Louis XIV than of his brother, her husband. Court gossip later suggested that the King was really the father of Henrietta’s first child. Henrietta’s open flirting is said to have caused a jealous Philippe to retaliate by beginning to flaunt his own sexuality more openly; he could get away with it.  Henrietta then allegedly seduced Philippe’s old lover, Armand, comte de Guiche. In 1662 Philippe became a father when Henrietta gave birth to their daughter Marie Louise, a future Queen of Spain. For his part, Philippe would always consider Marie Louise his favourite child. The girl was baptised on 21 May 1662. The ducal couple would not have another child until 1664, when Henrietta gave birth to a son who was given the title Duke of Valois, but who died in infancy.

Henrietta is best known for her part in negotiating the Secret Treaty of Dover; an offensive and defensive treaty between England and France signed at Dover on 1 June 1670. It required England inter alia to assist France in her war against the Dutch Republic. Having returned to France, Henrietta had to endure Philippe’s jealous spite for her secret mission to Dover and her part in the exile of the Chevalier de Lorraine. She travelled to Saint Cloud on 24 June, when she started to complain of pains in her side. On 30 June she collapsed on the terrace of the chateau. She claimed that she had been poisoned. She died on 30 June 1670. The Chevalier de Lorraine and the Marquis d’Effiat were popularly suspected of having poisoned her but an autopsy showed that she had in reality died of a perforated duodenal ulcer.

Louis XIV insisted that Philippe should re-marry. He chose the bride, the Princess Palatine, Elizabeth Charlotte: a tall German grenadier of a woman. Philippe duly married Elizabeth Charlotte, who converted to Roman Catholicism, on 16 November 1671. She was not attractive, as Henrietta had been. When Philippe first saw her, he is said to have remarked “how will I ever be able to sleep with her?” She became renowned for her brusque candour, upright character and lack of vanity. Her letters record how willingly she gave up sharing Philippe’s bed at his request after their children’s births and how she endured the presence of his male favourites in their household.

Elizabeth Charlotte gave birth to a son in June 1673 who was named Alexandre Louis and given the title Duke of Valois. Alexandre Louis would die, however, in 1676. A second son, Philippe, would follow in 1674, and then a daughter, in 1676, after which the Duke and Duchess of Orleans agreed to sleep in separate beds. Philippe’s second son with Elizabeth Charlotte, known as the Duke of Chartres until he inherited the dukedom of Orleans in 1701, would serve as Regent during the minority of Louis XV. He was a man of considerable intellectual gifts, the friend of learned men;   although mainly remembered today for his abandoned (heterosexual) lifestyle and his contempt for conventional religion and morality.

Despite his effeminacy, which was perhaps only skin-deep, Philippe showed definite gifts as a soldier. Having already established himself as a successful military commander during the War of Devolution in 1667, Philippe was eager to return to the field. In 1676 and 1677 he took part in sieges in Flanders and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General. The most impressive victory won under Philippe’s command took place on 11 April 1677: the Battle of Cassel against Netherlands Stadtholder William III of Orange; later King William III of England. William had decided to relieve some besieged towns; from Ypres he marched at the head of an army of 32,000 men through Poperinge and Oxelaere in the Cassel Valley. Philippe, who learned of his plans, arranged to meet William’s forces at Penebeek. Louis XIV sent him 25,000 foot-soldiers and 9,000 cavalry under the command of Marshal de Luxembourg. By nightfall there were 66,000 soldiers ready for battle.

The Dutch stormed the French positions without first exploring the site. The result was that Marshal de Luxembourg was able to surprise the Dutch with a cavalry attack that practically destroyed three battalions and forced William and his Dutch troops to flee. In all, casualties on both sides amounted to 4200 deaths and 7000 injuries. Philippe was hailed for his skill as a military commander; much to the annoyance of his brother, the King. He was jealous of Philippe’s growing popularity at Court and in Paris, as well as with the Army.

This suggests that, far from wishing to be an effeminate wastrel, Philippe would have preferred a life of action in the Army. His gifts as a strategist are known to military historians of the seventeenth century. However, like a lot of gay soldiers, he was very brave as well.  In fact, he was completely fearless, except that he found his brother the King intimidating.  How he escaped being killed in battle is still a mystery.  He and his regiment were always dressed in resplendent uniforms, which he had designed and which must have made them excellent targets. He was easily recognisable: always hatless, for fear of crushing the curls of his beautiful wig. His idea of fun was to hurl himself into the heart of the battle at the head of a cavalry charge, a sabre in one hand and a pistol in the other. But, at Louis XIV’s insistence, the Cassel campaign marked the end of Philippe’s military career; he soon immersed himself once again in a life of pleasure.  This, and the consolidation and embellishment of his estates, seemed to be the only option available.

Philippe’s very able son, the Duke of Chartres, was denied a position at the front in the War of the Spanish Succession, which began in 1701. This slight was the source of great bitterness on the part of both father and son. The pretext seems to have been the behaviour of Chartres in parading his mistress Mademoiselle de Séry in view of his wife. On 8 June 1701 Louis XIV and Philippe met at the Chateau de Marly to dine together. Louis XIV attacked Philippe about Chartres’s conduct with Mademoiselle de Séry. Philippe responded by tartly reprimanding Louis for his own similar conduct with his mistresses during his marriage to Queen Marie Thérèse, adding that Chartres had still not received the favours promised to him for having married his wife Françoise Marie, a legitimated daughter of Louis XIV by Madame de Montespan, whom he detested. Louis was shocked to be spoken to in such a manner by his brother. The announcement of dinner halted the argument; the brothers sat down to dine.

Philippe angrily returned to Saint Cloud early the same evening to take supper with his son. He collapsed after suffering a fatal stroke on 9 June 1701 at the age of sixty. Louis XIV, upon hearing that his only sibling had died was genuinely distressed. He said “I cannot believe I shall never see my brother again”.The Duchess of Burgundy, his granddaughter, was equally distraught, avowing that she “had loved Monsieur very much”. Philippe’s heart was taken to the Val-de-Grace convent and his body to the Royal Abbey of St Denis, north of Paris, where it remained until the French Revolution. Elizabeth Charlotte burnt all the letters from Philippe’s lovers through the years, lest they fall into the wrong hands, noting that the scent of the perfumed letters had nauseated her. Louis XIV assured the new Duke of Orleans, formerly the Duke of Chartres, that the past was forgotten and that henceforth he was to look on him as his father. The Court was plunged into genuine mourning; Philippe had been better-liked than he had realised.

The Indigo Bird

An Erotic Novel by Max Markham

James Graveney, a young Major in a respectable regiment, is outwardly conventional. In private James is bisexual, with a strong urge for his own sex. Gay sex, however, is illegal in the Army, so he is discreet about this.

James’ world is turned upside-down when he meets Lieutenant Richard Finch. Richard is intelligent, charismatic and exceptionally handsome.  He doesn’t mess around. He gets what he wants, and is completely unscrupulous about how he gets it. Richard will stop at nothing to achieve this, including Machiavellian deception and a cunning and brutal murder.  James starts responding to Richard, cautiously at first, then gets swept along on the great love affair of his life.

The Indigo Bird is a rollercoaster of surprises set against backdrops varying from the jungles of Belize to London, the English countryside, and Ireland, and the scene is set for more shocks and adventures. [Read more...]

Sweeping from the Central European countryside just before World War II to Paris to contemporary Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I Am Forbidden brings to life four generations of one Satmar family.

Opening in 1939 Transylvania, five-year-old Josef witnesses the murder of his family by the Romanian Iron Guard and is rescued by a Gentile maid to be raised as her own son. Five years later, Josef rescues a young girl, Mila, after her parents are killed while running to meet the Rebbe they hoped would save them. Josef helps Mila reach Zalman Stern, a leader in the Satmar community, in whose home Mila is raised as a sister to Zalman’s daughter, Atara. As the two girls mature, Mila’s faith intensifies, while her beloved sister Atara discovers a world of books and learning that she cannot ignore. With the rise of communism in central Europe, the family moves to Paris, to the Marais, where Zalman tries to raise his children apart from the city in which they live.

When the two  girls come of age, Mila marries within the faith, while Atara continues to question fundamentalist doctrine. The different choices the two sisters makes force them apart until a dangerous secret threatens to banish them from the only community they’ve ever known.

A beautifully crafted, emotionally gripping story of what happens when unwavering love, unyielding law, and centuries of tradition collide, I Am Forbidden announces the arrival of an extraordinarily gifted new voice and opens a startling window on a world long closed to most of us, until now.

About Anouk Markovits

ANOUK MARKOVITS was raised in France in a Satmar home, breaking from the fold when she was nineteen to avoid an arranged marriage. She went on to receive a Bachelor of Science from Columbia University, a Master of Architecture from Harvard, and a PhD in Romance Studies from Cornell. Her first novel, Pur Coton, written in French, was published by Gallimard. I Am Forbidden is her English-language debut. She lives in New York with her husband.

Editorial Review

French-raised Markovits’ English-language debut opens in Manhattan in 2005 with the meeting of two women: Atara, who, like the author, fled her Hasidic family to avoid an arranged marriage; and Judith, the granddaughter of Atara’s adopted sister, burdened by a cataclysmic secret. Then the clock turns back to Transylvania in 1939, where Josef witnesses the murder of his family and is taken in by a Catholic farmer, and Mila is saved by Josef when her parents are murdered too. Rabbi Stern later rescues Josef and sends him to the U.S. while taking Mila into his own family. Stern’s daughter Atara starts to question her father’s beliefs and expectations, including limited education for women, and also researches a dark episode of Holocaust history involving Mila’s parents and a revered Hasidic rabbi whose escape from Europe may have come at a very high price. When Mila and Josef marry, Atara abandons her family and disappears. The years pass but Mila doesn’t conceive. Finally, when she does, desperate choices have been made by both husband and wife. Decades later, matters come full circle as Judith and Atara choose what matters most. – Kirkus Reviews

Sisters Joined by Tumult, Grown Apart in Time

The New York Times Book Review – May 15, 2012 (Excerpt)

Anouk Markovits was raised a Hasidic Jew in France, but at 19 she fled her community to avoid an arranged marriage. She went on to get a master’s degree in architecture and a Ph.D. in romance studies. “I Am Forbidden,” her first novel in English, centers on two Hasidic sisters: one who leaves, and one who stays, shunning modernity. Given the author’s background, you might assume that this is a story about how one of them is wrecked by her choice.

But the wonder of this elegant, enthralling novel is the beauty Ms. Markovits unearths in the Hasidic community she takes us into. She remains largely nonjudgmental about the most difficult-to-grasp practices of the Satmar sect, while showing how even the most fervent believers struggle with the letter-of-the-law faith.

The involved plot, sweeping across four generations, opens in Transylvania, along the Hungarian-Romanian border, just before World War II. A 5-year-old boy named Josef plays with his little sister, Pearela. He’s just crawled under a table after her and whacked his head when he hears heavy boots clomp into the house. He sees his sister stabbed with a pitchfork. He hears his mother’s screams in the yard, and then it is quiet. [Read the full article...]

THE SABRINA STRONG SERIES by LORELEI BELL

Book One: Vampire Ascending [More Info...]

Book Two: Vampire’s Trill [More Info...]

Absently, I threw some fluffy white kernels on the floor for Dante, who snapped them up with his tongue as though he were starving to death, and then looked expectantly up at me for more. He had wolfed down his share of spaghetti earlier, and didn’t complain that the sauce had come out of a jar something he would never have served were he human, as he’s part Italian. I was convinced that he’d had plenty to eat — for a dog. I quickly reminded myself he’d gone through a lot in the past forty-eight hours, and I didn’t blame him for being overly hungry.

Earlier, when I’d arrived, Jena and Tera both had thrown their arms around Dante as soon as they saw him. From all the excitement generated by “the dog,” I was certain that it would be difficult to get them to bed. But they had gone obediently up to bed about an hour after dinner, and I’d read from one of their story books while Dante lay on the floor beside us with his head between his paws. It wasn’t long before the girls had dozed off.

Dante made one of his soft “woof” sounds, startling me, when I quit throwing him popcorn.

“It’s gone,” I said. “See? You ate more than me.” I tipped the empty bowl toward him, and he stuck his head into it, and licked it. I yanked it away from him and set it on the table. He stuck his head in and licked the bowl again.

“No!” I jumped up and grabbed the bowl before he knocked it off the table, and took it into the kitchen, placing it in the sink. Dante followed me the whole way, tail wagging, then followed me back out. He jumped up on the couch with me and knocked me back. I half-giggled and half-grumbled at him for it. He was in a playful mood, and I had to tussle with him some before he settled down. He was a heavy dog, probably a sturdy, solid eighty pounds of muscle. I tried to push him off, but he would have none of it, so I lay there with a large, black dog sprawled half-way on top of me, wondering how this would look if Randy and Constance came through the door just then. At least he hadn’t tried to hump me. He was still a gentleman, even in dog-form.

Then he became uncharacteristically still. I studied him. He looked as if he were going to be sick.

“Oh, God. Don’t be sick all over me,” I said, desperately trying to push him off.

With a loud whimper, his body made a sudden jerk.

“Dante, what’s wrong?” I tried to keep my voice down. The open oak stairs weren’t far from where I sat, and the girls might hear us. I didn’t want them to come down wondering what was happening, and then see something they shouldn’t.

Dante made another heart-wrenching sound, and then something happened. Right in front of me—and on top of me—he shifted. The bones in his body moved with an awful bone crunching sound that made me grit my teeth. I felt his body elongate, then his head reshaped itself, and I actually saw his dog form change, the entire molecular restructuring happening right before my eyes. The next thing I knew I was drenched in something warm and liquid-y. I didn’t understand it. My brain thought blood, but I looked and saw that it was clear, warm, gelatinous liquid.Ewww, yuck!

The jaguar’s eyes glinted, they were a beautiful green with dilated pupils. With his large paws on my chest — much larger than the dog’s — he stared down at me and made a loud purring. I saw his long tail whip around behind him. A moment later, he made another more vicious sound, and I saw a flash of huge, dagger-like teeth. Oh, crap. I hoped he wasn’t hungry. My heart thudded inside my chest. I held my breath as he dipped his head toward me.

Stiffening, I snapped my eyes closed and felt a big, raspy tongue lick up my neck and over my face, again and again. Then, he licked lower, to my chest and arms. I looked to find that he was actually cleaning the viscous liquid off me. Relief flooded me.

“Good kitty,” I said, my voice shaking. I hoped he didn’t sense that he’d scared the pee out of me. They say animals know when you’re frightened of them. I didn’t want the jaguar to become too interested in me.

Very, very slowly, I brought my hand up to his head. He didn’t seem to mind that I touched him as I smoothed my hand over his beautiful, soft fur. This was the first time I’d ever seen him up close and personal as his chosen animal. His coat wasn’t totally black. I could see some iridescent purple coloring as spots, over his body. The bright green eyes contrasted like jewels against black velvet. He was a gorgeous animal. I thought that if I were a lady jaguar I’d be into him. I admonished myself for the devilish ideas that evolved from that one little innocent thought. I never knew what exactly we’d done that first night I had shifted into my Were-animal, and he’d turned into a wolf. For all I knew, we had a fantastic time, werewolf-style.

His tongue slid over my face, not as wetly as a dog’s tongue, it felt like a soft version of a rasp. In fact, I thought he’d taken some skin with it from the way it had felt. Nothing like getting exfoliated by a jaguar.

“Damn it, Dante, get off me. You’re heavy!” He was. I thought he must weigh in at two hundred pounds of cat easily. If he were a wild cat, he’d have chowed down on me right there in my brother’s living room.

Then, something happened, and I saw the cat throw its head back and let out a loud, primal screech. Stunned, I pressed myself back, beyond imagining what more terrifying might occur at this point.

Again, I felt his body shift. The icky bone crunching, sliding sounds associated with his shifting filled my ears. Once again, the warm liquid coated me. While my feminine side was worried about cleaning up the yuck, my more logical side wondered what animal he had shifted into, and worried it would eat me because it would undoubtedly be hungry after shifting so many times in such a short time.

I heard a gasping above me, felt strands of silk touching my skin at my neck and face. I realized I had shut my eyes and now opened them to look up into Dante’s face. The silk had been his beautiful long black hair, only, it was wet with the slime.

I pulled in a sharp sound of marvel. “Oh, my God! You’re back!” I shrieked, grasping his face in my hands. I wanted to pull him into a fierce hug, but first things first.

I was suddenly aware that I had a naked man on top of me — his eyes tightly closed and his face pulled into a grimace as though still feeling the effects of shifting — but a naked man. No matter what, an animal on top of me would have been a whole lot easier to explain away — naked man, not so easy. I feared that one, or both girls could be spying on us right at that moment, and I strained my neck to scan the stairs. I didn’t see any little pair of hands on the open railings, no little faces peering out at us. I eased out a sigh of relief — we were okay, for now.

Dante lifted himself up on elbows and knees, and looked down at himself as though checking to make sure all his equipment was intact. It was, I assure you, and he was awfully glad to be with me, and that one detail was not lost on me, believe me.

“Oh, hell,” he groaned as his body sagged back down, and his head rested on my shoulder. I was awash with the shifting goo again.

THE SABRINA STRONG SERIES by LORELEI BELL

Book One: Vampire Ascending [More Info...]

Book Two: Vampire’s Trill [More Info...]

The Blind People

A Short Story by Joy J. Kaimaparamban

I had to go to Northwards. So I stood on the west side of the road waiting a bus.

Despite there was a waiting shed for the people it was partially damaged due to the night moving outlaws. Several parts of the roof seen missing.  Sword-like rays of the sun was hitting me.  There were no trees beside the  road.  And I was ignorant about the bus, which come from south. I should have enquired it before getting down from my home. If I had a knowledge of it, I could have alighted just before the time of a bus. As my house was only some distance away from the road it was practical.

An old man appeared beside.

He asked me, “Going to northwards?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

As if murmuring the old man said, “The bus must’ve started from the town.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” answered he with a laugh showing his toothless gums.

I watched him well.  A man between the age of eighty and ninety.  An octogenarian.  His hair and whisker told me so but his younger mind glittered through his eyes.

“It’ll take a half an hour for the bus to reach here,’ I said.

As if hearing a humour the old man laughed aloud.  The next moment he opened the umbrella, which he had brought with him.

“In my youth sunrays weren’t a problem for me,” he said while opening the umbrella. “I used to walk eight miles in the morning connecting with my daily work.  Nowadays young men are reluctant in walking.  They will wait for a bus one hour for covering ten foot steps.  See the changes sir.”

Looking at the sky he stopped a moment. Then observed me and said, “The morning sun is hot.  Isn’t it? Not only human, but also the nature has changed, what is your opinion sir?”

“You’re correct grandpa.”

He enjoyed my addressing in its full meaning.

“Yes you said it young man.  I’m a grandpa. I’ve had ten children, you know?”

Slowly a black piece of a sad cloud covered his face.

As if a bird, he flew to a pleasant mood. Looking at me with a smile, he said, “Sir you’re standing under the naked sun.  My umbrella is wide.  You can stand with me.”

I could not deny the frank offer of the old man.  I stood under his umbrella. Suddenly a smooth wind passed smooching my body.

I wished to know the history of the octogenarian.  But I could not put a start on the subject.  And the old man kept silence.

“See a blind man is trying to cross the road,” said the old man. I too saw the stated person standing on the other side of the road.  The old man continued, “you may think for helping him. But he doesn’t want anybody’s help young man.”

The next moment the blind man proved that the old man was telling a truth.  Slowly and gently he crossed the road.

Standing beside us he said, “There are people who wait for the bus, I think.”

“Yes man,” the old man replied.

“I was correct,” the blind man said with a laughing.  He continued, “From your sound I can guess it as of a young man.”

The octogenarian enjoyed the words of the blind man as some humour ones.  He said, “Yes you’re correct young man.”

The blind man laughed aloud.

Again I looked at the old man. I felt like vanishing his cotton like hair and whisker. Instead his young soul seemed to be standing before me.

“Are there more people?” the blind man asked.

“Yes,” I replied,

“You too are young,” the blind man answered.

Within a short time, the blind man could become the friend of us.  Despite of his blindness, he had been a chatterbox.  He had more experiences than the normal people had.  He had been seeing the outer world with his inner eyes.  On his face there were only two black lines in the space of the eyes.

At last the bus, which we had been waiting for reached from the south direction.

First the blind man climbed into it. Then the old man. I was getting up last.

Two seats were vacant.  I helped the blind man to sit on one.  The old man caught another seat.  I had to stand as no other seat was empty. The old man observed me with pity filling eyes.

The bus left the stop.  After running some distance it was stopped.  Number of people began to climb up ignoring the other ones.  Those who were with strong muscles could get into the bus first.

At last a middle aged woman with a grizzling child in one hand hardly climbed up. The grizzling of the child grew into a loud cry, which irritated the other sitting passengers.

The conductor of the bus watched the sitting passengers and said, “Please someone give her a seat.”

Nobody seemed to have heard the conductor.  He repeated the request.   But yet nobody cared him.

“Hey come here lady,” I heard the sound of the blind man. He had got up from his seat.

As the woman was just before him, she could sit quick on the seat of the blind man. He stood in a merry mood.

At the same time, the octogenarian got up and said aloud, “Come on here young man, here is seat.”

Then several sitting persons began to get up for giving seat for the blind man.

The child who was crying aloud became silent when the lady sat.  The moving bus had become a cradle about her child.

The Ayurvedic Healer

by Joy J. Kaimaparamban

Set in the intriguing atmosphere of India in the early 20th century, full of mysticism, love, compassion, and political drama, The Ayurvedic Healer tells the story of Madhavan Namboodiri, a physician practicing an ancient medical science, and his enduring love for Rosilie. By healing the underprivileged, regardless of their civilian and religious status, touching the untouchables, he follows his beliefs and disobeys the rules of his society. His life story is set in the background of India’s struggle for freedom, the communist revolt in the Southern State of Kerala, social advancement, and the emergence of new societies. The Ayurvedic Healer sweeps the reader into an exotic place and time, rendering an intimate experience through sharing Madhavan Namboodiri’s life and love.

Joy J. Kaimaparamban is not only a passionate story teller. He envisions people and events, past or present, in his native India as material for unwritten works. These visions and the ability to transform them into fascinating stories about his country is a trademark of his novels. [More information...]

The Ayurvedic Healer ia available through Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Hardcover, Paperback, or In Between?

by Irene Watson, Reader Views

Whenever a book is published, the author has to decide whether to print a hard cover, a paperback, or both, and in recent years, a hybrid version—the French flaps cover—has appeared. Deciding which cover to use depends on an author’s budget, the type of book, and the book’s audience.

In the past, the decision about a book cover followed a steady pattern with traditional publishers. Most big name traditional publishers would print a book in hardcover, and then some months later, the paperback version would come out. This process was followed for a couple of reasons. A new book, especially by a well-known author, was a collector’s item. The first edition of a hardcover book was something to treasure, and it was often of the highest quality and made to be aesthetically pleasing, including having a dust jacket. People who wanted a book they could treasure for the rest of their lives would buy a hardcover book. But not all readers could afford hardcover books, so a cheaper mass market paperback would eventually follow. Depending on how much value the readers perceived that the book would hold for them, they might opt to buy the hardcover or they might wait for the paperback. On occasions where the hardcover did not sell well, the paperback edition was never released.

As the world of publishing has changed in the last couple of decades, more publishers have begun to bring out only paperback versions for books perceived not to be of such great lasting value, especially in terms of genre books like romance novels and mysteries. This move saves the publisher money and also makes the books available to a target audience that might not have paid as much for a hardcover of a mystery that can be read in just a few hours.

Now that self-publishing has become so popular, and because traditional publishers are struggling to remain financially stable, more and more books are being printed solely as paperbacks because it’s the most affordable choice. However, hardcover books are still chosen for significant titles by traditional publishers, and some self-published authors also choose hardcover books, often in addition, but rarely in place of paperbacks.

In choosing a book cover format, authors should think about the way the book will be used, the practicality of the cover choice, their own printing costs, what price the market will bear, and how potential readers will view the cover. Following is a breakdown of guidelines for choosing a book cover format for self-publishers.

Hardcover
If you are publishing your first book, you probably should keep your costs low until you know your book will sell, so you are better off opting for a paperback over a hardcover book. That said, there are some exceptions to this rule. Hardcover books are often a good choice for:

· Children’s Books—because children might be rough with their books so these covers will give the book greater endurance.
· Cookbooks—because a hardcover book can more easily lay flat on a kitchen counter for quick reference while cooking.
· Coffee Table Books—hardcover books are easier to hold than paperback books because coffee table books tend to be larger than the average size of 6×9 or smaller used for most paperback books.

While most nonfiction titles and novels will do best as paperback books, you might also ask yourself what perceived value your readers will find in the book. How important is your book, and how important will your readers perceive it to be? Putting your ego aside, you need to understand that your readers are probably not going to place as great a value on your romance novel as they will if you write a biography of Mark Twain. The type of cover you use will speak to the reader, telling him how important your subject is. Remember, readers do judge a book by its cover.

One final advantage to a hardcover book is the amount of “selling” text you can place on it. It is possible to print a nice looking hardcover book without a dust jacket so that the front and back material are the same as if you printed a paperback. However, most hardcover books are printed with dust jackets, which allow for more text to be printed on them. A good formula for text on a dust jacket is to fill the back of it with testimonials you’ve collected from other authors or experts in your field. Then the inside front flap can provide a description of your book that might even run over onto your inside back flap. The inside back flap can also provide space for a short biography of the author and room for a color author photo. Room for more text means more space to sell your book to the potential reader.

That said, if you’re like me, you may find the dust jacket gets annoying while you read the book. I have a tendency to remove the dust jacket while I read, but if readers do that, it doesn’t hurt anything once the book has been sold.

Finally, think about the cost to you and the customer. A paperback book is more affordable to authors and readers. However, a hardcover can be produced sometimes for as little as four dollars more, and that cost can be passed onto the customer by selling the book for five dollars more so you still make a profit on the hardcover. The question is simply: Will people be willing to pay five dollars more for the hardcover edition?

Paperback
The paperback cover is most affordable, and except for the few exceptions listed above, it is probably the best choice for any book, especially novels and self-help books and other nonfiction titles. Again, your book will be judged by its cover, so people may perceive your paperback book as of lesser value—meaning they might actually think the content is of less value too—than if it were a hardcover. However, there is no longer any sense that people are “slumming” by buying paperbacks. I don’t know the percentages for a fact, but I would guess that at least 90 percent of books are printed solely as paperbacks today, especially among self-published books.

You have a little less space on a paperback cover to write text that will sell the book, but you can generally fit on the back cover all the information that you would include on the inside flaps of a hardcover’s dust jacket. If you wish to include testimonials, you can place them inside the front cover as the opening pages. I have mixed feelings about placement of testimonials. Many readers will read them in choosing to buy the book, but others will go to the book description first—most people will buy the book because the topic interests them more than because someone famous said the book is great—but having both can only help so it’s up to you whether or not you feel your testimonials deserve back cover space. Often you can fit just one or two short testimonials on the back cover with the description and author bio to balance everything out.

French Flaps
I’m seeing more and more books published with French flaps. This format is basically a hybrid. It is really a paperback book, but the flaps are an extended part of the paperback cover that fold inward to serve as a dust jacket without being removable. French flaps provide the same space as a hardcover for book descriptions without the expense of a hardcover with a dust jacket. A book with French flaps does cost more than a paperback, but depending on how many books you print, it will probably cost you less than a dollar more per unit.

I believe a lot of authors are choosing to use French flaps because they believe this format makes their book look more professional or significant than if it were simply a paperback. Readers may be impressed with the look of French flaps and even see them as a novelty, but frankly, I find such books annoying to read—the flaps have a tendency of wanting to flip up, making the book somewhat unwieldy. This format feels pretentious to me, like such books have delusions of wanting to be hardcover books.

Making the Choice
Personally, a standard paperback is good enough for me with the few exceptions of books I’ve listed where a hardcover is preferable. While I have offered some guidelines here for choices, no two books are the same and special circumstances may exist that would make one cover a better choice than another. Every author must choose for himself which book cover will best suit his book to promote its value as well as be most desirable in format and price to potential readers.

Comments? I’d like to hear from you here.

THE SABRINA STRONG SERIES by LORELEI BELL

Book One: Vampire Ascending [More Info...]

Book Two: Vampire’s Trill [More Info...]

[Read Part 1 of T. E. Lawrence, Gay Murder Victim?...]

The official version of Lawrence of Arabia’s death is that, riding home fast on 13 May 1935 on his Brough Superior motorcycle, he found two boys riding on pushbikes ahead of him. He was travelling at speed, so he pulled out to overtake them.  While doing so, he lost control of the motorbike, which ran off the road. Lawrence was thrown clear but hit his head against a tree. He was not wearing a helmet and suffered concussion and severe brain damage. Although he received prompt medical attention, he never regained consciousness. He lingered for six days and then died. This is the version that is portrayed at the start of David Lean’s film Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O’Toole as Lawrence.  Like everything connected with Lawrence, the reality is more complicated.

Lawrence was a careful rider, although care did not extend to wearing a crash helmet, which was not at that time compulsory. He had had only two minor accidents, “spills”, since he began riding. George Brough, who manufactured a whole series of motor cycles for Lawrence, said that he was “one of the finest riders I have ever met. In the several runs that I took with him, I am able to state with conviction that T.E.L. was most considerate to every other road user. I never saw him take a single risk nor put any other rider or driver to the slightest inconvenience.” He was also a creature of habit:  he always changed gear at exactly the same point on the road back to Clouds Hill, his Dorset cottage. At the time of his accident he was not travelling fast. A Brough travelling at speed was almost soundless; but the two boy cyclists said that they heard the motorcycle behind them. After the accident, the gears were found to be jammed in second gear. None of the witnesses who were   present on 13 May 1935, and who gave evidence afterwards, saw the exact moment of the accident, which took place in a hollow. These witnesses were:

A) Corporal Ernest Catchpole, who was walking his dog. He saw parts of Lawrence’s last ride but the hilly nature of the terrain meant that he could not follow his entire course. He saw, in this order: Lawrence, proceeding towards Clouds Hill; a black, private motor car proceeding in the opposite direction; the motor cycle swerving, possibly after it had passed the car, at a point that he could not see; then two pedal-cyclists ahead of Lawrence proceeding towards Clouds Hill. Finally, he saw the motorbike twisting and turning over and over on the road. He saw nothing of the rider. He ran to the scene and found Lawrence, whom he did not know, lying on the road. His face was covered with blood. Although a civilian, Lawrence was taken immediately to Bovington camp and placed in the military hospital there. He remained there until his death.  The inquest into Lawrence’s death was also conducted at Bovington Camp.

B) The two boys, Frank Fletcher and Albert Hargreaves, who were both the sons of serving soldiers. They had both recently left school. As they were facing in the same direction as Lawrence, they saw nothing, although they apparently heard his engine behind them. Albert was admitted to the RAMC hospital, but had not been seriously hurt. He might have been hit by Lawrence’s cycle. His friend Frank Fletcher was also knocked off his cycle, by Albert.

Bovington Camp reacted as though this was more than just a road traffic accident. All ranks were warned that they came under the provisions of the Official Secrets Act. The boys’ fathers were told to make them stay silent. It is fairly clear that they were instructed not to mention the black car, and they did not. Corporal Catchpole was also told that he should not mention the black car, but refused to change his story.  Two plain clothes detectives were assigned to Lawrence. One sat by his bed, while the other rested on a cot outside the door. The Press was effectively muzzled: all news had to come through the War Office Press Office. No newspaper proprietor felt like defying this ruling. Yet Lawrence was by this time a civilian, and had been for several months.

It now emerged that some of Lawrence’s closest friends and relations were conveniently absent. Arnold Lawrence returned from a holiday in Spain to be greeted by the news of his brother’s death and the discovery that officials from the Air Ministry had removed “secret papers” from Clouds Hill. A special guard had been placed over the cottage, apparently to keep sightseers at bay. Mr and Mrs Bernard Shaw were on holiday in South Africa.  His brother Bob and his mother were in China.

The coroner, Mr L. E. N. Neville-Jones, had a difficult task. The boys’ and Corporal Catchpole’s evidence conflicted: the main point of conflict being the existence of the black car. One of the jury also found this odd. The coroner’s court was conducted in a small dining room in an officers’ mess at Bovington. Few members of the public were able to obtain admission; it was held almost in camera.

What seems to have happened in reality is that Lawrence saw the two boys ahead and prepared to overtake. As he did so, he saw the black car coming towards him, fast. He tried to avoid it in the only possible way; to swerve off the road, but he did not succeed. He was hit and fatally injured. The car may also have hit the cycle of one of the boys; a glancing blow. It then continued on its way. A student of the case, Colin Graham, claims that a week before the accident Lawrence and one of his visiting airman friends, both on motor-bikes, had noticed a black car apparently being test-driven along the lonely road leading past his cottage.  The unfrequented road was a good place for such tests. Others recalled seeing a large black car in the area more than once before the accident, but never after it. It was never identified: it was not a regular delivery van that passed Clouds Hill most days, nor was it a taxi belonging to a local firm, both of which have been suggested. Some accounts suggest that the number plate may have been hidden or removed. Even in 1935 this would have been very illegal. If the car was being test-driven by a local garage, why did not the garage owner come forward and clear up the mystery?  If it was simply on its way from A to B, why did not the driver and the passengers, if there were any, come forward after the news of the accident became public knowledge? The story had been carried on the radio and in the local and national Press.  Why, indeed, did they not stop immediately to offer assistance to the accident victim? Why were they not sought by the police? Likewise, Lawrence’s airman friend was not invited to give evidence, nor did he try. He, like the boys, may have been silenced by his superiors.

On the day of his death Lawrence had travelled to a nearby village to send a telegram to a man who had written to him requesting a meeting.  The inward letter has disappeared but Lawrence’s reply survives:

“Williamson, Shallowleigh, Filleigh. Lunch Tuesday wet fine cottage 1 mile north Bovington Camp.

SHAW”

Henry Williamson, the author of Tarka the Otter, was one of Sir Oswald Mosley’s most devoted disciples. Mosley was the leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF). He had conceived the notion of recruiting Lawrence to the Fascists.  Lawrence was obviously interested. His potential value to the Fascists is clear; a hero can confer respectability on a political movement. Gabriele D’Annunzio; a brilliant poet, author, journalist and World War I soldier, had conferred his lustre on Mussolini’s Italy. Petain, the hero of Verdun, was to lend the French Vichy Government, at least for a time, a respectability that it would otherwise have lacked. Marshal Ludendorff had lent his name to the early Nazi Party.  Lawrence could have done the same for Mosley’s British Fascists.  In 1935 Fascism must have seemed to be on the crest of a wave: Mussolini was preparing to invade Abyssinia in defiance of international opinion; Hitler had come to power three years earlier in Germany and in 1936 would preside at the Berlin Olympic Games. They already had a number of minor imitators. In the late 1930s they would be joined by General Franco in Spain. Two months earlier In the UK, in March 1935, an enthusiastic audience of 8,000 had heard Oswald Mosley address his largest-ever indoor rally in the Albert Hall.

Then there is the matter of the “secret papers” that were removed from Clouds Hill. It is unlikely that Lawrence held any official papers. However papers were unquestionably removed; some personal items as well. Henry Williamson’s letter was removed. At any rate, it has never turned up anywhere. There were others letters too: from his friend John Bruce, a young Scotsman and former soldier who used to flog Lawrence; letters from other young men; a diary in which Lawrence recorded his flogging sessions; and a collection of whips. The investigators, whoever they were, would have found a lot of potentially embarrassing material. The evidence of Lawrence’s unusual pastimes would have been enough to silence most of his Army and RAF friends.

As for that black car: it is The Hound of the Baskervilles in mechanical guise. The hound, a real ferocious dog, made up to resemble the demonic hound in the family legend, was used to frighten Sir Charles Baskerville, an elderly man with a heart condition, so that he had a heart attack and died. As Sherlock Holmes pointed out, the hound was seen several times before the murder as the owner, Stapleton, sought a chance to unleash it at the frail Sir Charles, but it was not seen again after it had served its purpose. It looks suspiciously as though the driver of the car had been based in the area, studying Lawrence’s habits and seeking an opportunity to engineer an ‘accident’ that would kill him. The speed with which the Army reacted, and the way in which they reacted, suggests that some officers at Bovington at least were in on the plan and were expecting this to happen. It might be reasonable for the Army to have offered first aid to a civilian injured on its doorstep; but thereafter he would normally have been removed for intensive care in some large civilian hospital; probably in Dorchester. This did not happen. The tight official control exerted over the flow of news, and over the coroner’s court, is deeply suspicious. Someone wanted Lawrence dead.  That someone was in the Government, or closely connected with it.

Is this far-fetched? I do not think so. The following year the same British establishment would manage an even more remarkable coup; one which, if one were to introduce it in a novel, would be regarded as unrealistic. But it happened: they managed what amounted to a palace coup, to unseat the worryingly unconventional King Edward VIII and install his compliant, conventional brother George VI on the throne. King Edward too was thought to have an unhealthy interest in fascism.

For more information on the subject see:

• T. E. Lawrence 0n Wikipedia.org
• T. E. Lawrence on PBS.org

The Indigo Bird

An Erotic Novel by Max Markham

James Graveney, a young Major in a respectable regiment, is outwardly conventional. In private James is bisexual, with a strong urge for his own sex. Gay sex, however, is illegal in the Army, so he is discreet about this.

James’ world is turned upside-down when he meets Lieutenant Richard Finch. Richard is intelligent, charismatic and exceptionally handsome.  He doesn’t mess around. He gets what he wants, and is completely unscrupulous about how he gets it. Richard will stop at nothing to achieve this, including Machiavellian deception and a cunning and brutal murder.  James starts responding to Richard, cautiously at first, then gets swept along on the great love affair of his life.

The Indigo Bird is a rollercoaster of surprises set against backdrops varying from the jungles of Belize to London, the English countryside, and Ireland, and the scene is set for more shocks and adventures. [Read more...]

A remarkable memoir from the best-selling author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August.

Buzz Bissinger’s twins were born three minutes—and a world—apart. Gerry, the older one, is a graduate student at Penn, preparing to become a teacher. His brother Zach has spent his life attending special schools. He’ll never drive a car, or kiss a girl, or live by himself. He is a savant, challenged by serious intellectual deficits but also blessed with rare talents: an astonishing memory, a dazzling knack for navigation, and a reflexive honesty that can make him both socially awkward and surprisingly wise.

Buzz realized that while he had always been an attentive father, he didn’t really understand what it was like to be Zach. So one summer night Buzz and Zach hit the road to revisit all the places they have lived together during Zach’s twenty-four years. Zach revels in his memories, and Buzz hopes this journey into their shared past will bring them closer and reveal to him the mysterious workings of his son’s mind and heart. The trip also becomes Buzz’s personal journey, yielding revelations about his own parents, the price of ambition, and its effect on his twins.

As father and son journey from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, they see the best and worst of America and each other. Ultimately, Buzz gains a new and uplifting wisdom, realizing that Zach’s worldview has a sturdy logic of its own: a logic that deserves the greatest respect. And with the help of Zach’s twin, Gerry, Buzz learns an even more vital lesson about Zach: character transcends intellect. We come to see Zach as he truly is: patient, fearless, perceptive, kind—a man of excellent character.

About Buzz Bissinger

Buzz Bissinger is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of four books, including the New York Times bestseller 3 Nights in August and Friday Night Lights, which has sold two million copies and inspired a film and TV franchise. He is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a sports columnist for The Daily Beast. He has written for the New York Times, The New Republic, Time and many other publications.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

In addition to probing his son’s inner life, Vanity Fair and Daily Beastcontributor Bissinger (Three Nights in August, 2005, etc.) attempts to re-create the pleasure he took in being on the road with his own father. The author explains that Zach has the comprehension skills of a 9-year-old because of brain damage suffered at the time of his premature birth, three minutes later than his twin brother Gerry. Yet while Zach’s mental processes are slow, he has a phenomenal memory, complete recall of past events, friends with whom he corresponds by e-mail and a close relationship with Gerry. Because of his limited mental capacities, Zach works as a supermarket bagger: “He has been doing the same job for five years, and he will do the same job for the rest of his life,” writes the author. “My son’s professional destiny is paper or plastic.” Bissinger laments what he believes to be his son’s impoverished mental life in ways that sometimes seem unduly condescending—e.g., expressing disappointment that he prefers swimming or sitting by the hotel pool to gambling at the tables in Las Vegas, one of the stops on their trip. The author describes an exciting bungee jump that he shared with his son, and meetings with friends and relatives they visit on the way to Los Angeles, but much of the book is devoted to flashbacks about incidents in his own life, his failures and disappointments as well as the pains and pleasures of fatherhood. Surprisingly, while he had hoped to help his son expand his mental horizons, the author was the one who gained valuable insights, one of which was the realization that his son does indeed have a rich inner life. – Kirkus Reviews

Cleareyed, Full-Hearted, Unflinching Fatherhood

The New York Times Book Review – May 14, 2012 (Excerpt)

Buzz Bissinger’s first book, “Friday Night Lights” (1990), about high school football in Odessa, Tex., was a best seller that’s become an acknowledged classic of American sports writing.

It became a pretty good movie starring Billy Bob Thornton and Tim McGraw. It was made into a far better televisionseries, easily among the most sublime ever produced. The football team’s motto in that show — “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose” — percolates through the culture. I’ve heard grown men chant it only half-ironically in beer gardens, as a prelude to an evening of assiduous consumption.

This is a rare kind of success for a nonfiction writer, and you might think it would bring a measure of calm and satisfaction to the book’s author. If you suspect that’s the case, you don’t know much about Harry Gerard Bissinger III, who is universally known as Buzz.

His new memoir, “Father’s Day,” is ostensibly about his relationship with his son Zach, now in his 20s, whose brain was deprived of oxygen at birth and who has an I.Q. of about 70. (His twin brother, Gerry, was born without serious complications.) [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

In the third novel from the bestselling female writer in Sweden—and for the first time in English—the mysterious drowning of a little girl threatens to tear apart the town of Fjallbacka.

The remote resort town of Fjallbacka has seen its share of tragedy, though perhaps none worse than that of the little girl found in a fisherman’s net. But this was no accidental drowning . . .

Local detective Patrik Hedstrom has just become a father. It’s his grim task to discover who could be behind the murder of a child both he and his partner Erica knew well. What he does not know is how this case will reach into the dark heart of Fjallbacka, spanning generations, ripping aside its idyllic façade,perhaps forever.

About Camilla Läckberg

Camilla Läckberg worked as an economist in Stockholm until a course in creative writing triggered a drastic career change. Her novels have all become #1 bestsellers in Sweden. Her thriller The Ice Princess, winner of the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for Best International Crime Novel, has been published in over twenty-five countries. She lives in Stockholm with her husband and five children.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

Now that his live-in girlfriend, writer Erica Falck, has presented him with a child, Patrik Hedström ought to be finding a better balance between his personal and professional responsibilities. But his sympathies as both father and cop are demanded by the murder of Sara Klinga, the daughter of Erica’s new friend Charlotte. Who would dump a seven-year-old near a wharf after drowning her, according to forensic evidence, in a bathtub? As Patrik surveys the wreckage of Sara’s extended family, from the pathological philandering of Charlotte’s husband, Dr. Niclas Klinga, to the unaccountable cruelty of Niclas’ mother Lilian Florin, whose name Niclas rejected in favor of his wife’s upon his marriage, Läckberg (The Ice Princess, 2010, etc.) parcels out hints of the tragedy’s roots in the loveless marriage some 75 years ago between flirtatious heiress Agnes Stjernkvist and Anders Andersson, the stonecutter she’d captivated and planned to leave before her father discovered her pregnancy and forced the couple to wed. Meanwhile, back in the present, Patrik and his mostly incompetent colleagues on the Tanumshede police force focus their suspicions on imperious Lilian, who seems to loathe everyone but Stig, the bedridden husband she nurses so assiduously; Kaj Wiberg, the neighbor with whom she’s long feuded over every pretext she can find; and Kaj’s son Morgan, a computer game designer with Asperger’s Syndrome who’d be poorly equipped to take the air even in a much sunnier spot than Fjällbacka. – Kirkus Reviews

Book World: ‘The Stonecutter’ by Camilla Lackberg

The Washington Post Book Review – May 13, 2012 (Excerpt)

It’s got to be something in the fjord water. Or maybe lingonberries are an unacknowledged superfood. How else to explain all the superlative Swedish crime writers who have swarmed into the mystery arena since the mid-1960s? Indeed, the greatest unsolved mystery in the mystery world is no longer what happened to Agatha Christie during her 11-day disappearance in 1926, but, rather, “What’s up with the Swedes?”

And, speaking of Dame Agatha, here’s a young Swedish writer who’s being hailed as “the Swedish Agatha Christie.” Purists out there will snort in derision, but Camilla Lackberg is very, very good. Her novels are outselling those of her late countryman Stieg Larsson, and if she keeps producing mysteries as richly textured and downright breathtaking as her latest, “The Stonecutter,” who knows? Maybe, one day, we might be identifying Agatha Christie as “the British Camilla Lackberg.”

“The Stonecutter” is one of those mysteries that ruin a vacation. Take it to the beach and your eyes will be so locked on its pages, you’ll never even know there’s an ocean in front of you. There are two primary and at least five subsidiary story lines in this thick novel: All of them have to do with doomed relationships and fatally fractured families; all of them slither seamlessly in and around each other in one big snake pit of warped desire. [Read the full article...]

THE SABRINA STRONG SERIES by LORELEI BELL

Book One: Vampire Ascending [More Info...]

Book Two: Vampire’s Trill [More Info...]

In medieval times, a pilgrimage gave the average Joe his only break from the daily grind. For Gideon Lewis-Kraus, it promises a different kind of escape. Determined to avoid the kind of constraint that kept his father, a gay rabbi, closeted until midlife, he has moved to anything-goes Berlin. But the surfeit of freedom there has begun to paralyze him, and when a friend extends a drunken invitation to join him on an ancient pilgrimage route across Spain, he grabs his sneakers, glad of the chance to be committed to something and someone.

Irreverent, moving, hilarious, and thought-provoking, A Sense of Direction is Lewis-Kraus’s dazzling riff on the perpetual war between discipline and desire, and its attendant casualties. Across three pilgrimages and many hundreds of miles – the thousand-year-old Camino de Santiago, a solo circuit of eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku, and, together with his father and brother, an annual mass migration to the tomb of a famous Hasidic mystic in the Ukraine – he completes an idiosyncratic odyssey to the heart of a family mystery and a human dilemma: How do we come to terms with what has been and what is – and find a way forward, with purpose?

About Gideon Lewis-Kraus

Gideon Lewis-Kraus has written for Harper’s, The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, n+1, McSweeney’s, Bookforum, The Nation, Slate, and other publications. A 2007-8 Fulbright fellowship brought him to Berlin, world capital of contemporary restlessness. He has more or less settled in Brooklyn.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Reviews

Whatever one’s reasons for undertaking the Camino de Santiago—spiritual, touristic, to lose weight, or just for the opportunity to complain about the blisters—the experience is memorable. For the author, a freelance essayist, the trip began as a spontaneous diversion, a chance to temporarily leave behind the tediousness of everyday life and reconnect with a friend who similarly had too much free time. Sardonic discussions about the meaninglessness of blindly following an ancient footpath seamlessly give way to nuggets of personal insight both sacred and secular, and Lewis-Kraus was moved to follow the trek with a Hasidic pilgrimage to Ukraine and a circuit of 88 Buddhist temples in Japan. Pilgrims, beyond “look[ing] at each bus going by with the affection Robert Frost had for woodpiles,” spend much time deep in conversation about subjects as diverse as giraffes, the apostles and the “lazy geographical determinism of Northern Europeans.” However, the humor and the physical torment mask an inner journey through the realm of relationships, aspirations and the soul. Using the not-entirely-dissimilar legends and disciplines of Catholicism, Judaism and Buddhism as a spatial framework and scenic background, Lewis-Kraus explores the subtle impulses that drive people to follow certain paths. High-minded flights of intellectual fancy, however, are only so much use when the physical world, in the form of “a flatulent mixture of schwitz and acrid stewed kasha” intrudes. – Kirkus Reviews

Three Pilgrimages To Gain ‘A Sense Of Direction’

NPR Book Review – May 13, 2012 (Excerpt)

Gideon Lewis-Kraus was confused. A few years ago, the American 20-something was living in Berlin, hanging out in art galleries and nameless speak-easies, preoccupied with living a creatively meaningful life, but unsure what that meant or how to make it happen.

So when a friend asked him to come along on a pilgrimage — the ancient Camino de Santiago in Spain — Lewis-Kraus went, hoping to find some answers on the 550-mile journey.“It was a fairly serious religious pilgrimage for 1,000 years, and then in the last 30 years it’s become strangely, ahistorically popular with a young, mostly secular crowd,” Lewis-Kraus says.

After Spain, Lewis-Kraus went on to complete two other famous pilgrimages: First, he embarked on a 900-mile, circular, solo walk that visits 88 Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku. “I was very, very alone,” he says. “I met almost nobody. I went weeks without talking to anyone.”

And next, he invited his father and brother to join him as he went on a pilgrimage to pay homage to the tomb of a Hasidic mystic in Ukraine.

The result of his three treks is a new memoir called A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful.Lewis-Kraus speaks with NPR’s Rachel Martin about his journeys. [Read the full article...]

THE SABRINA STRONG SERIES by LORELEI BELL

Book One: Vampire Ascending [More Info...]

Book Two: Vampire’s Trill [More Info...]

Freeman, the new novel by Leonard Pitts, Jr., takes place in the first few months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Upon learning of Lee’s surrender, Sam–a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army–decides to leave his safe haven in Philadelphia and set out on foot to return to the war-torn South. What compels him on this almost-suicidal course is the desire to find his wife, the mother of his only child, whom he and their son left behind 15 years earlier on the Mississippi farm to which they all “belonged.”

At the same time, Sam’s wife, Tilda, is being forced to walk at gunpoint with her owner and two of his other slaves from the charred remains of his Mississippi farm into Arkansas, in search of an undefined place that would still respect his entitlements as slaveowner and Confederate officer.

The book’s third main character, Prudence, is a fearless, headstrong white woman of means who leaves her Boston home for Buford, Mississippi, to start a school for the former bondsmen, and thus honor her father’s dying wish.

At bottom, Freeman is a love story–sweeping, generous, brutal, compassionate, patient–about the feelings people were determined to honor, despite the enormous constraints of the times. It is this aspect of the book that should ensure it a strong, vocal, core audience of African-American women, who will help propel its likely critical acclaim to a wider audience. At the same time, this book addresses several themes that are still hotly debated today, some 145 years after the official end of the Civil War. Like Cold Mountain, Freeman illuminates the times and places it describes from a fresh perspective, with stunning results. It has the potential to become a classic addition to the literature dealing with this period. Few other novels so powerfully capture the pathos and possibility of the era particularly as it reflects the ordeal of the black slaves grappling with the promise–and the terror–of their new status as free men and women.

About Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Leonard Pitts, Jr. was born and raised in Southern California and now lives in suburban Washington, DC, with his wife and children. He is a columnist for the Miami Herald and won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, in addition to many other awards. He is also the author of the novel Before I Forget (Agate Bolden, 2009); the collection Forward From this Moment: Selected Columns, 1994-2009, Daily Triumphs, Tragedies, and Curiosities (Agate Bolden, 2009); and Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood (Agate Bolden, 2006).

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Reviews

“Leonard Pitts has a passion for history and a gift for storytelling. Both shine in this story of love and redemption, which challenges everything we thought we knew about how our nation dealt with its most stubborn stain.” —Gwen Ifill, PBS, author of The Breakthrough

“Post-Civil War America is fertile ground for novelists, but few have tilled it with such grace and majesty as Leonard Pitts. In Freeman, Pitts weaves a beguiling, cinematic love story against a rich tapestry of American history, evoking unforgettable characters in a narrative that could easily replace a shelf of textbooks. What a splendid read!” —Herb Boyd, co-editor of By Any Means Necessary—Malcolm X: Real, not Reinvented

“Leonard Pitts, Hr. crafts a novel as well as the great storytellers of our time. Freeman captured my attention from the very first sentence and my heart throughout. Sam and Tilda will stay with me for a very long time. I can’t let them go.” —Sybil Wilkes, The Tom Joyner Radio Show

‘Freeman’: A Liberated Slave In Search Of Family

NPR Book Review – May 10, 2012 (Excerpt)

In Freeman, Pitts explores the turbulent and violent time after the official end of war and assassination of President Lincoln. He draws from historical classifieds to emphasize the steadfast efforts of freed slaves looking to reconnect with their loved ones. Pitts tells NPR’s Audie Cornish that most people weren’t aware of what was going on at the time.

“To me, it’s such a fascinating and little known fact that all of these African-Americans newly freed slaves went to such lengths to reconstitute their marriages and reconstitute their families,” he says.

“Nobody really talks about this, but you’ve got — 20 years after the war — people placing ads and walking across counties and states. And I just liked the idea of using real ads to emphasize that this was a real story. These were real people who were looking for their loved ones.”

At the center of the novel is a love story. Sam Freeman, a liberated slave, embarks on a 1,000-mile journey to Mississippi in search of his wife Tilda. As Sam travels through the South, he encounters many different stories: slaves who are searching for their families, masters who won’t give loved ones back and slaves who are killed on their way out of the South.

With these anecdotes, Pitts wanted to recognize the struggle of freed slaves by “giving the full dimension” of their story. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Ferdinand Ward was the greatest swindler of the Gilded Age. Through his unapologetic villainy, he bankrupted Ulysses S. Grant and ran roughshod over the entire world of finance. Now, his compelling, behind-the-scenes story is told—told by his great-grandson, award-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward.

Ward was the Bernie Madoff of his day, a supposed genius at making big money fast on Wall Street who turned out to have been running a giant pyramid scheme—one that ultimately collapsed in one of the greatest financial scandals in American history. The son of a Protestant missionary and small-town pastor with secrets of his own to keep, Ward came to New York at twenty-one and in less than a decade, armed with charm, energy, and a total lack of conscience, made himself the business partner of the former president of the United States and was widely hailed as the “Young Napoleon of Finance.” In truth, he turned out to be a complete fraud, his entire life marked by dishonesty, cowardice, and contempt for anything but his own interests.

Drawing from thousands of family documents never before examined, Geoffrey C. Ward traces his great-grandfather’s rapid rise to riches and fame and his even more dizzying fall from grace. There are mistresses and mansions along the way; fast horses and crooked bankers and corrupt New York officials; courtroom confrontations and six years in Sing Sing; and Ferdinand’s desperate scheme to kidnap his own son to get his hands on the estate his late wife had left the boy. Here is a great story about a classic American con artist, told with boundless charm and dry wit by one of our finest historians.

About Geoffrey C. Ward

Geoffrey C. Ward is the coauthor of The Civil War (with Ken Burns and Ric Burns), and the author of A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, which won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography and the 1990 Francis Parkman Prize.

Editorial Reviews

“Imagine that Bernie Madoff was in business with former President Dwight Eisenhower and that after stealing millions from Warren Buffett, Madoff left Ike with only $80 to his name. That’s what Ferd Ward did to Ulysses S. Grant, but it only begins to describe the perfidy of the greatest swindler of the 19th Century. Now Ward’s great grandson, one of America’s finest historians, has redeemed the Ward family name with this wry and engrossing tale of Gilded Age greed that resonates powerfully in our own time.” — Jonathan Alter, author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One

“Before Charles Ponzi, before Bernie Madoff, there was Ferdinand Ward, the greatest and most audacious schemer of them all. Geoffrey Ward, his great grandson, had rare access to private papers, accounts, court documents, and the letters of this evil, self-justifying, mesmerizing sociopath, who went from a poor minister’s son to the swindling partner of President Ulysses S. Grant. This is a superb, exciting, beautifully written book. I couldn’t put it down. You won’t either.” — Barbara Goldsmith, author of Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie

“Geoffrey Ward has written an astonishing book.  Readers will not want to put down his fast-paced account of how his great grandfather, “The Best-Hated Man in the United States,” brought U.S. Grant to ruin.  He leaves no doubt that Ferdinand Ward of Grant and Ward was a scoundrel, but, in this riveting biography, he also raises the fascinating question of why so many Americans in the Gilded Age were so eager to become dupes.” — William E. Leuchtenburg, winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians

Great-Grandfather Was a First-Class Bamboozler

The New York Times Book Review – May 13, 2012 (Excerpt)

After Ferdinand De Wilton Ward Jr. became notorious as a Gilded Age financial schemer of rare weaselly ingenuity, his picture appeared in a manual of phrenology. The shape of his “low-top head, very broad from side to side,” was said to explain why Ward had shown the “Secretiveness, Cunning, Acquisitiveness, Destructiveness” to bilk investors, shame and bankrupt a former president and try to kidnap his own son.

Within the large Ward clan Ferdinand remains “the family sociopath,” although each of his parents was a candidate for that distinction. It took a great-grandson of Ferdinand’s, the prizewinning historian Geoffrey C. Ward, to write the scandal-filled but eminently fair book that airs this dirty laundry.

Geoffrey Ward has reason for backhanded pride when it comes to his great-grandfather’s malfeasance. Ferdinand was not just any crook; he created a Ponzi scheme before Charles Ponzi was even born. He can legitimately be called the Bernard Madoff of his time, and he had the public infamy and prison sentence to prove it. Ferd, as he was known, was incarcerated at both the Ludlow Street Jail and the Tombs in New York, but it was not until he reached Sing Sing that his gifts as a con man really reached their peak. Thanks to well-placed bribes he got a nicer-than-average cell and the privilege of wearing a straw hat, not a striped one.

Before the arrival of this book, “A Disposition to Be Rich,” which takes its title from Ferd’s mother’s excuse for his problems, not much was written directly about Ward’s chicanery. There are several reasons. His illicit financial dealings were best known as a sad footnote to the Ulysses S. Grant story, since Grant became Ward’s woefully ill-informed partner in the firm of Grant & Ward. (Specialty: securities rehypothecating, or “pledging the same paper over and over again to borrow money, paying the interest on one loan out of the principal for the next, hoping that things would somehow balance out one day.” [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

The majestic and haunting beauty of the Italian Alps is the setting of the first meeting of Enza, a practical beauty, and Ciro, a strapping mountain boy, who meet as teenagers, despite growing up in villages just a few miles apart. At the turn of the last century, when Ciro catches the local priest in a scandal, he is banished from his village and sent to hide in America as an apprentice to a shoemaker in Little Italy. Without explanation, he leaves a bereft Enza behind. Soon, Enza’s family faces disaster and she, too, is forced to go to America with her father to secure their future.

Unbeknownst to one another, they both build fledgling lives in America, Ciro masters shoemaking and Enza takes a factory job in Hoboken until fate intervenes and reunites them. But it is too late: Ciro has volunteered to serve in World War I and Enza, determined to forge a life without him, begins her impressive career as a seamstress at the Metropolitan Opera House that will sweep her into the glamorous salons of Manhattan and into the life of the international singing sensation, Enrico Caruso.

From the stately mansions of Carnegie Hill, to the cobblestone streets of Little Italy, over the perilous cliffs of northern Italy, to the white-capped lakes of northern Minnesota, these star-crossed lovers meet and separate, until, finally, the power of their love changes both of their lives forever.

Lush and evocative, told in tantalizing detail and enriched with lovable, unforgettable characters, The Shoemaker’s Wife is a portrait of the times, the places and the people who defined the immigrant experience, claiming their portion of the American dream with ambition and resolve, cutting it to fit their needs like the finest Italian silk.

This riveting historical epic of love and family, war and loss, risk and destiny is the novel Adriana Trigiani was born to write, one inspired by her own family history and the love of tradition that has propelled her body of bestselling novels to international acclaim. Like Lucia, Lucia, The Shoemaker’s Wife defines an era with clarity and splendor, with operatic scope and a vivid cast of characters who will live on in the imaginations of readers for years to come.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Adriana Trigiani

Adriana Trigiani is an award-winning playwright, television writer, and documentary filmmaker. The author of the bestselling Big Stone Gap series, Very Valentine; Brava, Valentine; Lucia, Lucia; The Queen of the Big Time; andRococo, she has also written the best-selling memoir Don’t Sing at the Table as well as the young adult novels Viola in Reel Life and Viola in the Spotlight. Her books have been published in 36 countries around the world. She has written and will direct the big screen version of her first novel, Big Stone Gap. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

Editorial Review

A portrait of early 20th-century Italian immigration, the story starts with two children in the Italian Alps. In one mountain village, serious, hardworking Enza lives with her large family; in another, rascal Ciro and his brother Eduardo are orphans at the convent. When 16-year-old Ciro travels to Enza’s village to dig the grave of her little sister, the two meet for the first time, and Enza falls in love. But soon after, Ciro is sent to America (he caught the priest kissing a girl) to apprentice as a shoemaker. Trigiani’s novels often bask in Italian culture, and this latest is no exception, taking place during the great wave of Italian immigration. New York’s Little Italy is a joyous place, and handsome, outgoing Ciro fits right in. A few years later, Enza and her father go to America (just to make enough money to dig their family out of poverty), and Ciro and Enza briefly meet again. Enza, a talented seamstress, first works in a factory, and then finds her way to becoming a costumer at the Metropolitan Opera House. Life at the Met is a dream for Enza as she works for the great Caruso. Meanwhile, World War I has begun and Ciro leaves behind his comfortable life at the shop (and all the beauties) on Mulberry Street to enlist. In the trenches, he dreams about Enza (though why he never bothered with her before is unclear) while she is getting ready to marry another. Love wins out as Ciro and Enza marry then move to Minnesota to start a business and a family. Much more happens, but Trigiani’s wide rush of plot hardly makes up for a dull heroine and a novel filled with workaday prose. – Kirkus Reviews

Book World: Romantic journey with ‘The Shoemaker’s Wife,’ by Adriana Trigiani

The Washington Post Book Review – May 11, 2012 (Excerpt)

Inspired by the lives of her own grandparents, who came to America from northern Italy in the early 20th century, Adriana Trigiani’s “The Shoemaker’s Wife” might be considered the ur-story behind her string of heartwarming family sagas. Free from the high-fashion brand names that infested the past couple of novels, this one is an old-fashioned, romantic tale of two star-tangled lovers, Enza Ravanelli and Ciro Lazzari. Beginning in the Italian Alps, the story travels by various routes to New York’s Little Italy, a Hoboken factory, backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, Minnesota’s Iron Range and the trenches of France. A love story, yes, but also a paean to artisanal work, food, friendship and family.

Ciro lives with his brother, Eduardo, in a convent in the town of Bergamo, deposited there when Ciro was 10 by their mother, who promised to return but did not. Although the sorrow and mystery of this abandonment are a constant presence in their hearts, the boys have made a good life with the nuns. Eduardo serves as secretary, accountant and calligrapher, and Ciro spends his days “tending the fireplaces, milking the cow, churning the butter, twisting fresh braids of scamorza cheese, chopping wood, shoveling coal, washing windows, scrubbing floors.” [Read the full article...]

THE SABRINA STRONG SERIES by LORELEI BELL

Book One: Vampire Ascending [More Info...]

Book Two: Vampire’s Trill [More Info...]

Swim is a celebration of swimming and the effect it has on our lives. It’s an inquiry into why we swim—the lure, the hold, the timeless magic of being in the water. It’s a look at how swimming has changed over the millennia, how this ancient activity is becoming more social than solitary today. It’s about our relationship with the water, with our fishy forebearers, and with the costumes that we wear. You’ll even find a few songs to sing when you push out those next laps.

Swimming enthusiast Lynn Sherr explores every aspect of the sport, from the biology of swimming to the fame of Esther Williams; from turquoise pools and wild water to the training of Olympians; and she reveals the secret of buoyancy so that anyone can avoid the example of the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who lamented, “Why can’t I swim, it seems so very easy?” When his friend, the biographer Edward John Trelawny, said, “because you think you can’t,” Shelley plunged into Italy’s Arno River and dropped like a rock. With Swim, you can avoid that happening to you.

About Lynn Sherr

Broadcast journalist and writer Lynn Sherr was an award-winning correspondent for more than thirty years at ABC News. She is the author of Tall Blondes: A Book About Giraffes; Outside the Box: A Memoir; America the Beautiful: The Stirring True Story Behind Our Nation’s Favorite Song; and Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Words. She coedited Peter Jennings, A Reporter’s Life. She lives in New York.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

Former ABC News correspondent Sherr (Outside the Box: My Unscripted Life of Love, Loss, and Television News, 2008, etc.) is a lifelong swimmer, and her passion for the act, from a lazy bobbing in gentle waves to a hard push across the Hellespont (aka the Dardanelles)—her story of which is tracked at intervals throughout the narrative—issues from each of these pages. Even when her comments are at their most random—e.g., “Swimming…allows you to dream big dreams”—her enthusiasm propels the book forward. That enthusiasm bleeds over into her history of swimming, which has a gratifyingly great sweep. Sherr moves from the deep past, when immersing oneself was only typical during wartime, to Leander and Lord Byron making their own Hellespont dash, to Benjamin Franklin (who wrote, “I thought it likely, that if I were to remain in England and open a Swimming School, I might get a good deal of Money”), to the coming of spandex. With a breezy touch, the author chronicles the evolution of public bathing, in the process revealing the disdain with which some purists view swimming pools: “Swimming under a roof to me is like big game hunting in a zoo. All legitimate fascination goes,” said Annette Kellerman, one of swimming’s grand dames. Sherr also explores the application of physics on competitive swimming and on miracle fibers in the latest swimsuits. From start to finish, she searches for the essence of why swimming has touched so many, be it Oliver Sacks (“I never knew anything so powerfully, so healthily euphoriant”) or Chairman Mao (“Do you swim? Water is a good thing”). – Kirkus Reviews

Swim: Why We Love the Water” by Lynn Sherr

The Washington Post Book Review – May 11, 2012 (Excerpt)

Swim. The single, solitary, one-syllable word that makes up the title of this wonderful book makes the author’s intention — and her passion — crystal clear. Swim, it reminds us.

But is the title of Lynn Sherr’s book a command, a suggestion, an exhortation? That one word on the cover leaves us in no doubt as to the focus we’ll find on the pages within. This slim volume is not about wateror exercise. It is neither history lesson nor social commentary (although, in fact, it contains some of each and much more besides). It is a love-letter to swimming, one woman’s homage to the pastime that continues to capture the hearts of young and old.

Just as I do before that first delicious moment of slipping underwater for a swim, I dipped into Sherr’s book with a shiver of anticipation. It opens with a vivid account of her attempt to swim the Hellespont, known today as theDardanelles, the channel dividing Asia and Europe, famed as the straits that tried (and failed) to keep apart the lovers Hero and Leander. [Read the full article...]

THE SABRINA STRONG SERIES by LORELEI BELL

Book One: Vampire Ascending [More Info...]

Book Two: Vampire’s Trill [More Info...]

At the height of the McCarthyite hysteria of the 1950s, John Paton Davies, Jr., was summoned to the State Department one morning and fired. His offense? The career diplomat had counseled the U.S. government during World War II that the Communist forces in China were poised to take over the country—which they did, in 1949. Davies joined the thousands of others who became the victims of a political maelstrom that engulfed the country and deprived the United States of the wisdom and guidance of an entire generation of East Asian diplomats and scholars.

The son of American missionaries, Davies was born in China at the turn of the twentieth century. Educated in the United States, he joined the ranks of the newly formed Foreign Service in the 1930s and returned to China, where he would remain until nearly the end of World War II. During that time he became one of the first Americans to meet and talk with the young revolutionary known as Mao Zedong. He documented the personal excesses and political foibles of Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. As a political aide to General Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, the wartime commander of the Allied forces in East and South Asia, he traveled widely in the region, meeting with colonial India’s Nehru and Gandhi to gauge whether their animosity to British rule would translate into support for Japan. Davies ended the war serving in Moscow with George F. Kennan, the architect of America’s policy toward the Soviet Union. Kennan found in Davies a lifelong friend and colleague. Neither, however, was immune to the virulent anticommunism of the immediate postwar years.

China Hand is the story of a man who captured with wry and judicious insight the times in which he lived, both as observer and as actor.

About John Paton Davies Jr.

John Paton Davies, Jr. (1908-99) was a Foreign Service officer in the U.S. Department of State from 1931 to 1954. He was also the author of Foreign and Other Affairs and Dragon by the Tail: American, British, Japanese, and Russian Encounters with China and One Another. Todd S. Purdum is national editor of Vanity Fair. Bruce Cumings is Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, most recently Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Reviews

“An often funny, always insightful account of an adventurous and wonderful life. John Paton Davies was an American hero—judicious, discreet, and reliable—who deserves to be remembered by a book as good as this one.”—Nicholas Thompson, author of The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War

“From his battles with Senator McCarthy, to his heroic achievements in the Burmese jungle, from his insightful predictions of the Chinese civil war, to his ultimate dismissal from the U.S. Foreign Service, Davies holds nothing back. Loaded in story and analysis, China Hand is a terrific book about a fascinating figure in American history.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Lion

“Davies predicted more accurately than anyone else, prior to the Cold War, what China’s course would be during it. We are most fortunate to have his posthumous autobiography available at last, in which he explains, in shrewd and sparkling prose, how he did this. His book is a major new contribution to World War II and early Cold War history.”—John Lewis Gaddis, author of George F. Kennan: An American Life

“China Hand: An Autobiography” by John Paton Davies Jr.

The Washington Post Book Review – May 11, 2012 (Excerpt)

In November 1954 John Paton Davies Jr., deputy chief of mission at the American Embassy in Lima, Peru, was fired by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. His dismissal had nothing to do with his service in Peru and everything to do with his standing as one of several “China Hands,” Foreign Service veterans “who were China specialists and had dealt with Chinese Communists.” Davies and the others — they included Edmund Clubb, John Emmerson, John S. Service and John Carter Vincent — were victims of a fierce campaign by the so-called China Lobby, a handmaiden of Joe McCarthy and his allies on the far right, which charged that the China Hands’ attempts to report honestly to the State Department, the White House and Congress about the state of affairs in China had undermined the administration of Chiang Kai-shek and brought about the triumph of Mao Tse-tung and his communists.

The accusations, as Davies dryly summarizes them, “were, in effect, that what we independently reported and predicted was what we willed and plotted to bring about.” Nothing could have been further from the truth, but truth was in short supply in the halcyon days of McCarthyism. The country was “in a national mood of mounting public apprehension, suspicion and anxiety, exacerbated by Chinese agitators, American lobbyists and hostile member[s] of Congress,” and the handful of men who had tried to give their superiors a fair assessment of the situation in China were made the scapegoats for what was portrayed as the “loss” of China. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

Before Madeleine Albright turned twelve, her life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia—the country where she was born—the Battle of Britain, the near total destruction of European Jewry, the Allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War.

Albright’s experiences, and those of her family, provide a lens through which to view the most tumultuous dozen years in modern history. Drawing on her memory, her parents’ written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly available documents, Albright recounts a tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring. Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind and, simultaneously, a journey with universal lessons that is intensely personal.

The book takes readers from the Bohemian capital’s thousand-year-old castle to the bomb shelters of London, from the desolate prison ghetto of TerezÍn to the highest councils of European and American government. Albright reflects on her discovery of her family’s Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland’s tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation. Often relying on eyewitness descriptions, she tells the story of how millions of ordinary citizens were ripped from familiar surroundings and forced into new roles as exiled leaders and freedom fighters, resistance organizers and collaborators, victims and killers. These events of enormous complexity are nevertheless shaped by concepts familiar to any growing child: fear, trust, adaptation, the search for identity, the pressure to conform, the quest for independence, and the difference between right and wrong.

“No one who lived through the years of 1937 to 1948,” Albright writes, “was a stranger to profound sadness. Millions of innocents did not survive, and their deaths must never be forgotten. Today we lack the power to reclaim lost lives, but we have a duty to learn all that we can about what happened and why.” At once a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history, Prague Winter serves as a guide to the future through the lessons of the past—as seen through the eyes of one of the international community’s most respected and fascinating figures.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright served as America’s sixty-fourth secretary of state from 1997 to 2001. Her distinguished career also includes positions on Capitol Hill, on the National Security Council, and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She is a resident of Washington, D.C., and Virginia.

Editorial Review

Albright’s (Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America’s Reputation and Leadership, 2008, etc.) parents had never told her of her Jewish heritage, and in January 1997 she had only recently learned of it when a Washington Post reporter broke the larger story. She spent the ensuing years researching her family’s history and the history of her native Czechoslovakia. She was aided in her endeavors by family material she found stored in boxes in her garage—and by a small research team. Born in 1937, the author naturally doesn’t remember the war’s earliest days, so the initial sections are principally a summary of history of the region and the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. Occasionally, she slips into the first person to talk about the activities of her father, a career diplomat, and her mother, a diplomat’s wife but also a woman very interested in the supernatural. The most gripping parts are those personal stories; the others mostly repeat what can be found in many histories of the war and Holocaust. Retellings do not, of course, diminish the horror, but Albright sometimes focuses more on the politics and the war than on the remembrance. The personal passages increase in number and detail as she grows older. Also engaging are the later sections, which deal with the postwar politics in Czechoslovakia, especially the communists’ moves to subvert the fledgling democracy. – Kirkus Reviews

“Prague Winter : A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948” by Madeleine Albright

The Washington Post Book Review – May 11, 2012 (Excerpt)

On the first page of her new memoir, Madeleine Albright writes, “I was fifty-nine when I began serving as U.S. secretary of state. I thought by then that I knew all there was to know about my past, who ‘my people’ were, and the history of my native land. I was sure enough that I did not feel a need to ask questions. Others might be insecure about their identities; I was not and never had been. I knew. Only I didn’t.”

Albright (née Korbelová) was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1937 when the country had been independent for just 20 years. Her father, Josef Korbel, was a Czech diplomat and democrat who fled to Great Britain with his family following the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and again in 1948, following a democratic election when the country was effectively gifted into the murderous hands of the local communist party. Korbel and his family were granted political asylum in the United States in 1949, and Albright became a U.S. citizen in 1957. Josef Korbel became the Dean of the University of Denver’s school of international studies, where he taught another future secretary of state, one Condoleeza Rice. [Read the full article...]

Madeleine Albright’s ‘Prague Winter’ Reveals Family Secrets (EXCERPT)

The Huffington Post – April 30, 2012 (Excerpt)

What does it feel like to be told your entire perception of your family and your childhood was wrong? Madeleine Albright, former U.S. secretary of state from 1997 to 2001 and the first woman to hold that position, knows first hand. Here, in an excerpt from her new book Prague Winter, Albright shares the family secret that shocked her when it was uncovered in her late 50s.

I was fifty-nine when I began serving as U.S. secretary of state. I thought by then that I knew all there was to know about my past, who “my people” were, and the history of my native land. I was sure enough that I did not see a need to ask questions. Others might be insecure about their identities; I was not and never had been. I knew.

Only I didn’t. I had no idea that my family heritage was Jewish or that more than twenty of my relatives had died in the Holocaust. I had been brought up to believe in a history of my Czechoslovak homeland that was less tangled and more straightforward than the reality. I had much still to learn about the complex moral choices that my parents and others in their generation had been called on to make — choices that were still shaping my life and also that of the world.

I had been raised a Roman Catholic and upon marriage converted to the Episcopalian faith. I had — I was sure — a Slavic soul. My grandparents had died before I was old enough to remember their faces or call them by name. I had a cousin in Prague; we had recently been in touch and as children had been close, but I no longer knew her well; the Iron Curtain had kept us apart.

From my parents I had received a priceless inheritance: a set of deeply held convictions regarding liberty, individual rights, and the rule of law. I inherited, as well, a love for two countries. The United States had welcomed my family and enabled me to grow up in freedom; I was proud to call myself an American. The Czechoslovak Republic had been a beacon of humane government until snuffed out by Adolf Hitler and then — after a brief period of postwar revival — extinguished again by the disciples of Josef Stalin. In 1989, the Velvet Revolution, led by Václav Havel, my hero and later my cherished friend, engendered new hope. All my life I had believed in the virtues of democratic government, the need to stand up to evil, and the age-old motto of the Czech people: “Pravda vítezí,” or “Truth shall prevail.” [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

Like it or not, knowing how to make use of online tools without being overloaded with too much information is an essential ingredient to personal success in the twenty-first century. But how can we use digital media so that they make us empowered participants rather than passive receivers, grounded, well-rounded people rather than multitasking basket cases? In Net Smart, cyberculture expert Howard Rheingold shows us how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and, above all, mindfully.

Mindful use of digital media means thinking about what we are doing, cultivating an ongoing inner inquiry into how we want to spend our time. Rheingold outlines five fundamental digital literacies, online skills that will help us do this: attention, participation, collaboration, critical consumption of information (or “crap detection”), and network smarts. He explains how attention works, and how we can use our attention to focus on the tiny relevant portion of the incoming tsunami of information. He describes the quality of participation that empowers the best of the bloggers, netizens, tweeters, and other online community participants; he examines how successful online collaborative enterprises contribute new knowledge to the world in new ways; and he teaches us a lesson on networks and network building.

Rheingold points out that there is a bigger social issue at work in digital literacy, one that goes beyond personal empowerment. If we combine our individual efforts wisely, it could produce a more thoughtful society: countless small acts like publishing a Web page or sharing a link could add up to a public good that enriches everybody.

About Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold, an influential writer and thinker on social media, is the author of Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (both published by the MIT Press), and Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Reviews

“The social media landscape changes quicker than you can say ‘future shock.’ As soon as you think you’ve mastered one network, another pops up, demanding its share of time and attention. Thank goodness, then, for Howard Rheingold. He has identified the skills — simultaneously old-fashioned and cutting-edge — that not only will help you thrive in this tumultuous world, but also help you shape social media into a force for good. Net Smart is a lifeboat for people who want to participate in new technologies without drowning in the flood.”–Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind

“A desperately needed and wonderfully written guide to being literate in today’s digital, always-on world. This book is not just descriptive. It articulates a comprehensive set of social norms, practices and protocols that help us unleash the collective power of networked intelligence. And, yes, using the web mindfully can indeed make us smarter, as this book will illustrate. A must read for anyone wanting to thrive in today’s increasingly connected world.”–John Seely Brown, Former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corp and Director of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center; co-author of A New Culture of Learning

“Education today is woefully inadequate. It’s about teaching people information and skills as if we’re alone and disconnected, stocking knowledge and tools in our brains. Today, it is important to learn how to find information and how to collaborate. Written in the traditionally smart and fun-to-read Rheingoldian style, Net Smart is the guide on how to think, learn, survive and thrive in the post-internet era. An essential guide and a must-read!”–Joichi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab

“Net Smart: How to Thrive Online” by Howard Rheingold

The Washington Post Book Review – May 11, 2012 (Excerpt)

Nagging worries about whether the latest bit of cutting-edge technology will have the unforeseen side effect of dulling our minds have been around ever since the dawn of recorded history. Long before Wikipedia or Google, Plato wrote of a king who feared that the invention of letters and reading would give its users the ability to cite facts that they had not properly earned or mastered. Such an invention will lead to forgetfulness among users, the ancient king predicted, and provide them with a false sense of wisdom.

Anyone who has followed an online political discussion or felt a twinge of guilt as she consulted the Web for help with the kids’ homework can identify with this concern. A person may know how to Google the answer to a question, after all, but that doesn’t mean that she knows anything else about the topic at hand.

Technology writer Howard Rheingold ponders this in his latest book, “Net Smart,” which strives to be a sort of consciousness-raising how-to guide for all of us who are immersed in the Web era. Rheingold, who has been writing about the digital revolution for a quarter-century, praises and critiques the Web’s tools and diversions. It’s his aim to make readers more aware of both the benefits and the potential drawbacks of digital life.

“Net Smart” arrives at the same time as a similarly minded title that is more narrowly focused on parenting in the digital age. James P. Steyer founded the San Francisco-based nonprofit organization Common Sense Media with the aim of helping parents figure out how to responsibly usher children into the digital era; his new book, “Talking Back to Facebook,” shares that goal. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

Now, more than ever, parents need help in navigating their kids’ online, media-saturated lives. Jim Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, the nation’s leading kidsand- media organization, and the father of four children, knows that many parents and teachers—unlike their technology-savvy kids—may be tourists in the online world.

In this essential book, Steyer—a frequent commentator on national TV and radio— offers an engaging blend of straightforward advice and anecdotes that address what he calls RAP, the major pitfalls relating to kids’ use of media and technology: relationship issues, attention/addiction problems, and the lack of privacy. Instead of shielding children completely from online images and messages, Steyer’s practical approach gives parents essential tools to help filter content, preserve good relationships with their children, and make common sense, value-driven judgments for kids of all ages.

Not just about Facebook, this comprehensive, no-nonsense guide to the online world, media, and mobile devices belongs in the hands of all parents and educators raising kids in today’s digital age.

About James P. Steyer

James P. Steyer has spent more than twenty years as one of the most respected experts and entrepreneurs on issues related to children’s policy and media in the United States. As founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, he is responsible for the overall leadership of the nation’s leading nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving the media lives of kids and families. Steyer began his career as an elementary school teacher and went on to become a nationally respected child advocate, public interest lawyer, and Stanford professor. Jim lives with his wife and four children in the Bay Area.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

Keeping track of the privacy and security aspects of social-media accounts can feel like a shell game for even the most astute Internet user. This seems especially true with regard to Facebook, whose enormous membership of 800 million users, coupled with their erratic shifting of privacy settings, has changed Mark Zuckerberg’s college-dorm project into a potentially dangerous destination for millions of teenagers. Computer and Internet education in elementary schools has given young people a formidable working knowledge of technology that often outpaces that of their parents—and of their own ability to judge the safety of what personal information they put on the Internet. Steyer is well positioned to write cogently on this subject. As a parent and founder of an organization working to empower Internet consumers to protect themselves, he brings a pragmatic approach to managing adolescent Internet activity. Recognizing the likely futility of “banning the Internet” for today’s kids, the author instead focuses on educating parents about “R.A.P.”—relationships, attention/addiction problems and privacy—with case-study examples and concrete suggestions on appropriate guidelines to set for children organized by age groups. The approach includes recognizing and building on the positive aspects of social media, which will help minimize the negative aspects. Some of Steyer’s recommendations are bigger-picture suggestions—e.g., challenging elected officials to take a serious look at updating the nation’s privacy laws. – Kirkus Reviews

“Talking Back to Facebook: The Common Sense Guide to Raising Kids in the Digital Age” by James P. Steyer

The Washington Post Book Review – May 11, 2012 (Excerpt)

Steyer argues that the amount of time children spend in front of computers and smartphones should be limited, and his book is most helpful when the studies he cites can be directly translated into action. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends, for example, that kids spend no more that two hours per day in front of their computer screen. YouTube, he tells us, is not intended for users younger than 13.

Steyer longs for an “eraser” button on the Web that would help protect kids who make flubs online by allowing them to undo their mistakes. Rheingold, on the other hand, assumes that there’s no such thing in the works and that his audience is going to stay plugged in, no matter what. With that in mind, he breaks his book down into a series of tools and skills that he believes the new digital citizen must master.

It would be unwise for any author to write step-by-step tips to navigate a digital revolution that is still in the works. Tell somebody, for example, how to change his privacy settings on Facebook today and the required mouseclicks might change tomorrow. Rheingold and Steyer are generally savvy enough to avoid such pitfalls, but what’s left is suggestions that sometimes feel vague or obvious. Take a break from your computer screen, both authors advise. Think about how you’re spending your time. Talk to your kids. Don’t believe everything you read online. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

Long neglected by European historians, the unspeakable atrocities of Franco’s Spain are finally brought to tragic light in this definitive work.

The remains of General Francisco Franco lie in an immense mausoleum near Madrid, built with the blood and sweat of twenty thousand slave laborers. His enemies, however, met less-exalted fates. Besides those killed on the battlefield, tens of thousands were officially executed between 1936 and 1945, and as many again became “non-persons.” As Spain finally reclaims its historical memory, a full picture can now be given of the Spanish Holocaust-ranging from judicial murders to the abuse of women and children. The story of the victims of Franco’s reign of terror is framed by the activities of four key men-General Mola, Quiepo de Llano, Major Vallejo Najera, and Captain Don Gonzalo Aguilera-whose dogma of eugenics, terrorization, domination, and mind control horrifyingly mirror the fascism of Italy and Germany.

Evoking such classics as Gulag and The Great Terror, The Spanish Holocaust sheds crucial light on one of the darkest and most unexamined eras of modern European history.

About Paul Preston

Paul Preston, author of The Spanish Civil War, Franco and Juan Carlos, and The Spanish Holocaust, is the world’s foremost historian on twentieth-century Spain. A professor at the London School of Economics, he lives in London.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

Scholar Preston (London School of Economics; We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War, 2009, etc.) uses the word Holocaust self-consciously but deliberately in this exhaustive treatment of the horrendous violence the Spanish waged against each other to annihilate mutually “undesirable” elements. The friction between the agrarian oligarchy and the landless day laborers and radicalized leftists had been escalating throughout the 1920s, culminating in the establishment of the Second Republic in 1931. However, the reactionary defenders of order, alarmed by the fall of the monarchy and breakdown in status quo, believed the new regime was a “Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik conspiracy to take over Spain”—therefore violence against it was justified. While the Socialist leader Francisco Largo Caballero propounded revolutionary slogans that incited the hungry masses, the fascist Falange led by General Franco spoke repeatedly of the conspiracy masterminded by the Jews and international foreigners (the contubernio, or “filthy cohabitation”). Preston concentrates on the systematic spread of terror and repression by forces of the right in specific areas of Spain; they moved from town to town, hunting out “reds,” often with the enthusiastic collaboration of the local landowning class. (During this time the poet Federico García Lorca was dragged out and shot.) The right-wing uprising particularly targeted leftist women, who had enjoyed new status and rights under the Republic. Using techniques of terror perfected against the Moroccan population, Franco and his hardened Africanistas moved to subjugate Madrid by slaughter, dismemberment and rape. Preston focuses on the staggering toll of the violence and the Francoist spin that stretches well into the present without proper reckoning. – Kirkus Reviews

Process of Extermination - ‘The Spanish Holocaust,’ by Paul Preston

The New York Times Book Review – May 11, 2012 (Excerpt)

In “Homage to Catalonia,” his memoir of the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell remarks that Francisco Franco’s military uprising against Spain’s elected government “was an attempt not so much to impose fascism as to restore feudalism.” Paul Preston’s magisterial account of the bloodshed of that era bears this out. Fascism may belong to the 20th century, but Franco’s grab for power evokes earlier times: the parading soldiers who flourished enemy ears and noses on their bayonets, the mass public executions carried out in bullrings or with band music and onlookers dancing in the victims’ blood. One of Franco’s top aides talked of democratically chosen politicians as “cloven-hoofed beasts,” and anything that smacked of modernity — Rotary Clubs, Montessori schools — seemed to draw the regime’s violent wrath. Echoing the Inquisition, Franco ordered particularly despised foes put to death with the garrote, in which the executioner tightens an iron collar around a person’s neck.

There’s also something medieval in the fierce class divisions of 1930s Spain, with its great latifundistas, whose estates were worked by landless peasants so hungry they stole acorns from pigs’ troughs. Preston describes the “near racist” loathing Franco’s officials had for the lower classes; one contemptuously referred to unionized farmworkers as being like “Rif tribesmen.” Indeed, Franco’s leading commanders were mostly, like him, Africanistas, veterans of Spain’s bloody colonial wars in North Africa. As a young man, the generalissimo himself led troops on a raid that brought back the severed heads of 12 Moroccan tribesmen. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

An explosive, funny, wildly original fiction debut: nine stories about the power of love and the love of power, two urgent human desires that inevitably, and sometimes calamitously, intertwine. In I Am an Executioner, Rajesh Parameswaran introduces us to a cast of heroes—and antiheroes—who spring from his riotous, singular imagination.

From the lovesick tiger who narrates the unforgettable opener, “The Infamous Bengal Ming” (he mauls his zookeeper out of affection), to the ex-CompUSA employee who masquerades as a doctor; from a railroad manager in a turn-of-the-century Indian village, to an elephant writing her autobiography; from a woman whose Thanksgiving preparations put her husband to eternal rest, to the newlywed executioner of the title, these characters inhabit a marvelous region between desire and death, playfulness and violence. At once glittering and savage, daring and elegant, here are wholly unforgettable tales where reality loops in Borgesian twists and shines with cinematic exuberance, by an author who promises to dazzle the universe of American fiction.

About Rajesh Parameswaran

Rajesh Parameswaran’s stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Fiction. “The Strange Career of Dr. Raju Gopalarajan” was one of three stories for which McSweeney’s earned a National Magazine Award in 2007, and it was reprinted in The Best American Magazine Writing. He lives in New York City.

Editorial Review

The book opens with “The Infamous Bengal Ming,” narrated by a tiger who expresses affection for his keeper in the only language available to him, a fatal combination of mauling and love-biting; he then escapes the zoo to commit other acts of mayhem, under which lies a misunderstood tenderness. This tour de force sets the tone and the stage for these dark, rollickingly imaginative stories in which the powers of love and savagery are loosed upon each other again and again. In the title story, a semi-literate (and also fancily semi-literary) hangman tries to seduce his new wife despite her disgust at discovering the way he makes his living. Meanwhile, he tries to negotiate between the equal and opposite forces in him of compassion and brutishness. In “The Strange Career of Dr. Raju Gopalarajan,” a fired computer salesman, an Indian-born American who believes deeply—too deeply—in the immigrant dream of self-reinvention, checks out anatomy texts from the public library and sets up shop in an exurban strip mall, claiming to be a doctor. Other stories feature a panopticonic security state in which everyone seems to be a government agent spying on everyone else; an elephant composing a memoir (in “Englaphant, that strange tongue native to all places of elephant-human contact,” we’re told); an Indian woman soldiering on with Thanksgiving plans despite the fact that her husband lies dead on the floor. The stories—some published in journals like McSweeney’s, Granta and Zoetrope—can sometimes be arch and tricksome, and they’re not for everyone. But Parameswaran is a dazzlingly versatile stylist and the conceits and voices here are varied and evocative. – Kirkus Reviews

A Tiger in Love - ‘I Am an Executioner,’ by Rajesh Parameswaran

The New York Times Book Review – May 11, 2012 (Excerpt)

A compulsive and infectious narrative restlessness marks Rajesh Parameswaran’s first collection of short fiction, “I Am an Executioner.” Although tagged by the generic subtitle “Love Stories,” Parameswaran’s work demonstrates about the same relationship to traditional literary debuts as the insects in his strange and beautiful story “On the Banks of Table River (Planet Lucina, Andromeda Galaxy, AD 2319)” do to the earthlings who have colonized their planet.

Parameswaran prefers first-person narration to the more detached third person, but his storytellers are also wedded to a 21st-century experimentalism, continually uncaging themselves from realist fiction. From tigers and elephants to a man in a yellowing photograph and, most simply and touchingly, just a “being” in “On the Banks of Table River,” they form an unpredictable and often charming cavalcade, revealing both the particularity of what they perceive and the extent of what they misunderstand or simply miss. Raptly attentive to their own narratives, they gradually paint us into corners. We must peer around and above them before we can escape.

“The Agent does not try to understand what he is seeing,” we are told in the story called “Narrative of Agent 97-4702.” “That is a job for the Analyst.” Here a fiercely committed spy presents her report of a fairly ordinary surveillance operation, a report that begins to crackle when it becomes clear that she is also pursuing a chilling self-interrogation. [Read the full article...]

THE SABRINA STRONG SERIES by LORELEI BELL

Book One: Vampire Ascending [More Info...]

Book Two: Vampire’s Trill [More Info...]

Were Thomas Jefferson to walk the grounds of Monticello today, he would no doubt feel fully at home in the 1,000-foot terraced vegetable garden where the very vegetables and herbs he favored are thriving. Extensively and painstakingly restored under Peter J. Hatch’s brilliant direction, Jefferson’s unique vegetable garden now boasts the same medley of plants he enthusiastically cultivated in the early nineteenth century. The garden is a living expression of Jefferson’s genius and his distinctly American attitudes. Its impact on the culinary, garden, and landscape history of the United States continues to the present day.

Graced with nearly 200 full-color illustrations, “A Rich Spot of Earth” is the first book devoted to all aspects of the Monticello vegetable garden. Hatch guides us from the asparagus and artichokes first planted in 1770 through the horticultural experiments of Jefferson’s retirement years (1809–1826). The author explores topics ranging from labor in the garden, garden pests of the time, and seed saving practices to contemporary African American gardens. He also discusses Jefferson’s favorite vegetables and the hundreds of varieties he grew, the half-Virginian half-French cuisine he developed, and the gardening traditions he adapted from many other countries.

About Peter J. Hatch

As Director of Gardens and Grounds at Monticello since 1977, Peter J. Hatch has been responsible for the maintenance, interpretation, and restoration of its 2,400-acre landscape. He has written several previous books on Jefferson’s gardens and is an advisor for First Lady Michelle Obama’s White House kitchen garden. He lives in Charlottesville, VA.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Thomas Jefferson’s Vegetable Garden: A Thing Of Beauty And Science

NPR Book Review – May 10, 2012 (Excerpt)

When you listen to All Things Considered host Melissa Block’s story about Thomas Jefferson’s garden, you’ll hear how he cared about putting peas on the table and sharing seeds with his friends. He also set loftier goals for his vegetable garden: Monticello’s south-facing expanse was a living laboratory for a lifelong tinkerer and almost obsessive record keeper. Jefferson was, in many ways, a crop scientist.

After Jefferson retired from public life to his beloved Virginia hilltop plantation, the garden “served as a sort of this experimental testing lab where he’d try new vegetables he sought out from around the globe,” says Peter Hatch, the estate’s head gardener. Hatch recently wrote a book about Jefferson’s garden and its history called A Rich Spot of Earth.

Somehow, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s third president found spare time to meticulously document his many trials and errors, growing over 300 varieties of more than 90 different plants. These included exotics like sesame, chickpeas, sea kale and salsify. They’re more commonly available now, but were rare for the region at the time. So were tomatoes and eggplant. [Read the full article...]

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QUEEN OF MISFORTUNE
A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same strange who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

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So whilst it’s great that sufferers of OCD can freely say they have OCD without being confronted with questioning looks, we the listeners need to respond appropriately. And this begins with knowing what not to say.

1)  “How bad can it really be?” So bad that it can take hours just to leave the house. If we even ever make it out of the house. And the only possible relief comes during sleep. It’s an incessant nightmare that never lets you go, not even for one second.

2)  “I’m also a bit OCD about things like that.” There’s a huge difference between keeping a neat and tidy home and suffering from incessant, intrusive thoughts and compulsions over which you have no control, no matter how exhausted you are.

3)  “Snap out of it.” OCD is not fun. If we could snap out of it, we would!

4)  “Why can’t you just think about something else?” OCD is a biological disorder of the brain. We can’t control our thoughts any more than a diabetic can control their production of insulin.

5)  “It’s because you don’t have any real worries.” We feel guilty enough as it is, you don’t need to make us feel any worse.

6)  “Let’s go out and get drunk.” OCD is an anxiety disorder, and alcohol use only makes anxiety worse. Interestingly, one of alcohol’s many side effects is the depletion of the neurotransmitter, serotonin. Sufferers of OCD already have low serotonin, hence the success of the serotonin reputake inhibitor drugs in treating OCD. So when someone offers you alcohol, the answer is thanks but no thanks.

7)  “It’s because your parents were too controlling.” Actually for once, parents are not to blame. OCD is a neuro-biological disorder, meaning that I was born this way.

So please, people, think before you speak.

Dr Annabelle R Charbit

Author of A Life Lived Ridiculously
When a girl with obsessive compulsive disorder falls in love with a sociopath, she must fight for her sanity and her life.

http://www.ridiculouslife.net

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Educator, writer, critic, intellectual, film-maker—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has been widely praised as being one of America’s most prominent and prolific scholars. In what will be an essential volume, The Henry Louis Gates Reader collects three decades of writings from his many fields of interest and expertise.

From his earliest work of literary-historical excavation in 1982, through his current writings on the history and science of African American genealogy, the essays collected here follow his path as historian, theorist, canon-builder, and cultural critic, revealing a thinker of uncommon breadth whose work is uniformly guided by the drive to uncover and restore a history that has for too long been buried and denied.

An invaluable reference, The Henry Louis Gates Reader will be a singular reflection of one of our most gifted minds.

About Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books, including Colored People, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, In Search of Our Roots, and the American Book Award-winning The Signifying Monkey. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

Most notably in the academic world, Gates (Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513–2008, 2011, etc.) excavated and promoted the significant original mid-19th-century African-American women’s narratives Our Nig by Harriet E. Wilson (rediscovered in 1982) and The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts (first published in 2002). The author’s insightful introductions to both works are reproduced here. He has been instrumental in reinvigorating the African-American literary tradition by drawing on these and other little-known or otherwise lost contributions—e.g., work by early poet Phillis Wheatley, who was writing at a time when the absence of black writing proved to many the inferiority of the race. Yet for Gates these long-lost writings proved both their “certificate of humanity,” by embracing the European tradition, and their utter distinctness, especially in terms of language. As director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, he has co-edited important volumes dear to the legacy of Du Bois such as African America Lives and Africana: The Encyclopedia of African and African American Experience, the prefaces to which also appear here. In his persistent delving into genealogical research of his own family and those of famous others such as Oprah Winfrey, he has made some fascinating and troubling disclosures—e.g., outing Anatole Broyard and Jean Toomer for “passing” for white. Finally, he demonstrates in numerous journalistic pieces that he is an engaging and accessible writer, especially in interviews with Josephine Baker and James Baldwin and with Condoleezza Rice. – Kirkus Reviews

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: A Life Spent Tracing Roots

NPR Book Review – May 8, 2012 (Excerpt)

For more than 30 years, Henry Louis Gates Jr. has been an influential public intellectual with a distinct style, who makes complex academic concepts accessible to a wider audience.

Gates — known widely as “Skip” — may be best known for his research tracing the family and genetic history of famous African-Americans. “There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees,” Gates tells host Neal Conan. “My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree.”

With a number of PBS programs and books, he has traced the roots of prominent Americans — including Oprah Winfrey, Yo-Yo Ma and Stephen Colbert — and uncovered surprises about many families, including his own.

He says his goal in this work is twofold: “First, to show that we’re all immigrants, and secondly, that we’re all mixed — that we all have been intermarrying, or interrelated sexually from the dawn of human history.”

His most influential writings on race, politics and culture appear in a new volume, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader. Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, discusses the new compilation and how his fascination with genealogy began. [Read the full article...]

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CRIMSON DAWN
Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]

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Muslims in America who reject extremist or fundamentalist expressions of Islam at home and abroad feel the urgent need for a voice that can represent them in the escalating irrationality of the current debate about Islam, America, and the West. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf—the so-called Ground Zero Imam—has become that voice.

Drawing from his personal experiences, Imam Feisal now speaks up on behalf of disenfranchised Muslims around the United States who are spiritual, moderate, and patriotic. Born to Egyptian parents in Kuwait, Imam Rauf was educated in England and Malaysia, became a U.S. citizen in 1979, and received a degree in physics from Columbia University. Here, he explores the beliefs, aspirations, and ambitions, both spiritual and political, of American Muslims in a post-9/11 world. For example, the Imam sees the 2011 Arab uprising and the death of Osama bin Laden as turning points for Muslims, strengthening moderate voices that are closer to the true nature of Islam. He argues that orthodox Islam supports equal rights for women and embraces religious tolerance and dialogue, and insists on the relevance of Shariah law for democracy in America and for the revolutions in the Middle East.

Touching on all the major issues that have been subject to misperceptions and misrepresentations—such as the role of women, fundamentalism in America and abroad, the intersection of Islam and democracy, even the “Ground Zero Mosque”—Imam Feisal pre-sents a fresh perspective that American Muslims can identify with and a book that non-Muslims can use as a go-to guide, completely changing the discourse about Islam and America today.

About Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder and CEO of the Cordoba Initiative, has served as Imam of the Al-Farah mosque since 1983, and is the visionary behind Cordoba House. The author of three previous books about Islam, an American goodwill ambassador abroad, and a sought-after speaker and media guest, he lives in New York City.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

Rauf has served as imam of the al-Farah Mosque in New York City since 1983. He is deeply involved in multifaith work with the Cordoba Initiative and very much in demand as a teacher on the finer points of Islam since 9/11 (What Is Right with Islam, 2005, etc.). He believes that all Muslims (and especially women) must reclaim Islam from the extremists around the world—Islamists and “radical jihadists”—who have co-opted the Prophet’s message and corrupted its benevolent intent. Events such as the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” argument in the mid-1990s that Islam “was the new enemy of the West” and, most significantly, the 9/11 terrorist attacks all helped demonize Muslims in the eyes of the rest of the country, obscuring what Rauf believes is shared by people of all faiths. He offers a knowledgeable comparative study of the “People of the Book,” focusing partly on the similarities between the three Abrahamic faiths: The first two commandments shared by all three exhort the believer to bear witness to the oneness of God and to treat others as you treat yourself, establishing the Golden Rule of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Rauf delves into the “bogeyman” of Shariah law, comparing it to the U.S. Constitution, which indeed has evolved as the world has changed and should not be viewed as static and literal. Unfortunately, writes the author, Islam has been deemed an anti-women religion, by culture and practice, when in fact the Prophet himself instituted revolutionary changes in the status of women, and his first wife, Khadijah, was a protofeminist. President Obama’s assertion in his 2011 State of the Union address that “American Muslims are part of our American family” gave Rauf new cause for hope that the hysteria around Islam has at last “bottomed out” and rapprochement can now occur. – Kirkus Reviews

Creating A New Vision Of Islam In America

NPR Book Review – May 9, 2012 (Excerpt)

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a leading moderate Muslim leader in the U.S., was once the lead cleric associated with the proposed Islamic community center some critics called the “ground zero mosque.” In late 2010, a debate over the location of the community center, now called the Cordoba House, became a contentious issue during the midterm elections.

During the debate, Rauf was called a “radical Muslim” and a “militant Islamist” by critics of the proposed community center. He was accused of sympathizing with the Sept. 11 hijackers and having connections to Hamas.

“For those who actually know or have worked with the imam, the descriptions are frighteningly — indeed, depressingly — unhinged from reality,” political reporter Sam Stein wrote last August for The Huffington Post. “The Feisal Abdul Rauf they know spent the past decade fighting against the very same cultural divisiveness and religious-based paranoia that currently surrounds him.”

In his new book, Moving the Mountain, Rauf details the events in his own life that have shaped his religious philosophy. He also recounts the struggle to build the Lower Manhattan community center, which was designed to bring together Muslims with people from other religions.

“That was my goal,” he tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross, “because the world needs that today. Now, what happened at that time clearly wasn’t the perfect solution, and what happened did not reflect my dream or my purpose in the right way. But the dream still exists and continues to exist.” [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.