Reviews (69)

Very Exciting!
CD by Christy French is such a GREAT story!I can see why this book was on the BESTSELLERS list for such a long time.The plot truly keeps the reader entertained for hours on end.

Terrific Story!
You know I, for one, cannot give this writer enough praise!I have enjoyed each and every book Ms. French has written to date and was thrilled to learn she has a new book that will hit the bookshelves sometime this year!An addition to her "Bodyguard" series.I know for a fact that any person who enjoys this fast-paced genre will love this story as much as I did!

Reviews (59)

Witty, Wonderful and Sooooo Good!
I am a great fan of Christina Dodd, mainly because she writes books in the historical regency type genre that I adore, BUT - because she writes with such feeling, freshness, and pure genius I decided to give her first contemporary a try. WOW - I am so glad I did!

JUST THE WAY YOU ARE has a sweetheart of a heroine who is caring, honest, earthy and so very `real'. She is Hope Prescott, orphaned daughter of a Texas minister and his wife who was then cruelly ripped away from her siblings - two sisters and a foster brother. It is part of that mystery of what happened way back then that shaped Hope into the person she is today. Hope works for an answering-service company operated by the kind Madam Nainci as she works feverishly to complete her computer-science degree. Growing up poor, has shaped Hope into the compassionate champion of underdogs and also drives her to earn the money to finance a search for her lost siblings.

She meets Boston's wealthy corporate raider business whiz Zach Given when his company employs Madam Nainci's Answering service. Hope mistakes him as his butler Griswald and after she thoroughly commiserates with the man she thinks is a butler over having to work for such an `old fart' of an employer, Zach doesn't correct her assumption as he is intrigued with the `voice'. Zach begins to enjoy the telephone friendship, as does Hope, and when he came down with a cold - Hope brought the poor `old dear' some chicken soup - surprised that the `poor old dear' turns out to be drop dead gorgeous. Zach posing as Griswald - is also taken back as he discovers that the middle aged matron he assumed Hope to be was a young, intelligent and very attractive female he decided then and there to seduce thinking how surprised she'd be when he told her who he really was.

True to her talents, Ms. Dodd's tale of misinterpreted identities is rife with humor and feelings as she introduces a delightful supporting cast of characters from the very real butler, Griswald, to Zach's witty and wonderful Aunt Cecily, eccentric and kind Madam Nainci and all the diverse and zany characters that subscribe to the answering service. The romance is quick and the passion extremely sensual. This is a wonderful romance in spite of being contemporary when it is done by an author whose deft hand at dialog and passion is unsurpassed. Bravo Ms. Dodd - you continue to amaze me with your gifts to engage and entertain your readers!--- Marilyn, for www.romancedesigns.com ---

I loved it.
The only Christina Dodd books I have read, is this one and the next one on the series, Almost like being in love, and if these books are "bad" compared to normal, then she has a fan for life. I thought they were great, ergo, can only get better, right? The two totally different plots did not bother me, I loved both stories and men and plots and supporting characters. I could not put it down and got very upset with any disruptions. Because of these books, I will read much more of her. I loved it. It was hot and fast paced, the beginning was a little slower then the second half of the book. But it was never truly really slow. A good read for a cold night. It woulndt be cold for long.

Reviews (49)

Short and excellent
I am a physician dealing with many diabetics. I have used this book, given it to my patients and recommended it to others. This book benefits my patients understanding of their emotions and offers solutions and direction. Don't mistake this book to be only about loss caused by death.

Packed with information
This short book is packed with tons of information and it speaks directly to your heart. It has really helped me and I wanted to pass the word.

Reviews (22)

Interesting story, but not life-changing
I don't know what I was expecting when I bought this book, but because of all the stellar reviews here I expected to enjoy it more than I did. I have to say that it was a very honestly written book, and for that I have to respect the author. She tells the story of a very personal odyssey. I wish I'd known beforehand that it had such a heavily Christian theme though, I probaby wouldn't have bought it. That's just my personal taste. Also, I had some problems with her writing, it could have used some editing for clarity.

Bottom line, it was an interesting story, but not gripping. Nothing I'd be moved to recommend to anyone else.

BESTSELLING WRITER FOR A REASON!
Ms. Johnson has become one of today's brightest new stars and for a very good reason!It takes talent...real talent to become a bestselling author and take my word for it this writer has what it takes!Buy her books today!That's an order!

Compelling and Spellbinding
It has been some time now since I have read an entire book straight through in one sitting.The Grass Dance captivated me from page one and although a very short book it is filled with a myriad of emotions I had personally lost touch with in my own life.As I read about Grandma and Grandpa I pictured my mother's parents, right down to the "Pshaw" my grandmother always said of anything she felt beyond belief or perhaps exaggerated.

I am not a book reviewer, but rather an author myself, and I think that I shall never write anything in my lifetime as emotionally powerful as The Grass Dance; not even if I write for another fifty years.I opened a book written by a little known author about her personal struggle through a dark portion of her life and became spellbound.I had surgery scheduled in the morning, it was late in the evening, and I couldn't put the book down. I needed my rest badly, but I needed this book's message more.

Thank you, Laurel, for the "sharing".This book is a must for anyone who isn't sure of what life is all about or for anyone who needs another "tool" for helping others figure it out.

Reviews (120)

Great Fun Is What The Lambert Series...
Is About!I loved this series.It offered me everything I look for in books of this nature.Each book in the series only continued to get better and better and the excitment was nonstop!

I couldn't wait to see who Nouri Sommers finally wound up with.Surprised!Maybe a little.I will tell you this perhaps who she wound up with wasn't that must of a surprise BUT how this story ended certainly was!!!

I look forward to many more stories by Victoria Taylor Murray, my new favorite writer of romantic suspense.

The Lambert Series By Victoria Taylor Murray ...
IS MORE FUN THAN WATCHING A TELEVISION SOAP...I have to tell ya, I am having such a glorious time with this fun soap opera!The characters hooked me right from the very start.Of course, Nouri is my favorite but I also enjoy all the sexy men in her life as well.This series has been highly etertaining and I will be sorry to see it end.

Editorial Review

Reviews (8)

Highly Recommended!
Abigail Trafford's compassionate guide to the post-retirement years is a fascinating collection of personal stories, mixed with a healthy dose of sociological and scientific findings. Her research into what she calls "the Bonus Decades" began when she found new meaning in her life after age 50. As she talked with hundreds of members of her generation, or "My Timers," Trafford uncovered a quiet revolution in the making. These adults, who are finished with child-rearing and have reached the end of successful careers, are wondering, "now what?" as they face longer, healthier lives post-retirement. It is this generation, she predicts, that will change the structure of the workplace, reaffirm the values of family and community, and leave an enduring legacy. Trafford's insightful comparison of the storms of adolescence to the emotional and spiritual crises of late adulthood will resonate with anyone facing retirement, a late-in-life career change or simply a growing feeling of anxiety and dissatisfaction with the norm. This is not a how-to book or a survival manual, but a reassuring travel guide to the uncharted territory of "Second Adolescence." We recommend this book to everyone older than 50 or soon to arrive there - after all, it's about time.

Disappointing
If you are looking for a "What Color Is Your Parachute" book for guidance on making the most of your life between 50 and 75, this is not it.It is a collection of impressions and interviews with successful cheerful retired professionals, rather than a hard look at our choices and how to make major decisions on jobs, families, finances, health, and spiritual well-being. Her subjects are uniformly propserous, well-educated, self-aware, and articulate.It reads like an expanded article from the Washington Post, and since the author is a Post writer there, no wonder.Lawyers and doctors are her featured subjects.Some of the books and studies she cites may be worth pursing, but it is hard to tell.This book fills its market niche, but a wider audience could use a more comprehensive and analytic guide to these potentially productive and enjoyable years, as another reviewer puts it.This it reads like Gail Sheehy for 2004.

Your time -- if you're lucky!
Being well into what Trafford calls "my time" -- the time when family obligations slow down and we get time for ourselves -- I was eager to gain insights from this book.As a career coach, I work with men and women who have moved to "my time" or realize they're close.

Unfortunately, I couldn't recognize myself (or my clients) in this book, and I couldn't figure out what My Time was trying to do.Trafford is a journalist, not a counselor or career coach, and she has conducted what appear to be dozens of interviews with people at midlife.Unlike Po Bronson, who explored career change through interviews, she shows only happy, optimistic people who make few mistakes and experience even fewer financial woes.

My Time can't be viewed as journalism.Trafford adds words of wisdom -- not especially profound and not new to anyone who's been reading the self-help genre or surfing the web.For example, on page 38, she writes, "You look for potential in the daisy by your doorstep," rather than reaching for the more distant North Star.Compare this advice to what's contained in a better book, Finding Your Own North Star.Martha Beck describes a 55-year-old who starts a business after losing his job and retirement. In just a few sentences, Beck sketches a much more realistic, hopeful story.

So my biggest complaint: About Time straddles between self-help and light journalism, yet fails to fit either category.We get snippets of generalization -- e.g., dreaming helps us focus and we need to have plans -- but no tips for implementation.

My second grinchy comment: About Time trades on generalizations. In the fifties, we have increased medical bills. Older adults handle stress better. We have greater wisdom. We want to find meaning.These beliefs are comforting but not accurate.

I know lots of people who still enjoy the edge that comes with making real money. Meaning? They'll donate to charity -- and frankly, they're not good at doing warm-and-fuzzy.

Wisdom?When you're thrust into a new life, you start over. Often skills and knowledge that served you in the corporate world become irrelevant -- even harmful -- during a life transition.Any real estate agent meets midlife retirees who decide to move to the country, only to find themselves isolated and miserable. They lose money as they sell their retirement homes and move back to where they belong.

Generalizations are especially dangerous when writing about midlife, because people in the 50-to-80 age range are so diverse.We are what we've lived. In a big city gym, I once observed a group of fifty-plus exercisers, walking slowly around in a circle.In the next room, members in the same age group were training to run a marathon.

At fifty, you may be fully employed at the peak of your career. Or you may be newly laid-off, forced to discover a new path, possibly with no retirement savings. You may be ready for a career change.I've met 45-year-olds entering college and others who trained for careers as truck drivers and flight attendants.In their fifties, they'll be newbies.

That's why the comparison with adolescence fails.In the US, nearly every fourteen-year-old is in 9th grade. A few are in 8th or 10th.But legally they're all in school, with a few home-schooled, and they're getting ready for high school.
A ten-year or twenty-year stint will pay huge dividends. At fifty, a ten-year-stint will have limited payback time.

Finally, this book is relentlessly cheerful. In a poignant interview, "Nancy" reports dealing with ageism when she applies for a challenging, full-time "real" job.She freelances and consults.She's learning to reinvent herself, chirps the commentary.

But we're missing a key point. If we have thirty years ahead of us, we have time for another career. Society's infrastructure and business culture have not caught up with this reality. There's still a stigma to starting over in many professions and often the doors are closed. Free lance work and volunteering do not compensate for the loss.For some of us, the daisy on the doorstep will be a reminder that we're missing our full-blown rose garden -- or our daily treks to the steamy jungle!

I wanted to be positive until I came to the end of the book, where the author rejoices in how "good," "strong" and "generous" people are.Anyone who agrees to invest in a journalistic interview will come across as good and generous.

Strong? Trafford says, "[F]or the most part, they repaired or renewed after loss..."What does "most part" mean? For that matter, what does "repaired or renewed" mean?What's the difference between the "most part" and the "least part?"

I didn't see examples of people who were tossed out of the corporate world in their mid-fifties, with limited options in their own industry. I didn't see examples of people who lacked insurance to get the kind of health care these interviewees took for granted. Nor did I see examples of lonely people who had to make new friends after losing a profession or spouse.

Reviews (48)

New Alternative
There must be something about The South Beach Diet that makes it so popular. However, I think that we in North America, while chasing the perfect body, forgot about what really matters - the perfect health.

I am a creature that trusts everybody, but not without a dose of skepticism. Therefore I always make a point of trying new approaches on my own before expressing any opinion. After going trough The South Beach Diet I realized that Agatston is just updated version of old Atkins. Although these two low carb approaches certainly bring good results from the point of loosing weight, I am not really convinced that this is what one need to focus on. First of all, it is a hard diet to follow, and sooner or later one is bound to break some of the rules. Secondly, I find that in a healthy diet we need carbs the same way as we need fats and proteins.

Out of all approaches to losing weight, the one that makes most sense to me is presented by Dr. Tombak in his book "Can We Live 150 Years?" Using simple language he talks abut all aspect of health and longevity. Following some simple food combination guidelines, and not letting your stomach direct your actions are the basic things that one needs to do. As Dr. Tombak advises: "Eat to live instead of living to eat!"

The interesting thing is that once I started following Dr. Tombak's guidelines I lost about 10 pounds within six to seven weeks without ever focusing on losing weight. I was more concerned about proper nutrition and healthy life style more than anything else. Loosing weight was just a pleasant byproduct of my new lifestyle.

But of course that is not all. It turns out that improper diet is only one of a few causes of obesity for many people. Mr. Tombak names other, less known causes of the problem and he also suggests the ways of dealing with them.

It's not a complete and easy reference as the title states
If you are looking for a diet that is easy to follow, does not leave you hungry, is effective, nutritionally balanced, and improves your overall health, the South Beach Diet may be for you.In this companion book to The South Beach Diet book, Dr. Agatston lists many common foods, as well as whether they can be enjoyed in abundance, limited, or avoided completely.While this could have been done with a simple food list, this information is presented in a table that also lists carbs, sugar, and total fat.

The beginning of the book gives a brief overview of the diet, and a discussion of trans fats and why they should be avoided.It also has a discussion of the glycemic index. Although the recommendations in the book are based on glycemic index, glycemic load, and other factors, this information does NOT appear in the tables, purportedly because it's not available for all foods. Leaving it out for that reason, even when known, defies credibility.

As followers of this diet know, it's not about following the glycemic index, or counting calories or carbs.While the GI may serve as a guideline to let you know where foods fit in, it can also be misleading since some foods with similar GI values may not be of equal value to your diet.All this is explained in the main diet book, which gives a brief list of GI values for common foods. Likewise, we are told that total fat is not the big factor, but how much is saturated or trans fat vs unsaturated fats is important.That distinction is not made in the tables, which list total fat.

If a strict look at those factors is not a necessary part of the diet, then why are they in the table? That's not clear. The portion that describes how to use the guide acknowledges that you need not be a slave to the numbers, but the real advice ultimately boils down to following the main diet book, in which case all but the last column (whether and how much to eat) seems irrelevant.

The other problem is that this supposedly complete book is far from complete.It has too many entries for items that are obviously not allowed on the diet, and few entries for what might be suitable substitutes.

If you look at breakfast foods for instance, you'll find bacon and eggs, cereals, and pancakes.Yet you won't find French toast. You may be able to figure it out based on the rules from the diet book, but then why do you need this book? It's not as if processed foods or foods prepared from recipes that may vary were left out. There seems to be no rationale for what's included.

If you do look at cereal, you will find a couple of pages of cereals that are limited or should be avoided completely.But do I really need this book to tell me to avoid Frosted Flakes and Corn Pops if I know how the diet works? Yet if I look at the myriad "healthy" cereals in my supermarket, not one of them is listed in this book. The same is true for the ones in natural food stores, even if they are available nationwide.

I might be able to figure out on my own that Uncle Sam cereal is a good choice, but then why buy the book? On the other hand, I might find another supposedly healthful cereal, and the label may show me that it's whole grain and high in fiber, but has more sugar than I would want.It's foods like these for which I would like the book to give me an idea if it's acceptable.

There are way too many common foods left off the list, which is surprising considering the exhaustive permutations and combinations listed for others. I don't need five pages to tell me that all baked and broiled fish is good, but breaded fish is not. If it's the recommendation that counts, I don't need a separate entry for tuna, canned, light, in water, and different ones for dark tuna in all its permutations, when ultimately, they fall into the same recommendation as other fish.

The bottom line is that if you stick to the main diet book, and manage to work around the flaws in the way it was written, you won't need this guide.This book might be helpful if you are on Atkins or even Weight Watchers, however.

Reviews (23)

Lost steam, unbelievable
I just finished this book a few days ago. What a disappointment. I thought that since it had the great name Ludlum on it, it would be better. How wrong I was.

I agree with the reviewer who said it lost steam after about 150 pages. It started out great, and I was really enjoying it as the tension built up. But then something happened midway through where it just became unbelievable. The main character, Metcalfe (who is supposed to be only 29 but acts way older at times) will be in a hot spot, unable to get out, and lo-and-behold, somebody would come along just in time to rescue him, or he'd happen upon just the right tool to help him out of the job. In the end, everything fell together just too easily, and it was too cliche the way the "bad guy" spent several pages explaining what he did, the whole time threatening to kill the hero. I just can't recommend this book.

Of course it's not the same. He's dead.
Few people could write the espionage thriller as Robert Ludlum could. Bits of him are found in Nelson DeMille, Len Deighton, LeCarre to some extent, and Furst to some extent. And the Nazis and Russians are an enormous mother lode of people who transcend evil. So it's hard to run out of bad guys.

Another thing that punctuates the Ludlum novel in addition to great characters is that there is that stream of history that runs through it. Accuracy. Some truth. How much? We just don't know. Jason Bourne? We don't dismiss him because we can see where such events might have commenced. The Parsifal Mosaic? Might have been. Who knows.

And here we have Stalingrad. Giving the devil his due, literally and figuratively, how could Hitler have been coerced into invading Russia? Yammamoto was supposed to have called the U.S. 'the sleeping giant' after the rejection of a second attack on Pearl, but any student of history knows that the real sleeping giant was the rabid Bear of Mother Russia.

So a diabolical, intricate plan is hatched to use double and triple agents to create that whiff of believability, and somehow translate that pseudo conspiracy to the highest level of the Third Reich, to Hitler himself. To not just shatter the truce between Germany and Russia, but to get Hitler to invade the Soviet Union.

And at the center of this, a man we start off disliking, the promiscuous, educated, multi-lingual Steven Metcalf.

Good plot, complicated figures, double crosses and triple crosses. Murder most foul. But we must remember that it is a rewrite. Mr. Ludlum is dead. This is but a manuscript, a work in progress.

My criticism of the novel is that too much time is spent explaining to the reader why Metcalf is NOT going to do something, virtually over and over. The dialogue is crisp but the introspective thought patterns tedious. They are too long. It drags in parts.

Excellent stuff but maybe it's time to let Mr. Ludlum rest in peace. 4 stars. Larry Scantlebury

Editorial Review