Every year thousands of self-help books are published promising you can be smarter, richer, thinner, happier and/or better pleased with yourself even without all of the above. The majority of these books have one basic assumption: that the reader knows what he or she wants.

Authors Kenney Hayes and Marlene Hamilton, however, know there are some --women in particular -- who may have a feeling there's something missing in their lives but aren't quite sure what. What may be missing, they say, is an understanding of one's life's purpose, a dream. Everyone has such a purpose, they advise, but may have either lacked the courage to pursue it or lost faith in their ability to do so. What Do We Want to Be When We Grow Up is for them.

"Get ready," writes Ms. Hamilton, "to visualize the invisible Dream God has for you, or the one tucked down deep within your heart."

In a breezy, wry style, Ms. Hayes and Ms. Hamilton offer the kind of "you can do it" encouragement one gets from good friends, and that is totally intentional. Although both are active in church ministry, they aren't out to preach a sermon. Instead, by using events in their own lives as examples, they show how even the negative events in our lives can further our path goalward. Each chapter is followed by a single page of exercises intended to build confidence and aid in self-discovery, making their slim volume an potentially excellent group study guide.

WHAT DO WE WANT TO BE WHEN WE GROW UP might almost be subtitled "An Introduction to Self-Help," because that is essentially what it does. It's a place to start if one is dissatisfied without quite knowing why, a first step on the road to finding out just what one is here for presented in an easily digested, uplifting way that never accuses or condemns. And it is well worth reading just for the pleasure of knowing the authors.

The middle of the twentieth century is in many ways the golden age of science fiction. Science fiction had come into its own with many great authors pushing the genre out into other areas such as mysteries and in this case fantasy. In 'A Yank at Valhalla,' Hamilton takes a sword and sorcerer type fantasy and mixes in strong scientific reasoning. The result is a plausible science fiction tale using Norse mythology. Today the science fiction/fantasy market is dominated by fantasy but back in the golden age, it was writers such as Hamilton that put the science first.

Keith Masters is a pilot on an Artic expedition. He finds a gold cylinder with runes. The runes give a warning about hiding the cylinder. The golden tube is a key that binds Loki and his familiars. If the key is brought back to Asgard, Ragnarok, the Norse equivalent of Armageddon, will occur destroying Valhalla and all the Norse gods.

Keith doesn't believe the runes and wears the cylinder as a good luck charm. While flying a scouting mission north of the main expedition, a storm comes up and forces his plane into a region of the Artic Ocean that blocks light, a gigantic blind spot on the face of the world. He flies through the light boundary and into the world of Odin, Thor, Freya, and Loki. His landing has just started a war between a race of humans with the scientific knowledge to control the weather and attain eternal life.

'A Yank at Valhalla' is a pure fantasy/action story. 'A Yank at Valhalla' is an easy recommendation to anyone who likes fantasy stories and it is a must read for those who are interested in a science fiction/fantasy tale that, if written today, would be dominated by magic.

I have never been so moved by an artist in my life! David has captured purity, in these Angelic forms of innocence.

If only we could preserve, what David has so passionately embodied in the pages of all of his books.

I await the next release

My book club chose the Book of Ruth to discuss last month. We are all educators and have taught Ruth, May and Ruby and their families. I have seen children go through our school system untapped and ignored because of background. These children can be forgotten about from 1st grade on up. It is much easier to ignore these situations than address them. This book made me appreciate the slow children, those from less fortunate, and the ones who do not speak up for fear of being ridiculed just like they are at home. I had a sympathy for Ruth and also for Ruby. T he general concensus was that no one felt sorry for May. She did not even try to overcome her circumstances whereas both Ruby and Ruth did. The ending was sad but all too real in todays society. The positive aspect of this book is that Ruth did survive and has an opportunity for future growth. The fiction of this ending is that all too many times in reality, Ruth would not have survived this brutal attack. Although not an uplifting book, I am certainly glad I read it.

As I got on the treadmill and turned on the tape, the plantiff sound of Ruth's voice made me feel I was reading her private journal and I hesitated for a moment. Did I want to know? Like other readers of this book, at times I felt repelled by the life circumstances of this troubled family. But having come from a poor, troubled family in a small town myself, I somehow found empathy even for May and Ruby. Could this have been my life if, by the Grace of God, things hadn't been different? Ruth, telling me her story in her own words, somehow helped me restore a link to my childhood that I had severed sometime in the past when I felt threatened by it. I don't know whether I would have loved this story so much if I had merely read the words off a page. My first experience with an audio book version of a novel was superb! Thank you

I just finished this book last night. This is the first Jane Hamilton book I have read. I can't wait to read A Map of the World.

I'm surprised that so many readers found The Book of Ruth so depressing, pointless, and disturbing. This book portrays the way real people are and live in our world. Only we don't always see them. Most of the time we don't even acknowledge they exist. Then they read a book like this one and can't stand to even think about them being real people. Well they are, and they may live in your neighborhood.

I felt sorry for Ruth. She was dealt a hand of cards and wasn't sure what to do with them. Ruth was missing love in her life. When she found Ruby, he gave her something that May couldn't. I am still thinking about Ruth and wonder if hope is enough to get her through.

I have read all of Jane Hamilton's books from the very beginning (even before Oprah told us to), but this one was a struggle for me. The premise of the story is timely. Henry Shaw discovers his mother is having an online relationship with a man she met in person at a family wedding. As a teen-ager he is going through his own personal struggles with the world as he watches his mother change before his eyes. He reads her e-mails to and from her lover by secretly accessing her internet account. He and his younger sister, a lesbian in the making who lives her life as a Civil War soldier while fighting the inevitable (growing breasts and feminine beauty) actually travel with Beth Shaw to meet the lover. I found the book interesting enough to continue to read but only after coming to terms with Henry's constant changes in his reference to his mother. He calls her many names to mirror the many roles she plays--wife, daughter, mother, musician, adulterer.

It is a story about feelings, confusion, deception, and even love. Although I am a big fan of Jane Hamilton and will continue to look forward to her books, I liked her first three a lot better than this one.

I was pleasantly surprised with Jane Hamilton's latest novel, Disobedience. Beth and Kevin Shaw's teenage son, Henry, is faced with knowing things about his mother that he can't share with anyone. While sneakily reading his mother's e-mail, he discovers that she is having an affair. For an entire year, Henry works through his anger, his disappointment and in some cases, his jealousy, as his mother works through her guilt and desire for a different life. The supporting characters in this novel are tremendously enjoyable, from Henry's tomboy, Civil War re-enactor sister, Elvira, to his first girlfriend, Lily, and keep the plot moving along at a fairly quick pace. For most of the book, I kept wondering when Henry would finally confront his mother and when he'd "get over it." Henry asked himself the same question in the novel, which I thought was entertaining. I loved Beth's book club and Henry's analysis of female book groups and would even recommend this to book groups for a potentially intense debate over infidelity.

Has Jane Hamilton missed the mark with "Disobedience"? This seems the debate raging, at quick glance, with fellow Amazon reviewers. Having read all of Hamilton's previous works, initially my concern was that she had. This is more a continuation of the reflective feel of "A Short History of a Prince" and less of the more plot-driven "The Book of Ruth" and "A Map of the World." This is where perhaps the "boring" criticism comes from, as Henry is hopelessly obsessed with his mother Beth's affair with a fellow musician. As with "Prince," Hamilton tells the story with a male narrator. Whether Henry comes out sounding more like a middle-aged woman than a young man is certainly debatable, but with Hamilton's writing skill I found it hard to complain.

Overall, "Disobedience" is a rich and thought-provoking work. First, there is the title. The easy leap to make is that the title refers to Beth's extramarital affair. But each character, in their own way, is "disobedient." Despite his mother's transgression, Henry's invasion of her e-mails would certainly not meet the "honor thy mother and father" criteria. Likewise, the sub-plot of Henry's sister's (Elvira) obsession with Civil War re-enactment only sets the stage for the many internal wars going on in the novel: a "typical" American family struggling to stay together, the battle of the sexes, and Henry's own struggle in becoming an adult. Certainly enough fodder for a book club, which Hamilton nicely skewers even after her own post-Oprah successes.

While Hamilton appears to be losing some of her rabid fan-base with her last two novels, in my humble opinion, "Disobedience" is only further evidence that Hamilton has only continued to make her mark as one of the top contemporary American authors.

I must agree with many of the other reviewers that this book is not worth your time. In the beginning of the series we got a good supernatural murder mystery, some great character building and interaction, great fight scenes, witty dialogue,and some good supernatural politics. Anita was much more "real" than she has become and thus this series has lost my interest. I own the first 8 books in the series, but have used the library for the last two books and I am so glad. I used to recommend this series to friends, but would no longer do so.

For those fans of Ms. Hamilton, it will be hard to believe but Cerulean Sins is actual better than her last entry in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter Series. Sadly, it's only better by a hair due to a slightly more cogent plot even if that plot is pale rehash of Burnt Offerings. As well, it looks like an editor actually worked on CS because the typos and grammatical mistakes do not leap off the page in this latest offering.

Even sadder is that fact that what made NiC so horrid is still laced throughout the book. Numerous sexual encounters that push this book so far past erotic romance that it misses erotica altogether and goes straight to porn. Possibly this is due to the complete lack of romance between the characters or more probably because the sex is more often than not something you'd see in an video tape from the back room of a seedy adult book store.

Gratefully none of these encounters are with Micah, the latest of Anita's significant others. In point of fact, there is a pleasing absence of abnormal genitals describe, thank goodness. Ms. Hamilton seems to have gone to great efforts to restrain herself in that respect.

In summary, those expecting a miracle in the form of Ms. Hamilton writing returning to it's more creative origins after reading Narcissus Chains will be disappointed. Those readers who loved Ms. Hamilton's last book will be pleased.

I am such a fan of this writer and I love this series! If you are into books that keep you on the edge of your seat for hours on end...then "Cerulean Sins," by gifted storyteller Laurell K. Hamilton is definately the book for you! Fun, exciting, and hot! "A Must Read" to be sure...

Seeking to reprise his earlier success with The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper went on to write several other tales built around his heroic character Natty Bumppo (called "Hawkeye" in Mohicans and "Pathfinder" in the book of THAT name). In this one our hero is known as "Deerslayer" for his facility on the hunt and is shown as the younger incarnation of that paragon of frontier virtue we got to know in the earlier books. In this one, too, we see how he got his most famous appellation: "Hawkeye". But, this time out, our hero comes across as woefully tiresome (perhaps it's because we see too much of him in this book, where he's almost a side character in Mohicans). Yet some of Cooper's writing skills seem sharper here (he no longer avers that Natty is the taciturn type, for instance, while having the fellow forever running off at the mouth). But, while there are some good moments & excitement, this tale really doesn't go all that far...and its rife with cliches already overworked from the earlier books. The worst part is the verbose, simple-minded self-righteousness of our hero, himself, taken to the point of absolute unbelievability. He spurns the love of a beautiful young woman (though he obviously admires her) for the forester's life (as though he couldn't really have both), yet we're expected to believe he's a full-blooded young American male. And he's insufferably "moral", a veritable goody two-shoes of the woodlands. At the same time, the Indians huff & puff a lot on the shore of the lake where Deerslayer finds himself in this tale (in alliance with a settler, his two daughters, a boorish fellow woodsman, and Deerslayer's own erstwhile but loyal Indian companion Chingachgook -- "The Big Sarpent," as Natty translates his name). But the native Americans seem ultimately unable to overwhelm the less numerous settlers who have taken refuge from them in the middle of Lake Glimmerglass (inside a frontier house built of logs and set in the lake bed on stilts). There is much racing around the lake as Deerslayer and the others strive to keep the few canoes in the vicinity from falling into the hands of the tribe of marauding Hurons who have stopped in the nearby woods on their way back up to Canada (fleeing the American colonists and the British at the outbreak of English-French hostilities -- since these Hurons are allied with the French). And there are lots of dramatic encounters, with some deaths, but the Indians seem to take it all with relative equanimity, while trying to find a way to get at the whites who are precariously ensconced out on the lake. (It seems to take them the better part of two days, for instance, to figure out they can build rafts to make up for their lack of canoes -- and why couldn't they just build their own canoes, in any case -- and how is it they don't have any along with them since it's obvious they'll have to cross a number of waterways to successfully make it back to the homeland in Canada?) The settler and the boorish woodsman, for their part, do their stupid best to attack the Indians unnecessarily, getting captured then ransomed in the process, while Deerslayer and Chingachgook contrive to get the loyal Indian's betrothed free from the Hurons (it seems she has been kidnapped by them -- the reason Deerslayer and Chingachgook are in the vicinity in the first place). In the meantime the simple-minded younger daughter of the settler (Cooper seems to like this motif since he used a strong daughter and a simpler sister in Mohicans, as well) wanders in and out of the Indian's encampment without sustaining any hurt on the grounds that the noble red men recognize the "special" nature of this poor afflicted young woman (Cooper used this motif in Mohicans, too). In the end there's lots of sturm und drang but not much of a tale -- at least not one which rings true or touches the right chords for the modern reader. Cooper tried to give us more of Hawkeye in keeping with what he thought his readers wanted but, in this case, more is definately too much. --- Stuart W. Mirsk

"The Deerslayer" is, chronologically, the first of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, although the last to be written. It takes place in the early 1740s on the Lake Glimmerglass. Natty Bumppo, called Deerslayer, and his friend Hurry Harry March go to Tom Hutter's "Castle," which is a house built on stilts on a shoal in the middle of the lake, and it is practically impregnable. March intends to get Tom's daughter Judith to marry him. More love is in the air, for Deerslayer plans to meet Chingachgook at a point on the lake in a few days in order to help him rescue his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, who is a prisoner of the Hurons.

War breaks out, Tom and Harry are captured by Hurons, and the untested Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them. That sets up the plot, and there follows many twists and turns, ending with a very haunting conclusion. Although the book drags in parts, it's still pretty good.

I would caution you not to expect realism in this book. "It is a myth," D. H. Lawrence writes, "not a realistic tale. Read it as a lovely myth." Yes, Deerslayer is fond of talking, but take his soliloquies the same way as you take Shakespeare's: characters in both men's works meditate and reflect on what they are going through. So toss out your modern preconceptions aside and just enjoy the myth!

Cooper's final Leatherstocking Tale, The Deerslayer, depicts young Natty Bumppo on his first warpath with lifelong friend-to-be, Chingachgook. The story centers around a lake used as the chronologically subsequent setting for Cooper's first Leatherstocking Tale, The Pioneers. Tom Hutter lives on the lake with his daughters and it is here that Deerslayer (Bumppo) intends to meet Chingachgook to rescue Chingachgook's betrothed from a band of roving Iroquois. A desperate battle for control of the lake and it's immediate environs ensues and consumes the remainder of the story.

Throughout this ultimate Leatherstocking Tale, Cooper provides Natty much to postulate upon. Seemingly desiring a comprehensive finality to the philosophy of Bumppo, Cooper has Natty "speechify" in The Deerslayer more so than in any other book, though the character could hardly be considered laconic in any. Though the reason for this is obvious and expected (it is, after all, Cooper's last book of the series), it still detracts a tad from the pace of the story as Natty picks some highly inappropriate moments within the plot to elaborate his position. And, thus, somewhat incongruently, Cooper is forced to award accumulated wisdom to Bummpo at the beginning of his career rather than have him achieve it through chronological accrual.

All things considered, however, The Deerslayer is not remarkably less fun than any other Leatherstalking Tale and deserves a similar rating. Thus, I award The Deerslayer 4+ stars and the entire Leatherstocking Tales series, one of the better examples of historical fiction of the romantic style, the ultimate rating of 5. It was well worth my time.

The book Cabin Faced West is about when Ann's family becomes pioneers. She goes throught a lot of changes.For example, she doesn't have any friends any more. She has 3 brothers,a baby brother named Jhonny Cakes,and two other brothers named David and Daniel. David and Dainel made a rule up. The rule was if you complain you will get a bucket of spring water on your head! IF you read this book you will find out who gets the water on them. In the middle and end of the book two special people come. Ann didn't really like Hamilton Hill but the two special people made her feel better and now she likes Hamilton Hill. You will be surprized when you read the postscript. It is a really good book you should read it!!

This book (The Cabin Faced West) is about a girl named Ann who went from Gettysburg to the west. She has two brothers named David and Daniel. Her cousin's name is Margaret. I enjoyed reading this book a lot. Ann and her family met a lot of new people. Their cabin was on Hamilton Hill.

I think this book,The Cabin Faced West, is an exiting book to read becouse it tells about a little girl who has no friend around but this really anoying boy named Andy Mcphale is the onely other kid on hmilton hill. This book is an inspiaring book and I would recomend this book to whoever has never read this exciting-back-in-time-pioneer-time book. It kind of tells a true story about Mr. Washington, our first United States president, had dinner with the Hamilton Family. Well, I don't want to give away the secret between Arthur Scott and Ann Hamilton. If I could I would give this book four or five start beacuse this book really teaches you about historical fiction that really happened but was a long time ago. Half of this book is not really true but the other haif is.

This series is very interesting, engrossing, and full of interesting characters, technology, and philosopies, all set in a very plausible future for humankind only 700 years off.

This book is very similar in structure to Red Storm Rising, by Tom Clancy, in the large number of overlapping story lines going on. Unfortunately, after the long hiatus from the preceeding four books in the series (technically, he calls them two books in two volumes each) coming back to it was a little challenging. Fortunately, though, he includes a full six page cast of characters in the front of the book, as well as a "timeline" in the rear, which helped during the first 50-100 pages until the rest came back to me.

Another very good book set in the same universe is "A Second Chance at Eden." This is a book of short stories, and was a very enjoyable read while waiting for this book to be published.

As with his other books, don't expect to put this down until you finish it - and it will take a while, with his detailed story, engrossing style, and 600+ pages of goodness.

If you're this far into the series already, is anything I say really going to sway you either way? So I guess this will be targeted towards new readers who might be wondering if they should invest in reading thousands of pages if the later books stink to high heaven. Rest assured, dear reader, the first half of the last book keeps the same quality as the other books, I've found this to be almost conpulsive in making me keep turning pages, Hamilton as the rare ability to keep plots spinning and zips you through so many plots that while you can keep them straight (most of the time) you rarely get bored. Most of the plots are fairly crucial more or less to the final cascading plot, so moreso than others and they are more wildly split by distance and importance than the other books but we're still treated to lots of action and some philosophy, everyone is getting gtim as they move the players into the last stages of the battle, we're getting near do or die time folks. The intensity is almost unrelenting sometimes and some of the payoffs are better than others but Hamilton leavens it out with enough humor or horror to keep things interesting, his characters may not be the most well rounded people in existence but they are a fun bunch that you won't mind cozying up to for seven hundred pages (or more if you've been reading since the beginning). There's not much I can say without giving away the plot to the entire series, if I skimp too much it sounds like "Same old same old" I mean yes the possessed are still taking over people and those folks not possessed are trying to stop it and everyone's fighting or trying to find solutions or whatnot . . . but if I go into too much detail then I'll be giving away too much or it won't make any sense. So let me just say that if you're read this far you probably won't be disappointed and if you're thinking of starting, the quality of the series tends to remain high throughout, which is a rare occurrance these days. Hopefully the ending will be just as good, we'll see I guess.

I have read this entire series. I have deeply enjoyed each installment. It is apparent, from the writing, that the author is weaving a multitude of social, moral, and technological issues into a wonderfully imaginative and thought provoking series. Each book is satisfying and the finale does not disappoint. I am eagerly awaiting more of Mr. Banks works!

Readers of Brown's BEFORE AND AFTER, a novel that packed a tremendous emotional wallop, may be disappointed in HALF A HEART. The author starts with an intriguing premise: Miriam, an idealistic young Jewish woman, gets caught up in the civil rights struggle during the 1960's. In the course of teaching at an African-American college in Mississippi, she has a passionate love affair with a charismatic fellow teacher, the consequences of which profoundly affect the course of her adult life. While the reader is made to care about how Miriam will resolve her conflicts, the author spends far too much time describing the characters' feelings and emotions instead of letting their words and actions speak for themselves. In addition, Miriam sometimes comes across as a kvetch! Get on with your life, woman, you want to say, and stop all this analyzing and brooding. The book would have been far more effective had it been one hundred pages shorter. (For a more tightly written, suspenseful examination of how the baggage of the 60's can affect lives in the 90's, read Sue Miller's WHILE I WAS GONE.)

This novel disappointed me deeply because it started out so good, with so much potential. A white woman gives birth to the child of a black man in 1960s Mississippi. She leaves the child to be raised by the father, but eighteen years later, still haunted by the daughter she lost, she goes looking for her. That premise has potential for melodrama, of course, but also for an interesting exploration of what it means to be a mother, as well as some complicated racial issues.

For the first hundred pages, I thought this novel would probe those issues in a sensitive and intelligent way. The two main characters Ð Miriam, the mother who left her daughter behind, and Ronnee, her bi-racial child Ð start out as intriguing characters. The pain of Miriam, who has a good life, but canÕt appreciate it because of the hole left by her absent child, is palpable. And Ronnee is a beautifully written character. We learn early on that she agrees to meet with her mother mainly because sheÕs hoping for some money to finance her way to college. And yet she doesnÕt come across as a greedy villain, but rather as an intelligent, ambitious and complex young woman.

But once Rosellen Brown goes into flashback to tell the story of MiriamÕs affair with RonneeÕs father, the novel goes astray. The biggest problem is that the author doesnÕt seem to know what to make of MiriamÕs lover, Eljay. She begins with a promising portrait of a charming and intelligent man, somewhat edgy and resentful because of all he has had to suffer to get where he is. But then, out of nowhere, he gets involved with a group of black separatists who seem to take over his personality. Suddenly heÕs a different, incomprehensible, man. Because we never get inside EljayÕs head, but only see him from MiriamÕs point of view, the change in him seems weird. I have the feeling Rosellen Brown was merely trying to make the point that black racism can be just as bad as white racism, but her political point gets in the way of the story. It would have been a lot more interesting to see what Afrocentrism meant to a man like Eljay. Dismissing his point of view seems like a betrayal of a potentially fascinating character.

And the novel goes downhill from there, with one clichŽ after another. Almost all the characters, black and white, are bigots, and the bigotry is so blatant and obvious, so crude, that it makes the novel seem anachronistic. God knows racism has not disappeared, but the author seems unaware that it usually takes subtler forms than it did in 1960.

Rosellen Brown is obviously a talented writer, and this novel had a lot of potential, but unfortunately the promise remained unfulfilled.

As the mother of several grown children, I've often wondered who my children would have been without my influence...who I would have been without them at the center of my life. This wonderful story explores those "What if" questions in an engrossing and authentic way. By creating a mother and daughter who are desperate to compensate for a lifetime of seperation, this book pays beautiful tribute to the amazing power of parenthood. As is always true of Ms. Brown's books, the writing is lush and lovely.