Several yours ago i saw the tail end of a commercial that changed my life in about 30 seconds. i would like to know if anyone has or knows how i could get the audio books. please let me know any info you may have....thx dave

Everything Rita does is first class and simply awesome! Amazon... you ought to ask Rita about her newest addition of "Making Time, Making Money in Network Marketing". The tapes are brand new and they are fabulous!

Rita gave a speech on time management at a home economics convention in Kansas City when I was a college senior at Kansas State University. I can't tell you how many times I've turned to her book, Making Time, Making Money, to get her advice on a topic in my life. Delegation is a huge issue that she shared. I've always wondered what happened to her wanted MORE of her work. It was a pleasure to find this site today!!

No Comebacks was the first short story collection that introduced me to the dark side of society in a way that felt incredibly real. I was a teenager when I came across an audiobook (read by Frank Muller) from Recorded Books.

I was riveted to these stories of people who--more often than not--get themselves into strange predicaments and have to resort to violence or the like to get out. Often the stories end with a twist on the level of O. Henry (except more dire, of course) where we learn something new about the character(s) that Forsyth had previously held back from us.

I have yet to read any of Forsyth's novels but I keep going back to this collection time and time again, enjoying them as much as the first time (perhaps more now that I am older and can identify with them more).

I've read this book many years back and recently I read it again. "No Comebacks" is a real great book. Every story has its' own impression. Amazingly every story gives one common impression of a real fix, i.e. No Comebacks. There Are Some Days, There are No Snakes.. and of course No Comeback are really very good stories. The beauty of the book is that there are soft crimes & no violence. This is probably one of the best work of Forsyth !

I read this book a long time ago. "No Comebacks", the story with the same title is the most remembered story by me, out of all them and it is enough for a guarantee that the rest of the stories will also be good. So get your hands on the book and start off.

This is a book for those who are without hope. Written as though the author is telling her story to the reader, one-on-one, it captures the despair and joy experienced by one human being.
While September 11th was an unthinkable national tragedy, many have experienced the collapse of their "own tower" before they even had a chance to begin their life's journey.
Ms. Davenport's story begins with trauma and ends with healing and wholeness. It is the story of one woman's life; of things out of her control, and the choices she made because of those things. It is a story of resurrection; a story of how hope and renewal can spring out of ashes and destruction.
Ms. Davenport is to be commended for her honesty. She gently guides the reader through the process of her own ripening on the vine.

What a wonderful book. Michele's story is one of sadness but how she delt with it by finding God's blessings was awesome. Once I started reading the book I didn't want to put it down. I reccomend this book to all. Weather you are searching for answers in your life or not, this is a very uplifting book and very spiritual. Enjoy.

I loved this book! Michele's story is one that will melt a heart of stone; and one that will start people on the road of healing. You will laugh; and you will cry! You will see God's hand in every aspect of Michele's life as you read her story. We have an awesome God! Thank you Michele for telling your story! Your story broke my heart; but you showed me how to let God sew it back together.

I recently had back surgery and was going out of my mind with boredom when my mom insisted I read a book that had brought her much happiness in her teens. Ever since I picked up The Valley of Decision, I cannot stop insisting that everyone I know read it. Ms. Davenport made the characters come alive; They are real people whose lives I cried over, laughed at, was upset for and rejoiced with. It has been a long time since I felt as much a part of a book - probably since reading the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis in my childhood.

Reading this book has been one of the better things I've ever done for myself. I HIGHLY recommend it to all.

I first read this as a teenager (I'm now 50) and re-read it several times before I lost it sometime in my twenties. For years I tried to find it in second hand shops, or to order it from book shops, all to no avail. So I was not overly hopeful when I typed the title and author into Amazon's search engine - and was amazed and very excited when I got a picture of it in front of me within ten seconds! I had it in my hands just a week later and after all those years of thinking about it, was finally able to read it again. And I wasn't disappointed at all - it was as majestical, magical, emotional, compulsive and wonderful as I remembered, even after a gap of nearly 30 years. It's such a touching tale, spans such a great historical era and has such truly memorable characters, it still ranks as one of my very favourite books of all time.

I first read "The Valley of Decision" as a teenager, and find great comfort in it as an adult. I have reread it many times, not only for its "human" story, but for the sense of history it conveys. The sense of history in the book is strong, but the characters are even stronger. So many of the characters remind me of my ancestors, so each reading of the book is a delight.

Silent Prey - I rated this book 3 stars. Lucas Davenport travels to New York to help capture the escapes murderer from Eyes of Prey (third in the series) and to help former a love interest weed out vigilante cops from the NYPD. This effort falls a little short in comparison to the other Prey novels, but it is very entertaining. And, yes, Lucas hooks up with another woman in this book too. Maybe he is irresistible.

Winter Prey - In his fifth Prey book, some local cops from a small community call upon Lucas Davenport to help solve the murder of a young couple. What he finds is a new love interest, in the form of an attractive medical examiner, and a ring of child molesters. Like Eyes of Prey, this book also has a suprise revelation that keeps you guessing until the end. I rated this book 4 stars.

Night Prey - I rated this book 5 stars. Lucas davenport finds his way back onto the Minneapolis police force as a political appointee. Now he has to team with a dying investigator from the BCA to catch a serial killer, who has escalated from one murder per year to a virtual killing spree. This book is also fulfilling if you have read the other Prey books, because Lucas' love life starts to stabilize, and we see him grow as a man in love.

Read these books, and keep reading the Prey series.

I have all the prey series and continue to be impressed with the details of Sandford's writing and scene-settings. Lucas Davenport is the best loved character I've encountered in any book! Is it possible to get the fourth book of the prey series in hardcover? I look forward to the next one!

Lucas Davenport is the hero for the 90's - and well into the next century!

And now for a public service message:

Want to feel safe tonight, don't make Lucas Davenport mad at you.

A most interesting and delightfully opinionated book is the latest offering from Tom Davenport and Larry Prusack. Easily digested, this book attempts to 'out-meta' the competition in the game of management idea mindshare, by giving a framework by which other ideas are evaluated for their applicability to your organization. 'He who owns the process wins' is an oft-quoted cliché at ManyWorlds.com and this book makes a good claim for the process. But more seriously, it does introduce some important (dare I say new) thinking into the faddish and/or fatigued of management ideas.

The most critical of those is that of the 'idea practitioner' - the role of the unsung heroes in organizations that translate the guru's missives from on high to that of the real-world working business. They are defined as 'individuals who use business improvement ideas to bring about change in organizations'. And to help you seek out these people in your company, Davenport and Prusack helpfully profile a number of real idea practitioners across a range of companies such as BP, Clarica, World Bank, BIC and many others. But chances are that if you are attracted to this book, you are probably an idea practitioner yourself, even in latent form.

The idea practitioner is an idea filterer who possesses the key skills of 'translation, harmonization and timing' and applies them to new ideas around the organization. It's the skill of knowing when to introduce an idea, to maximize its impact and benefit to the organization.

What's the Big Idea? examines the lifecycles of ideas, internal and external adoption rates as well as describing the categories of gurus. These include academic gurus (think Michael Porter), consultant gurus (think Adrian Slywotzky), practicing manager gurus (think Jack Welch) and journalist gurus (think Tom Stewart). Of course these categories are blurred but the distinction is useful. An interesting step would be to consider what type of guru your company seems most interested in. My guess would be that hard asset companies are likely to be swayed by practicing manager and consultant type gurus, high growth companies by journalist gurus and very large enterprises by academic gurus.

But the problem with being an idea practitioner is while you may be rewarded by a good profile in Davenport's next book, you may not be appreciated for your network and filtering skills by your own organization. Indeed, pursuing your interest in ideas may only be tolerated once you have proved yourself in more operational roles. Even so, such an idea driven route can be career limiting, since in every idea you sell to the organization, there will always be an ounce of personal credibility that has to go with it. But by taking the core of the idea, the 'zeitgeist' and perhaps even innovating a little on top of it to make it more acceptable to your organization, you can build on the foundation of initiatives before it.

Which is just as ideas themselves do. In every idea, the authors would argue, there is a kernel of good practice that should be adopted. The problem is that there is often so much emotion wrapped up around a guru, or a leading company or the idea itself is that this kernel is often ignored or dismissed. But gurus themselves are also guilty of this practice. They often battle against each other, dismiss others' ideas or do not give credit to their sources, teams or inspiration. Sounds just like the local management corporate politics wrestled with in 90% of companies, doesn't it? Thus the role of idea practitioner becomes all the more important to the corporation, navigating both the external and internal battlefields.

Overall, a highly recommended read .Additional highlights including a non-partisan ranking of the top 200 business gurus (contrast that with our traffic based rankings on ManyWorlds.com) and an interview with the immensely smart Steve Kerr, previously CLO at GE and now at Goldman Sachs, on how he 'idea practitions'.

Companies with an unhealthy culture, and with the associated weak/passive H.R. dept that perpetuate this sickness, ultimately cannot innovate. Their Mavericks get laid-off, fired, or bumped out of the way. Go along to get along behavior is rewarded, and the uninvolved get promoted instead.

So as I contemplate Davenport and Friends' latest book offering, I am moved to share this simple truth:

Unhealthy culture eats: strategy for breakfast, the project schedule for lunch, troublemaker and soon to be laid-off maverick employees for dinner, and all remaining discretionary funds in the annual operating budget 6-months early for a midnite snack.

We can talk until the cows come home about the latest and greatest ideas for maximizing the productivity of knowledge workers -- but the $500 question is: WHEN will executive management start treating culture management as a fiduciary responsibility?

Until this happens, NOTHING else will happen -- except for the razorblade ride down to zero margins. Also, 80% of all new jobs are in companies with less than 25 employees. For the larger companies in the business landscape who think that they're going places -- there's a MESSAGE there.

I really appreciate Davenport's perspective on things; and he's always been a good collaborator with other leading minds. Davenport's focus has now shifted away from I.T. and K.M. and full tilt into Human Capital and Organizational Effectiveness. AMEN! It's about time! I'm an I.T. veteran of 20+ years who is SICK of living and working in a cess-pool of low morale by staff and displacement of responsibility by executive management.

CIO's everywhere sit up and take heed -- the goldmine that you seek is NOT in integration of your processes or technology. Instead, it's in your Human Capital; everything else is merely a consequence/outcome of that fact. Can't sell that idea to Finance you say? Then read about cultural triage from Geoffrey Moore's "Faultline" (also available from Amazon) and see how any line functions that are underneath Finance in the org structure will slowly suffocate and drive out mavericks -- because the default culture of Finance is operational -- not innovative.

Read Davenport's "Big Idea" twice. Then read Dave Ulrich's book "Why The Bottom Line Isn't" (also available from Amazon). Then stop talking to software integrators and instead go out and get yourself a really good HRD-OD professional with an I.T. background -- and PLEASE don't wait around for H.R. to give you "permission" to do this or you really will be waiting for the cows to come home. It's time to get traction and move on already. Otherwise you'll find yourself fired only 2 years into a 5 year contract.

Heed this advice or else "CIO" really does mean "career is over".

For anyone who has felt overwhelmed by the barrage of business and management ideas and movements, and at times even skeptical of their individual and cumulative claims, and that is most of us, this is the perfect book. Davenport and Prusak are veterans of the last two decades of management revolutions-they have been in the game long enough to look back at some of the ideas with which they have been associated with critical detachment, and to make some novel and deep sociological observations about how ideas get made, marketed, used, abused, and superceded. However, they are less interested in a blanket judgment on the idea trade than in taking a closer look and identifying what works and who is doing the working. According to D & P, none of the ideas pushed over the past couple of decades is entirely new, and none is without merit. However, none of the ideas is, or ever was, the best solution for each company in every set of circumstances. So much depends on the particular company's situation, and so much of a company's success depends on those inside the corporation-the "idea practitioners"-who select, advocate, refine, and implement the otherwise general and abstract ideas of management gurus. D & P (& W) have done a great service in refocusing attention and credit from the brand names to the practitioners, without, of course, slighting the great contributions of gurus, like themselves, to the agility and productivity of modern enterprise.

I fealt that Chupacabras and Other Mysteries was a good book if your into it. It had some loco information on the feared bloodsucker. The only thing that upset me was that it only had drawings of the beast, but I suppose any actual pictures would be disturbingly cheesy. If your looking for information on this creepy guy, this is definately the book to choose.

I must admit I bought this book as a rather light read. I expected to be finished within a few months. Bathroom material only. However as I got past the first chapter I began to read it more steadily. AFter only three days of owning the book I had read the entirety of the book and had began to search for small details. Anyone interested in Chupacabras or crypto-zoology, or even "Goblin universe" phenomena should check this book out. It reads easily and has a very nice style. I thought something would be lost in the translation, however I do not think so. All ideas are given a footing here (although not always equal) and it makes the mystery of Chupacabras very intriguing.

The Chupacabras remains a paranormal phenomenon not well understood where it appears, and even less so with interested US readers. Chupacabras and Other Mysteries provides the first substantive English work dealing with the bugger. It relies on the primary research and work of Jorge and Marleem Martin, who made first-hand investigations of animal mutilations attributed to the Chupacabras in the Puerto Rican municipalities of Orocovis and Morovis, and the book also uses the work of Jose Victor Ramirez, Willie Durand Urbina, Salvador Freixedo and other researchers, plus countless journalistic sources (El Vocero, El Nuevo Dia, The San Juan Star.) Chupacabras and Other Mysteries includes a photo section, none of the elusive creatures, but of kittens they "exsanquinated," haunts, and the original sketch based on eyewitness memory. Chupacabras is not a run-of-the-mill hide and seek type bigfoot. A wide variety of paranormal activity attends its visits. As UFO researcher Marc Davenport points out in the introduction, the creatures' reported eye-beams do not behave like the bio-luminesence of fireflies and deep sea fish. Chupacrabras is something else again, and this volume contributes greatly to helping figure out what.

Kenn Thomas, Steamshovewl Press

K2 is an endlessly fascinating. Beautiful and cruel, savage and mighty, mysterious and far away - seen by few and successfully ascended by even fewer - it draws and repels simultaneously.

Robert Mantovani does a superb job on the magnificent photographs, all in color, beautifully sharp and clear. The vistas and detail take your breath away. A special commendation goes to Patricia Lovicetti, the Graphic Designer. At [item price], it is a bargain at twice the price. It is a BIG book (10" x 14"), so it will need a place of honor on the coffee table.

Most of the text is from Kurt Diemberger's previously published "Endless Knot" (though this fact is not mentioned in the book). However, the pictures are well captioned and informative. Mr. Diemberger is a legend, the only man living with two first ascents of 8,000-meter mountains to his credit. He is also is among the elite few who have successfully ascended and descended K2, though at terrible personal cost. (See "Endless Knot")

This book would be a terrific gift to a climbing enthusiast or just as a wonderful indulgence to yourself!

If you've read all the classic historical books of ascents on K2 except this one, your library is incomplete. The power of this book is in part within it's outstanding photography and also has to do with how well it pulls so much information together. This is a complex mountain but the information is presented clearly such that one feels more comfortable with the different sides of the mountain and their challenges to the climber.

-although the text may just have suffered in the translations. If you want to see the single best collection of K2 photographs I've ever seen, and I have them all, this is the book for you. A bargain at anything less than about $250.00, it's bound and published beautifully (at least my copy was!)

I have purchased this book hoping to find something innovative, something very cool - and under the cover of so much advertisment I found a simple, but not bad, SAT preparation book. It has all the elements to prepare for the real thing except for the practice tests and the so-called "SAT words" - both of them are low in quantity. Perchaps it's a suggestion for the authors. Overall, I think I wouldn't have bought it if I had seen the Barron's title earlier.

PS: The "word teams" is just great - explore it more and this might be your key to success!

This is the best SAT book I've used - it really helped me improve my score. I thought it was well-written, and the practice tests were really useful. I would recommend it over any of the others out there.

This is the best SAT prep book out there. This has great pointers for avoiding common mistakes, a comprehensive vocabulary building section, an easy-to-understand math review, and even gives you prep talks along the way to keep you calm but psyched and ready to ace the test. This was great, I recommend it to anyone hoping for high scores on the SATs.