The book ain't exactly about a ninja, but about the Sensei, of the League of Assassins. Learn more about his feud with Bruce here.

This book had all the twists and turns you expect from a Perry Mason Mystery, but lacked some of the charm. The court case, which is always my favorite part of a Perry Mason book, does not come until close to the end, and Mr. Mason does not have that much a part in it-Which is an interesting turn that makes most of the otherwise kind of boring story, worth reading. All said, it is an entertaining story, but far from Mr. Gardner's best work.

Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason is faced with a peculiar request in "The Case of the Screaming Woman." Joan Kirby wants Mason to cross-examine her husband, who she says told her a cock-and-bull story about picking up a stranded woman in the middle of the night and dropping her off at a hotel. When Mason investigates, he finds that his new client is likely to be implicated in the murder of a doctor running a singular sort of clinic.

It should come as no surprise that the book ends with a dramatic courtroom confrontation. This time, though, the scene rings false. Mason confronts his D.A. nemesis, Hamilton Burger, but the D.A.'s actions seem unusually inept and cartoonish. Mason succeeds in making a fool of the man far too easily, and the book ends on an unimpressive note. This ending is especially unfortunate given the strong beginning. In setting up the preliminary hearing, Gardner does a wonderful job of presenting the lies of witnesses and suspects alike, leaving Mason with the difficult task of finding the truth in the pile of lies. In addition, the mystery here is one of Gardner's better ones. The clues are there, and the identity of the true culprit still comes as a surprise. The review, then, is mixed. Amid so many good things is the one false note, but the prominence of that note makes it a real clunker.

"The Case of the Singing Skirt" is one of Erle Stanley Gardner's eighty-five Perry Mason books. In this case, the famed defense attorney undertakes to help Ellen Robb, a cigar-and-cigarette girl who works at a local gambling club. Because she refused to help the owner swindle a gambler, Ellen finds herself framed for the theft of a certain amount of money. Mason quickly defuses that situation, enabling the woman to keep the money and threatening suit against the employer for defamation. Events escalate soon, though, when Ellen turns up with a gun in her possession that she cannot explain. Mason suspects that another attempt to frame Ellen is in the works, and he takes steps to thwart that attempt. When a woman turns up dead, though, Mason must defend his client on murder charges--and himself against charges of being an accessory after the fact.

"The Case of the Singing Skirt" is really a novel in two parts. The first part deals with the machinations of the various parties before court, and the second part puts Mason in his element--the courtroom. As a legal thriller, "The Case of the Singing Skirt" is passable, though not particularly exciting. Mason spends a great deal of time deflecting his opponent's thrusts, but only in the last few pages does Mason go on the offensive. As a result, this book is not the best forum for Mason's considerable legal expertise. As a mystery, there is little doubt who the murderer is. Once one starts with the premise that Mason's clients are, as a rule, innocent, there is little more to figure out. Still, eighty-five books with a single character do not come about by accident, and there is a fair amount of charm to "The Case of the Singing Skirt."

QuickBooks 99 is a royal pain to use, so I bought this book to learn how to use it. The author does a good job of explaining how to use the software (and I really like the way QuickBooks commands are colored in orange), but unfortunately she forgets that the reader is a "complete dummy" who also needs a crash course on accounting. There is some basic information, but not enough to help you understand why you are using a particular function of QB to do something.

Still, I recommend this book over "QuickBooks 99 for Dummies."

Anyone wanting to wax nostalgic about baseball's past, particularly the 1940's, 50's and 60's, should pick up Peary's book. Anyone looking for a compendium of baseball's cult figures, particularly the weird or offbeat, may be disappointed. Each player gets a short revealing chapter penned by a different author. Like any compilation, the quality varies from chapter to chapter, from sports-column bland to personal reminiscense. But the range of major leaguers--from unknowns to certified greats--is broad enough to interest any fan. The gamut runs from legends like Mantle, Mays, Williams, Ruth, to middlings like Kluszewski, Colavito, Waitkus, to bottomers like Ueker, Throneberry and Bilko. There are the burn-outs too: Fidrych, Spooner, Belinsky; and most importantly the weird cases: Piersall, Lee, and my favorites, Joe Charboneau, and Steve Dalkowski. In fact, the book suffers from not including more of the latter, that is, those unknowns who have either an unusual flair or a distinctive story to tell. The greats have had their stories told many times over, making their inclusion seem unnecessary. It's the bottomers and oddballs where the real gold lies. Theirs are the stories that add genuine color and spice, showing that the game is defined by real human beings, not by the gods of hitting and pitching--and given baseball's rate of turnover, I'm sure their ranks are legion. (Good example not included in the book- Ryne Duran, whose 100mph fastball, Coke bottle eyesight, and Jack Daniels restbreaks, sent opposing players wild-eyed and running for cover.) Peary doesn't define cult as in cult ballplayers, but his successful film series defines cult movies by their distinctive qualities, not by their popularity or excellence. I wish he had applied more of those same standards to the fertile field of baseball. As it stands, the book remains something of a promising though unfulfilled project.

I picked this one up because I thought it would be a nice relaxing series of short essays for a cross country plane trip. I was a bit disappointed. Its essays are of uneven quality, the first and last two being the best, and in order to get the little nuggets of pithy critical theory goodness out of muddled mass that is the rest of this book one has to do a bit of searching. In fact Cultural Turn was almost completely unmemorable, except for the interesting bit on architecture and spectrality in "Brick and the Balloon" (The last essay) and a few of the remarks on the myth of scarcity in the "Second World City" that are to be found in one of the first two pieces. Jameson's writing in Cultural Turn seemed crippled by a greater than usual density of language and jargon, unlike in Political Unconsious, which make several of these pieces tough on either the casual reader (like myself), or the reader who is not versed in Jameson's ideas or specific field of Marxist aesthetic critique. A good addition to other writings by Jameson and on various subjects, but not a pleasant escape or introduction.

A good story with likeable characters, believable internal conflicts, and a happy ending. It is for everyone who believes that every small town deserves a dedicated doctor, willing to be on call 24/7.

This text was helpful in preparing for the clincial liscensing exam. I was able to quiz myself and check my answers prior to sitting for the LCSW exam. I have used it in supervision with students. I would caution that this is based on the DSM III and is no longer current for exam purposes. However, it is fun to use in discussions regarding differential diagnosis.

This book was good, although if you read alot of Inspirational Romance books, you'll probably reconigize the plot immediately, and there wasn't any shockers, nothing too unusual, that you weren't at all expecting.

Typical story of Dad with Kid, who needs a housekeeper/nanny and old g/f ends up with the job. There's several good scenes, but this is not a book to re-read.

Although, it's not really an 'expensive' book, so I could definitely say it's worth the money, for a one-time read, but not something you'd want to hang onto forever.