Music Reviews

Broken Wings (Soul Searchers Series: Book 1)

admin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:58:05 +0000

In this opening book of the Soul Searchers Series, a con-artist who's been hired to locate a buried treasure finds more than she bargains for.Rio Laraquette thought the legend was nothing more than an enchanted tale about star-crossed lovers who left behind a fortune. That is, until she figures out that she--in a past life--was the culprit who stole a shipment of gold and silver and buried it somewhere in the hills of northern Nevada.While searching for the treasure, Rio's heart begins to ache for a man who's been dead more than one hundred years. They say time heals all wounds, but what if it doesn't...?** Book One in the Soul Searchers Series is a novella of approximately 45,000 words (Print Length: 215 Pages). This title is also available in the Soul Searchers Omnibus.**Kindle Edition Update: December 2011

Legon Awakening: Book One in the Legon Series

admin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:49:32 +0000

Set in a world that is not our own, Legon Awakening takes you through an epic journey into a land full of wonderment, illusion, and innovation.Join Legon and his sister, Sasha, as they search to understand their true heritage and unravel the possibility of being part human and part elf. Surrounded by Elves, the newly introduced Iumenta race, Dragons and Humans, our heroesâ�� lives are filled with adventure and fantasy in their search for answers, as they begin a larger-than-life quest of discovery. Not to mention the incredible battle scenes, which are sure to capture your imagination!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Pop-Up Book

admin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:58:05 +0000

Author Q&A with Eric Carle Q: Itâ��s clear that creating pictures gives you great joy. Are there other hobbies or interests that give you a similar sort of happiness? A: Not in the same way, though I do enjoy gardening. I have more recently been taking photographs of interesting textures I come upon in my daily life and immediate surroundings: a patch of grass, a section of cement sidewalk. About the question of hobbies, I have often said: My work is my hobby and my hobby is my work. because even when I am not working in my studio, I may be thinking about a book or an idea that is connected to what I am working on. Q: Can you share some of your favorite memories of meeting children and adults who admire your work? A:I have met many wonderful people over the years, children and teachers, parents. People come with so many meaningful stories about my books in their classroom and kind words about their own childhood memories of being read to. It is very gratifying to meet people who enjoy your work. I have also been on the receiving end of a tremendous amount of fan mail over the years. And have been sent many gems, letters and drawings from children around the world. One of my favorite letters was from a reader who told me, I believe he was writing from Texas, that he wanted to come and visit me but he wasn't allowed to cross the street! Q: Many characters in your books are animals â�� how did you develop such a love of the natural world? A: I have always loved animals and insects and been fascinated by them. My father was an animal lover and took me on walks in the woods, introducing me to the creatures who lived underneath the bark and so forth. And I think my approach to how I draw animals is a combination of realistic and imaginary. While I have photography books in my studio that I refer to and while I aim for a certain amount of accuracy when it comes to my pictures of animals, the creatures in my books are also growing out of my imagination.

Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)

admin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:49:32 +0000

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

Water for Elephants: A Novel

admin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:58:05 +0000

Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison. Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea. The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena's and Rosie's pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it--and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely. --Valerie Ryan

Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know [Illustrated Edition]

admin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:49:32 +0000

2011 Reprint of 1915 edition. Illustrated full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This volume contains a collection of fairy tales from a wide array of classical works, which we have grown up throughout time. These tales are immortal and include the following: Enchanted Stag; Twelve Brothers; Puss in Boots; Jack and the Beanstalk; Princess on the Pea; Ugly Duckling; Light Princess; Beauty and the Beast; Hansel and Gretel; Jack the Giant Killer; Second Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor; Story of Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp. Illustrated with 8 engravings by Mary Hamilton Frye. Hamilton Wright Mabie (1846-1916) was an American essayist, editor, critic, and lecturer.

Wife by Wednesday

admin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:58:05 +0000

Blake Harrison:Rich, titled, and charmingâ�¦ And in need of a wife by Wednesday so he turns to Sam Elliot who isnâ��t the business man he expected. Instead, Blake is faced with Samantha Elliot, engaging and spunky with a voice men call 900 numbers to hear. Samantha Elliot:Owner of Alliance, her matchmaking firm, and not on the marital menu... That is until Blake offers her ten million dollars for a one-year contract. All she needs to do is keep her attraction to her husband to herself and avoid his bed. But Blakeâ��s toe-curling kisses and charm prove too difficult to combat. Now she needs to protect her heart so she can walk away when their mercenary life together is over.

The Book of Tea

admin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:49:32 +0000

That a nation should construct one of its most resonant national ceremonies round a cup of tea will surely strike a chord of sympathy with at least some readers of this review. To many foreigners, nothing is so quintessentially Japanese as the tea ceremony--more properly, "the way of tea"--with its austerity, its extravagantly minimalist stylization, and its concentration of extreme subtleties of meaning into the simplest of actions. The Book of Tea is something of a curiosity: written in English by a Japanese scholar (and issued here in bilingual form), it was first published in 1906, in the wake of the naval victory over Russia with which Japan asserted its rapidly acquired status as a world-class military power. It was a peak moment of Westernization within Japan. Clearly, behind the publication was an agenda, or at least a mission to explain. Around its account of the ceremony, The Book of Tea folds an explication of the philosophy, first Taoist, later Zen Buddhist, that informs its oblique celebration of simplicity and directness--what Okakura calls, in a telling phrase, "moral geometry." And the ceremony itself? Its greatest practitioners have always been philosophers, but also artists, connoisseurs, collectors, gardeners, calligraphers, gourmets, flower arrangers. The greatest of them, Sen Rikyu, left a teasingly, maddeningly simple set of rules: Make a delicious bowl of tea; lay the charcoal so that it heats the water; arrange the flowers as they are in the field; in summer suggest coolness; in winter, warmth; do everything ahead of time; prepare for rain; and give those with whom you find yourself every consideration. A disciple remarked that this seemed elementary. Rikyu replied, "Then if you can host a tea gathering without deviating from any of the rules I have just stated, I will become your disciple." A Zen reply. Fascinating. --Robin Davidson, Amazon.co.uk

Something Secret This Way Comes: Secret McQueen, Book 1

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:58:05 +0000

Some secrets are dangerous. This Secret is deadly. Secret McQueen, Book 1For Secret McQueen, her life feels like the punch line for a terrible joke. Abandoned at birth by her werewolf mother, hired as a teen by the vampire council of New York City to kill rogues, Secret is a part of both worlds, but belongs to neither. At twenty-two, she has carved out as close to a normal life as a bounty hunter can. When an enemy from her past returns with her death on his mind, she is forced to call on every ounce of her mixed heritage to save herselfâ��and everyone else in the city she calls home. As if the fate of the world wasnâ��t enough to deal with, thereâ��s Lucas Rain, King of the East Coast werewolves, who seems to believe he and Secret are fated to be together. Too bad Secret also feels a connection with Desmond, Lucasâ��s second-in-commandâ�¦Warning: This book contains a sarcastic, kick-ass bounty hunter; a metaphysical love triangle with two sexy werewolves; a demanding vampire council; and a spicy seasoning of sex and violence.

The Hunger Games: Movie Tie-in Edition

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:49:32 +0000

The New York Times bestselling The Hunger Games, with an all-new cover from the major motion picture!The astonishing bestseller is now a fantastic movie. Here is the original novel with new movie artwork on the cover. (Original cover version also available.)In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.