I tried to listen to the taped version. It's 12 two-sided tapes, with an advertised running time of 15 hours and 5 minutes. After about 10 hours into a car trip, we voted unanimously to put in the last tape, just so we could satisfy our "Who dunnit?" curiosity. Alas, even that strategy was frustrated, as only one of the murders is solved on the last tape. The writer's style is both pretentious and repetitious, a deadly combination. After we had heard "lugubrious" for the third time, the groans became audible, even above the traffic noise. The writer's obvious fascination with the styles, manners and customs of London in 1890 have led her to assume that all her readers are similarly inclined. For me, they got in the way of the story... constantly! I got the book/tapes from the local library, so it was free. It still wasn't worth the price. Unless you're fascinated by the trivial aspects of living in London circa 1890, save yourself from a gruesome ordeal.

Just a very tedious book, with far too many extraneous details and repetition. Not a bargain at any price.

This story was better than highgate rise. I thought it was well told. The very last few pages dragged on a little too much. I am still looking for something within the pages to make me "feel" something for the characters. There is still that undefinable something that makes you genuinely care about characters that is missing. If you have a desire to understand and connect with characters in a story, then I would not recommend this one (although sometimes you come close with Emily & Jack). If you really don't care about that aspect of this type of story, then I think it makes good reading. -Reed

Crushingly dull. The characters are bland and too poorly drawn even to be irritating. The plot is pedestrian, with details that are neither relevant nor even entertaining. Luckily the heroine's husband is absent in this book, so we are spared the embarrasment of being invited to share their (probably) tedious bedroom. Disagree with me if you like - just don't ask me to read any more Charlotte McLeod.

I had to force my way through this mystery. For books which are read for enjoyment and entertainment, that should not be the case. I've read her books before, and usually they are more tightly written, concise, with a plausible plot. This was not the case in this book, and it felt as though the inclusion of different family members was merely done as afterthoughts to connect to previous books. Very disconnected job... Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh

This is not one of Charlotte Macleod's best outings--things get a little toooo contrived, and there's hardly any Kelling family in the story (except some juicy stories from Jem)--but it's still a good way to spend a rainy (or snowy) afternoon.

I read this book in a bookstore in about one minute. It's all of 2 inches high by 1 inch wide and has no more than 20 pages. "A Aga" is the story of a guy who goes hunting, or something like that; I honestly couldn't tell. Every page has an incomprehensible scribble, followed by a description of what it represents. All are along the lines of "Hunting deer" or "They killed a bad man." Get the idea? Please avoid this book, unless you really love children and drawings by them.

This book was boring. Amy was too much of a goody-goody in this book, too. And she LET someone else cheat!!!!!!!!!!!! UGH! THIS BOOK WAS STUPID! AMY'S STORY in the PORTRAITS OF LITTLE WOMEN, fairly boring itself, was better than this!

At over 500 pages, this book would certainly seem to have a lot about the animal kingdom. However, one immediately begins to be wary when the first 100 or so pages are about the environment -- dwelling heavily on Africa's many parks, describing their sizes, briefly discussing the animals, and going into flora, and showing many pictures of nature. Even more daunting is the text -- which may stop mid-sentence before continuing three pages later, thanks to a two-page spread. And the photo captions -- in some cases, the description for the two page spreads are at the end of the SECOND page following it, or in some cases (page 344-5, for example) they have no caption at all.

With that being said, most of the photos are excellent: A leopard descending a tree, or how an elephant dwarfs the other wildlife at a watering hole. Some aren't as crisp as you'd expect from a book calling itself "A Visual Celebration", and in some cases there are five of one animal and none of the animal following it. Yet all in all the photos are splendid to look at.

A breakdown, out of a four star projection (without the one guaranteed star that all books get):
Photos (out of two stars): 1½ stars. The large majority are a pleasure to look at, though the variance in amount of photos from one animal to another loses a half star.
Text (out of one star): 0 stars. Oftentimes relying on detailed specs in the middle of a sentence describing an animal's size (or a National Park's, for that matter) makes reading cumbersome. Perhaps a spec list at the start of each animal would have made more sense.
Layout (out of one star): 0 stars. How the text appears on the pages, as well as the poor setup of captions and how one animal's photos may continue pages into the description of another animal was bad enough to take a half star from the photos. Thus why I gave it just two stars.

Overall, there is a good many better books as a photographic look out there than this one. Not really worth the money. Unless you need to learn how NOT to do a book layout.

The book's premise was fascinating to me (prolly because I'm a longtime pro wrestling fan with a huge interest in all the backstage stuff). And the book started off well too. But by page 20 the writing (specifically the dialogue) had sank to a sixth-grade level and it was growing tiresome to read page after page of poor writing. I'd like to see what someone like Dean Koontz, Stephen King, or someone else with a good level of writing talent could have done with the plot...this could have been great. But as it is, this book is sadly, medicore. Don't waste your money.

I don't usually like romances with children or babies in them, because it often seems to me as if the author included them just so that there'd be a cuteness factor for the book. In this book, the baby is a vital part of the story, but I still don't like the story any better.

Devon Clarke, author of the immensely popular column "Bringing Up Baby", is a fraud. She knows nothing about babies. Unfortunately, two fans of hers, a couple who'd applied her advice to their own child, die, and they leave their baby to Devon. I thought this was a bit strange and contrived, since this couple had no way of knowing what kind of person Devon was or even what she looked like, since she never did interviews. Anyway, Colin O'Reilly, Devon's new carpenter, helps her out with the baby. She needs that help not only because she's miserably bad with the baby, but also because someone is causing accidents to happen around Devon, in order to make it look as if she can't properly care for the baby. On top of all of that, Devon needs to do her first tv interview, and she needs to produce a baby and a husband, fast. She's got a baby, so she figures all she needs to do is convince Colin to pretend to be her husband.

I never really liked Colin that much. He seemed to be pretty much against everything Devon did or decided to do. The romance between them was a little forced, especially since, if I were Devon, I would've been too mad about the way Colin was acting to even get around to romance. Then again, Devon wasn't too brilliant either, digging herself into a deeper hole with her lies by actually using Colin as the "husband" she'd made up and even going so far as to create a fake video tape of their wedding. Any normal person would've just ended up admitting that they'd made the whole "perfect wedding, perfect husband, perfect child" thing up.

Charlotte's mother became pregnant out of wedlock, but her lover died in Viet Nam before Charlotte was born. Charlotte's paternal grandfather never acknowledges her, but, after a fight with his wife who said he should leave Charlotte *something* in the will, he left *everything* to Charlotte and nothing to his wife, providing Charlotte stay at the ranch for 2 weeks, or else everything goes to some woman. So the wife's son, Matt, has to convince Charlotte to come for the 2 weeks then sell everything to him for his mother to have. Got it?

Now Charlotte's just a tad bitter about her father and grandfather. Not knowing if her father would have ignored her too or loved her, she basically hated him anyway. She doesn't want to go to the ranch, but her mother guilt trips her into it. So, in the spirit of shooting the messanger, she acts like ditz to annoy Matt. She wears dresses and high heels at a ranch, is purposely late for everything, and, although she has riding prize ribbons, acts like she's afraid of horses when riding. She's annoyed that Matt never mentioned that her grandfather's wife and Matt's mother are the same person, while at the same time she admits that if she had known, she wouldn't have come (and, no, she had just met Matt, she had no reason to dislike him). She gets angry that Matt told her that an appointment with a lawyer (which she wanted to make sure he didn't make up the whole thing, though why he would is beyond me) was an hour earlier because he assumed she'd be an hour late. Of course, she *was* an hour late (and darn proud of it) and in lying about the appointment time, they were on time.

The reader is supposed to realize that the heroine is a good person, because, well, she thinks so, and her mother and grandmother think so too! WHY Matt falls in love with her is COMPLETELY beyond reason. There is NO REASON for him to want anything but to get rid of her. And even if he COULD live with her prissy ways, supposedly that's not the real her, so what good does that do for their romance?

It's not a complete flop, I did read the whole thing, and I didn't fling it across the room. But the characters are all flat (Matt, his mother, his 8 yr old son, who was really just a plot device, cause, look, Charlotte doesn't hate his pet mouse, looks like she's marriage material!). The conflict was basically Charlotte's pissy ways, but there was a side story with Matt's dead wife's sister. But the plot didn't really keep any tension or reach its potential. Ugh, a 1.5, which I'll round up.

This book was such a waste of time to read! I can't believe the library spent money buying it-but better them than me.

The crimes imputed to Charlotte Bronte are nothing compared to those perpetrated by Mr. Tully in writing this book. He begins with a silly premise, and presents it badly. Granted, he is not a professional novelist. However,the absurd dialogue and plot development read like the work of a (not overly talented) high school student. If he has any derious knowledge of the Brontes' lives and work, little is betrayed in this trivial volume. According to an article in the BBC's online service, the author intended it as a work of nonfiction but the publisher would only accept it if he called it a novel.

Perhaps the nonfiction approach would have been better, as Mr. Tully would have had to stick to the evidence of the alleged dirty doings at Haworth Parsonage. The book would in that case certainly have been shorter.

Or beter yet, non-existant.

The title of this novel should be 'The Crimes of the Curate', 'The Stupidity of Charlotte Bronte', or rather 'A Diatribe on the General Stupidity of Women'. Tully's novel reveals only one crime of Charlotte Bronte (the death of Anne) while making a demon of the curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Additionally, every woman in the novel is in some way a victim of Mr. Nicholls. Emily and Charlotte die by his hand while still in the throes of love, Anne is killed under his direction, and Martha Brown, the narrator, begins and continues a passionate love affair with Mr. Nicholls, knowing he is a murderer. Her description of their initial interactions describe not so much love, or even lust, but rather sexual harrassment and attempted rape. Her admission of enjoyment is by far the biggest of Mr. Tully's fantasies. I picked up this book because of the title and the fact that I harbor my own suspiscions about the traditional Bronte biography. What I found in the pages was mediocre writing, indistinguishable character voices and an unlikable narrator. I find Mr. Tully's story highly implausible and not a little fantastic.

Brontemeisters, admit it: Anything new on the Bronte front is riveting.

And while Tully's poisoning theory of the mysterious Bronte deaths is both unprecedented and fascinating, his thesis lacks evidence and is too speculative to be convincing.

Arthur Bell is portrayed as monstrous and manipulative - and he may well have been - but to have committed the crimes Tully/Martha accuses him of is to denigrate the intelligence and perspicacity of Emily, Branwell, and Patrick.

Notice the sinsiter exclusion of Charlotte: she, the most egotistical and unscruplous of the Brontes, providentially procured exactly what she craved most after her siblings died...recognition and financial reward.

After reading Tully's novel, I re-examined my Bronte biographies and found the evidence of communications and events, by turns, suspicious then commonplace. But it also made me re-think the origins of Emily's uncommon and extraordinary Wuthering Heights; her understanding of physical passion; Branwells's unexpectedly quick death; Patrick's hatred of and eventual acquiesence to Arthur Bell's presence; Anne's quietness and need for escape; and finally, Charlotte's smugness.

I can't concur with Tully's theory, but it made me think. Poison permeates this book; some is presented as historical possibility and some is proffered for pure, sheer cerebral incitement. Take a sip.

Unless you are a total jerk, you probably already know 90% of what is written in this book. Of course, most jerks aren't interested in reading about etiquitte, so this book is rather pointless. For me it was mostly common sense. There were a few good tips, but I wouldn't recommend buying the book.

There are no shortcuts to etiquette. This book is proof. It is more like an undeited magazine article than a comprehensive guide to modern civility.

This book is completely useless as a guide to good manners. Any child knows the rules of good behavior set down in this book.

Not many of us are actually going to be invited on our friends private boat. If we are then we are in the social level to already know now to wear high heels on deck.

If you had bought a car with her name on it you would have named it,"a lemon." It is !