Excellent premise: In love with a murderer. Gradually, things grow tamer and more whimsical, until the story is muddled and meandering. The ending leaves too many things unresolved. I found that the first half of the book was intriguing. Kim was a murderer, and he draws Lynn in. This alone lends him a certain dark mystique. The rest of the book seems to be an attempt to justify his crime, when no justification is required. (or even desired!) The lyric richness of the novel is what saves it. Ms. Neimark's descriptions and style are like elegant poetry with the occasional stunning twist.

This book is shattering and lyrical. It manages to conjure up such precise emotion that you get lost within it's language.
This book will grip you unlike any other and it's poetry will entrance you, so that you will re-read it till you know it by heart.This is a story that will haunt you,it will make you yearn to meet a man like Kim and yearn even more so to know what 'soul-lust' actually feels like. You should read this if you've ever walked the wrong path and known that it was the only way that could save you.

In Guest of a Sinner, James Wilcox tirelessly attempts to depict a New York City that is as idiosyncratic as his writing is contrived. It is evident by the second chapter that his primary objective is to fashion an novel that captures urban entropy at its best. Unfortunately, his chaotic characters are plotted into a storyline that is meagerly strung together. In this book, Manhattan takes center stage, while Eric, Wanda, and the rest play second fiddle to the ever present metropolis: "Farther north at Gramercy Park she peered through the wrought-iron fence at the labeled trees and counted five yellow roses in a well tended bed...Ten minutes later, at Madison Square, she had to take a rest beneath a bronze Chester Alan Arthur...she got up and walked on through the show of a relatively new skyscraper, forty glass stories that blocked the sun from the shapely marble blossoms." Most of his references to the city are of landmarks easily accesible to any tourist! ! on a Big Apple Bus tour. Eric and Wanda are not only disconnected from this world they inhabit, but from each other as well. Wilcox's compression of one too many happenstance encounters and colliding worlds renders this novel and its characters unnotable and unbelievable. The stunted dialogue with pervades each chapter does not help matters: "I don't like the Spanish. They nearly ruined the Church with their Inquisition." "The Italians were no slouches, kid. And Avignon-- when I heard what they used to do there, in those dungeons,that was it for me." "I sometimes wonder why I go to Mass." "You'd really wonder if you saw the instruments they used to bless." This brand of back-and-forth leaves the reader wondering how such a supposedly comic and wry novel could be utterly dull.

Like a Woody Allen movie in its 'nostalgia' for New York City - its public & private places, its people. A touchstone novel: you can select friends based on their reactions to this book and its on-target, off-beat images of -- for example -- 'the fellowship of Christian Anonymity.'

It was all I could do to finish this horrible book. The main character seemed to be sleepwalking her way through life, abusing her prescriptions of anti-depressants. Very monotone, very boring. By the time I was finished reading it, I had no compassion for any of the characters, and thought they should be jailed for being too boring, or better yet, go ahead and do some sort of suicide pact and jump off that ledge.

As an avid and varied reader sometimes I take a chance on an author I have not tried before. In Elizabeth Richards case I am so happy I did. Her protaganist, Paige, is a 40 year old woman struggling with infertility, loss, a stepson, and a band of "littles" that she babysits. The interactions of these characters are unique; offsetting; slightly eccentric.(much like Anne Tyler offers) The dialogue is realistic and crisp. I experienced a myriad of emotion along with the characters, always a sign of a well written story. I look forward to purchasing, "Every Day" as this author shows strong promise.

Elizabeth Richards has a penchant for off-beat female protagonists. (See EVERY DAY) In this warm, wise, satisfying book, Paige, a professional bookbinder who cannot have children of her own, tries to fill her life, not only with her work, but with the "littles", four and sometimes five, small children whom she watches each afternoon. She is also presented with her stepson, a bright, needy young man of seventeen, who has been shunted from pillar to post. Paige's life, from her jobs to her friends - from small children (who are wonderfully drawn, by the way) to teenager - place her on an emotional roller coaster. How she finds her equilibrium and some measure of peace is at the crux of this very moving tale.

it served no purpose to me except to act as a directory of building addresses

If you are shopping for a condo in Manhattan, this book will be very interesting because as you know, there is a huge maze of co-ops and if you want a condo, you'll need this book to weed them out of the crowd.

While the book shows great photos of the buildings, and maps of NY, and tells you the year built and/or converted to condo, the statistical data on sold apartments runs 12/96 thru 5/98. Since Manhattan condo prices tend to go up anywhere from 15% to 65% per year, the sales data will always be incorrect -- and you'll have no way to ballpark any "real" numbers.

You MUST buy the Sunday NY Times or search the Sunday NY Times on-line classifieds (it's called nytoday.com) over a period of weeks to accurately determine the asking prices of condos. Forget the sales data in this book and use the book for all other superficial information around choosing neighborhoods and buildings, and viewing apartments.

A final note: don't believe the brokers. They will all tell you that the sellers are all getting their asking prices plus 10% during the typical bidding wars that take place over NYC apartments. Nonsense. Bid what you think the apartment is worth and if they won't sell it to you for that price, move on. There are always apartments going up for sale and the next one will be yours!

Excellent book on Manhattan Condo buildings. Needs to have updated sales numbers for each building.

I wasn't at all impressed. The writing style is shallow with poorly developed characters. The main character's sister dies as an apparent suicide which everyone who knew her can't understand and he never calls the police who are invetigating the case to question them. Even when he learns she was strangled he barely reacts and doesn't take an interest in the investigation. Incident after incident occurs to which any normal person of average intelligence would react. He and his new main squeeze just stroll through the story barely paying attention as their world comes apart around them. The only reason I finished the book instead of quitting in the middle was curiosity as to weather the author ever got these two to do something! It sure was a fast read because all I had to do was skim the pages. The writing wasn't interesting enough to bother reading every word. I sure am glad I didn't waste my money buying this book ( I checked it out of the library)

I would have given this book 5 stars except for the ending, which I found disapointing. Yes, the novel's mystery is solved but the hero ends up where he started. That is not my idea of the ending this book deserved. The look into the world of a major fashion magazine was terrific. Good characters and a plot that kept me guessing. The author writes very well. If only the ending showed some progress or some promise for the main character! Glad I read it, anyway.

The story is quite simple; the editor/owner of a society magazine gets killed and her antipode in life, her brother, takes over as an editor. At the same time he plays the sleuth and finds out who killed her. What makes it a good read is the nice "behind the scene" view of the glossy magazine world.If we have to believe the writer ( and why not, he is a BIG player in this world) it is a ruthless and dangerous environment, interesting enough as background for a well developed thriller. The dialogues are OK and the plot has enough twists to keep the tension in the novel...in short, good fun for a nice long summernight

We start out with a simple murder. A man's been killed, and the circumstances seem to imply a homosexual liason gone wrong. The problem is that the victim is a security officer at the Los Alamos Atomic Weapons Facility, so someone must investigate thoroughly to make sure nothing's compromised. A peacetime newspaperman improbably turned detective shows up to investigate, and thus begins Joseph Kanon's Los Alamos.

Moving from the desert to diners in New York City, the book has an easy sort of grace to it. The characters are fluent, and believeable, and the plot is fast enough to be interesting. Our hero gets a girl, the bad guys are interesting, it's all worthwhile, far as I was concerned. There are also interesting supporting characters, including General Leslie Groves, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and a bunch of scientists. This makes for a very entertaining book.

One would never know it by the title of this book, but it is, in fact, a murder mystery. The title gives away the fact that this isn't just ANY murder mystery. It takes place during the days of the Manhattan Project. A security guard is murdered, and an outsider is "brought in" to discern the situation.

The big twist is that Army intelligence does not care so much who murdered the guard. Rather, the $60,000 question is WHY he was whacked. Was he simply mugged, as it would appear? Or did it have something to do with the security of the project? That's what the protagonist, Connolly, is there to find out. And fast!

The plot of the book takes a backseat to the historical setting. Kanon does a wonderful job of interweaving the goings-on of Los Alamos. The fictional character of Connolly interacts wonderfully with figures such as General Leslie Groves and the famous physicists involved in the Top-Secret Project. Legendary names such as Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman and a few others enter into the pages of the story.

This book that is highly recommended to anyone who is even vaguely interested in the Manhattan Project - whether they like "murder mysteries" or not. The ethics of making & using the bomb, the political polemics of Communism, the almost paranoia for secrecy @ Los Alamos & brief glimpses of the "gadget's" scientists are all enclosed within this book.

Although the story is fiction, I can't imagine Los Alamos during the mid-1940s being much different than the way in which Kanon describes it in his novel. I can think of no greater compliment to give a work of historical fiction.

This novel is shelved as a mystery but it is every bit as much, or more, a romance. It is told with the hero's first person voice and is set in atmospheric Los Alamos during WW II during the Manhattan Project. I found the setting of the story compelling. The characters are not all white or black, any of them, but shades of grey instead. This rather fits with the setting since many people have mixed feelings nowadays about both Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project themselves. Los Alamos and the atom bomb project are backdrop and setting, however, to a character driven novel that also provides a murder mystery to solve. For those romance readers eager to shake the virginal heroine with the heart of gold and try a flawed heroine instead, this may be your book. This could have been a big groundbreaking novel in the romance genre had it been shelved or classified there and I'm sorry it wasn't.

Nora Robert is one of my favorite authors and I usually can't put her books down. The only thing that kept me reading this book was knowing that it is a Nora Roberts book and it would have to get better. It didn't.

The characters are unsympathetic and it's hard to care what happens to them.

Nora Roberts has used thieves as heroes in other books, but the characters are charming and its fiction, so it works. It didn't work in this book. Doug is a thief who often gambles away what he steals. There is nothing romantic about him. It was mentioned a few times that Doug would sometimes check into a hotel for a week and rob the other guests. Every time this was mentioned I couldn't help but think of the poor tourist who worked hard all year to go away for two weeks and relax. Then, his first day in a foreign country, his wallet is stolen with his cash, his credit cards, and his ATM card. He'll get his cards replaced, but they'll be waiting for him at home. Meanwhile, he's traveled across an ocean and has no means to do anything but sit in his hotel room and watch TV. I really tried to like the characters, but Doug just came off as cruel.

Whitney is shown, repeatedly, to be upset and concerned about the innocent people who get killed as she and Doug go after their treasure. However, she has no concern for Doug's victims - rather, she's impressed by what he does.

If this were my first Nora Roberts book, it would also be my last. I own most of her books and there are no others I actively disliked - and just two I was passive about (Hidden Star and Captive Star, I liked Secret Star).

Hot Ice-an adventurous, romantic, comedy that had me staying up all night to read. Nora Roberts wrote great romantic scenes like her other book Sancturary. Hot Ice made me laugh out loud many times because of the many sarcastic remarks. Hot Ice is definetly a page-turner that made me want to order more of her books!

"Hot Ice" by Nora Roberts is not half as bad as some of the reviews would lead you to believe. Though "Hot Ice" is certainly not one of Nora's best works, it is still a fun-filled, exciting, and romantic read that I had trouble putting down. So give this book a try, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Doug Lord is used to living his life on the run, due to his chosen profession - larceny. Doug is great at what he does, but it looks like his luck may be running out since he crossed a terrifying and some say omnipotent criminal named Dimitri. Injured and running for his life, Doug surprises New York heiress Whitney MacAllister when he leaps into her car, right before the bullets start flying. Tired of her sheltered and smotheringly boring life, Whitney decides to help Doug, at least for a little while, and see where it takes her. After losing the black sedan chasing them, Whitney brings Doug back to her apartment.

Doug knows money when he sees it, and he figures Whitney may just be his ticket to finding the treasure of a lifetime. Doug has in his possession the stolen documents that lead to a legendary hidden fortune dating back to the French Revolution. Whitney has the cash and the connections Doug needs, but the only way Whitney will agree to help Doug is if she becomes his partner. Doug never works with partners, having been burned one too many times, but he figures he can bring Whitney along until he has what he needs from her and then ditch her.

So Doug and Whitney's adventure begins. With Dimitri's hired muscle always right behind them, Doug and Whitney need to be smart and fast. Their dangerous encounters with Dimitri's men make for some wonderfully suspenseful scenes that will have readers on the edge of their seats.

The stolen documents lead Doug and Whitney to Madagascar, where their journey begins in earnest, but complications abound. Whitney doesn't trust Doug one little bit, and Doug surely doesn't trust Whitney. But as time passes, the ever present spark between them gets brighter and brighter, until it's nearly impossible to resist. Doug knows that letting himself fall for Whitney could very well cost him his big break, but in the end, his heart doesn't give him much choice. Whitney too finds herself falling in love, as she gets to know the intelligent, determined, perceptive, and funny man underneath Doug's sexy exterior. So as these two race through the exotic lands and rainforests of Madagascar with hired killers never more than a step behind, Whitney and Doug find a passionate love in each others arms that they never expected to find. But Doug knows a thief like him has no future with a classy lady like Whitney. Unfortunately, that's not the biggest problem on Doug's mind, because the dangerous game he and Whitney are playing may end up being fatal!

I thought Doug was a wonderful character. He was smart, handsome, intriguing and very real. Though Whitney's character sometimes grated on my nerves a bit with her occasional spoiled rich girl attitude and her annoying little account book, for the most part, I was able to overlook her flaws and see the sensitive and strong woman beneath. Whitney and Doug undeniably make a great team, and their amazing adventure kept me glued to the pages.

Overall, "Hot Ice" was a very enjoyable read. The story never stops, and is filled with thrilling suspense and red-hot romance. I am extremely glad I decided to take a chance and buy this book when I found it, because otherwise I would have missed out on some great entertainment. So don't believe everything you read, buy this book today and form an opinion for yourself, I most certainly did not regret it!

You can take the girl out of Maggody but you can't put quality into the writing. Unfortunately, this is just another example of the poor character development that Ms. Hess is known for. She has come up with such wonderful characters and does absolutely nothing with them, leaving you with a boring book and a waste of several reading hours. There are alot of "cozy" writers out there. I would give this one a pass.

Joan Hess is a very funny writer. Her Maggody series is a hoot. She creates situations and dialogue that make you laugh out loud. But she can't plot a mystery much better than her designated idiot, Kevin Buchanon, probably could. The plot in this one is a muddled mess.

I FELT CONFUSED OF SOME OF THE CONTESTANT AND WHY THEY CALL IT CO-CO NUT

If you want any further prove that the Marvel Universe is the only real comic book universe and everything else is junk. Then read this book full of badly written heroes and then we'll talk.

Gen 13 was always good because of the characters and art. Don't imagine anything more than that in this book.
The history is previsible and very lame.

This is, without a doubt, the funniest comic book in existance. Gen-13 is exactly what would happen if a bunch of young people got super-powers. This isn't some high-and-mighty Justice League of America, nor is is some sniveling X-spinoff with the characters too sorry for themselves to do anything.
These are kids trying to have a good time in life, and be superheroes second.
For those of you just browsing for the Gen-13 comic books, this is one of the fully-illustrated and not one of the cheesey novels.
The jokes alone are worth the money. The battle with one of Moore's old characters, Tao, was a laugh-and-a-half. Check this: what happens when a villian who depends on twisting logic through complex sentences meets up with Grunge? The painful illogic and Who cares? attitude of the grunge-man end in a headache for Tao. Grunge is definately the humoroius focal point. In the one when Grunge is "transformed into a giant, hairy monkey," the running gag response is "'transformed?'"
Buy it and enjoy. I know I did.

I would recommend this novel only to the most utterly bored, angst ridden teenager. The characters have little depth, especially the girls (or women, you decide) whose characters lie solely in their outward appearance, level of easiness, and drug use. A reviewer by the name of Hunter Thompson writes, "The ratio of age to talent is horrifying..." I couldn't disagree with this statement any more, McDonnell's novel reeks of the ADHD plaguing today's adolescents. His prose is terse and undeveloped, the episodic story line is choppy, and each chapter consists of no more than a few pages.

I found the characters to be dull, with the exception of the comic relief provided by Timmy and Mark Rothko. How many novels and films can one make about materially rich teens who have to rely on drugs because their parents spend all of their time in Brussels? This plot is losing steam fast, as far as I am concerned.

I considered giving this book three stars because of the shock value of the penultimate chapter. But, I later decided that all this violence losses any lasting impression, because the Afterword is such a cop-out. If you decide to read "Twelve," try to find it at the library, don't waste your $$.

Oops, did I say that? Yeah I did. OK, my deal with this whole book is that it's about rich, white kids living bored and stupid lives when they could be out doing something if they weren't too busy trying to be "cool" and junk. It's really stupid for them to call Nick "the voice of the gen. y generation" because for one, I am apart of that and it's not true in his book and two, Generation Y is way more diverse and there are so many other people to be mentioned in our generation. Generation Y can't be summed up in "rich white kids." It should be summed up with diverse people such blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Indians, Arabs, and other Asian countries.

If you think about it--you'll see that. It just presses my buttons they should call him that when it's not even true. He totally ripped off Bret Easton Ellis with "Less Than Zero."

I give it 2 because the writing was OK but also because I feel sorry that Nick had so many connections and he actually NEEDED that to prove himself. Loser.

Choose whatever you feel.

Apparently not everyone liked this book, but I thought it was incredible from start to finish. It was an extremely quick, compelling read, and while predictable at times, I found the ending to be a rush of emotions(call me naive). The author's age, I think, lent itself to his style of writing, which I enjoyed for its crispness and brevity; many chapters were only 1 or 2 pages in length. It was an easy read in that way, but full of moral dilemmas with which the reader could grapple along with the characters. Don't believe all the positive hype or the negative; read the book and decide for yourself.