I used this text as a source for my Master's Thesis. Although I found it gave plenty of information regarding older sitcoms, it was limited by those of I Love Lucy, Roseanne, etc. It doesn't give very much basic information on feminist media theory, instead it takes a Stuart Hall cultural critique-esque approach to analyze the images of women in certain television shows. However, the number of texts that you can get from the authors' listings of sources is very rich. I intially purchased this book because of previous article readings I had done by Julie D'Acci. The text at whole is very long, but broken down into articles could be very helpful for media theory classrooms.

Although better than the first book in this duet (which isn't saying much), "First-Class Father" is still only an OK read. The prologue tells you that a rich couple is searching for their twenty-five year old daughter who was taken from them at birth. Then we meet the twenty-five year old heroine. Guess who she is? The plot moves along quickly, and Heather and Dylan are likable, but I personally can't stand books where you know the guy is the father of the woman's baby, yet the characters don't get around to learning that forever. Predictable events and a too-cute epilogue ruin what could have been a real page-turner.

When I first picked up this book at the bookstore I thought I would be in for a light hearted reading experience. I was surprised to read what I did. Mayerson was direct and to the point about all of the realities of marriage. The women that she interviewed were very candid and did not hide anything. I am getting married soon and this book gave me the opportunity to really see all the different types of relationships that there are.

this book had good pictures and a basic overview of the breed but if you're looking for something informative this isn't the book for you.

Nice book since my Lhasa Apso got mated to a mixed breed and she is about to give birth. But I think some of the info is general, like in training. Excluding the part dedicated to mixed breeds, I think the book can also be called Guide to owning a dog.

If you know anyone with a '50's style mother/grandmother who is now getting married. (The couple having lived together before the wedding) They will appreciate the humor in this book. It's mostly jokes about what USA society thinks a bride should be. (Well what the 50's pretended was the ideal bride) I.e. how to look "perky" without actually being that person, Gosh, I just can't bear to say that "V" word! I suspose this humor is what makes the "V" monologs so funny.

Charlotte Charke led an amazing life in eighteenth-century England. Often in debt, cast out by much of her comfortably-off family, partly for her habit of wearing men's clothes, she tried her hand at inn keeping, pie making, doctoring, waiting at table, gentleman's gentleman, and most successfully (tho that's not saying much) as a strolling player. Her words tumble out just like someone speaking, she doesn't always stick to the point but she brings her times and surroundings vividly to life as she junkets about the country with Mrs Brown, her Friend, living from hand to mouth.

Charlotte Douglas returns to tell some "Montana Secrets" in her latest Intrigue. For five years, Catherine Erickson believed her fiancé, Ryan Christopher, was killed in an embassy bombing. She raised their daughter alone on her family's Montana ranch, until a mysterious stranger appeared in her life. He said he was a friend of Ryan's. So why hadn't she ever heard of him? Trace Gallagher couldn't reveal his true identity without putting Catherine in danger. Can he keep her safe without breaking her heart?

"Montana Secrets" was an okay story, but nothing special. It's a well-written book. The story moves quickly and the storytelling is smooth. The characters are charming, the emotions feel real, and while there isn't much actual suspense for most of the book, the story is engaging enough to keep readers turning the pages.

I think I would have enjoyed "Montana Secrets" more if I hadn't read the last few months of Intrigues first. This is the fourth month in a row where one of the Intrigues has been about a presumed dead man returning to the woman he loved. Linda O. Johnston's "Operation Reunited," Intrigue 655, was the most suspenseful and dramatic. Sylvie Kurtz's "Red Thunder Reckoning," Intrigue 657, had the richest characters. Harper Allen's "The Bride and the Mercenary," Intrigue 663, was the most romantic. All of those books had something that made them feel a little different and special. "Montana Secrets" didn't. By throwing in amnesia AND a secret child AND the Montana ranch setting, the author really makes this seem like the same old story most of us have read before.

There's really nothing wrong with "Montana Secrets." It's a nice book. There just wasn't anything that made it stand out and a little too much that made it feel like a story I'd read before. It's a little too predictable, a little too familiar. Readers who haven't read stories like this before and Douglas's fans should enjoy it more than I did. I would have to recommend any of those other books before this one.

This book is designed to create a bleak,desolate tone (a la Wuthering Heights), and it does so by describing the heroine's graduallyincreasing suffering and oppression. The novel, like so many of Arthur Conan Doyle's SherlockHomes stories, exposes the vices that can flourish in the lonely, isolated British manor. The hero'ssufferings come as a blast of fresh air and relief in the novel: Orlando goes to fight on the Britishside in the American revolution and ends up wounded with several Indians in a rather inaccuratelydescribed American landscape. There is a sort of sequel, The Wanderings of Warwick, which tells what happens to two of the characters who disappear for a huge portion of the novel. The heroine is rather pathetic for a good deal of the novel, but she gets a burst of feminist courage at the end of the novel as she sets out on her own and finds a job.

While this book is not a "literary companion" for university students or scholars, the so-called "young adult" audience for whom it was intended will find it quite useful. Many junior and senior high students -- or even those adults with only a casual interest in learning more about this novel -- often find the language of academic journals cumbersome, confusing, overly dense -- and thus beyond their interests.

The book includes a brief biography of Charlotte Bronte, descriptions of the characters, and even some early reviews of the novel for background purposes. The selections for the collected essays of this text are quite good, a survey of ones illustrating shifts in interpretation, that help with imagery and even with the understanding that a novel can be read/examined at levels that go beyond plot and story-telling. For example, the essay by Annette Tromly ("Jane's Unwholesome Eden") points out that Jane's story, often read as a simple Cinderella tale, is not just a "happily-ever-after" if the reader examines it closely. For the young adult, that is an important insight. One of the strengths of this book is that the essays are easy to read: they have been simplified in language and length to make their points accessible to the younger reader.

That, of course, is also a serious limitation for the scholar or even advanced undergraduate. The essays are not the original, do not contain the references to sources cited by the author(s), and would not be used in a scholarly or academic paper. But teachers in accelerated classes for secondary schools, in English-as-a-second-language courses for adults (whose life experience would cause them to seek more sophisticated discussion of a classic novel, despite their limited vocabulary or reading level), or in noncredit introductions to literary classics might very well find this book fills a need that is not usually met.