Daniel Valentine is a detective of the first water--intelligent, handsome, and gay, he teams up with Clarisse Lovelace in "Vermilion," the first book featuring this fearsome duo in a first-rate comedy suspense series (all with a color in the title, ala John D. MacDonald). Set in Boston (as are the following three), Valentine starts looking into the death of a young hustler, found dead on the lawn of an outspoken homophobic legislator.

Perhaps better known for its tea parties and baked beans, nonetheless, the city of Boston is all aghast at this latest turn of events, especially the political factions and the gay community. Of course, the police have set this case on "top priority." Valentine, who works as a bartender by night and a detective by day, involves his best friend, Clarisse (who's a not-so-inspired straight real estate agent). Author Nathan Aldyne balances well the suspense and intrigue of the murder and its implications with some very wry, dry humor that makes fast reading reading this novel.

Of course, by book's end, the murder is solved--but not without first involving some very smart sleuthing and calculations on the part of Valentine and Clarisse, a path that leads them into some very seedy, questionable, and dangerous areas.

Nathan Aldyne is also the author of "Cobalt," "Canary," and "Slate." ...

When these books first came out (80's) I do not remember there being a lot in this particular genre (except for the Brandstetter mysteries - which were much more serious.) Now these humorous gay detective stories seem to be everywhere, but the ones I've read come nowhere close to these gems.

Vermillion is the first of 4. The others are Cobalt, Slate and Canary. (Actually, they could almost be the titles of Pet Shop Boys albums ...) Anyway, the Boston/P-town settings are great, the Daniel & Clarisse team is hysterical, the stories solid, and the 80's period --once current with the first publication -- is sweetly nostalgiac.

If you want a good, light, comic romp .. get these books. And hold onto them .. they come and go quickly from print.

Okay, I admit I'm a fanatic when it comes to this author's books. He wrote horror novels under his real name (Michael McDowell) that I could not get enough of as a teen. I still reread them all. Then just as I came out, I discovered he co-wrote these four books, and I devoured them as well. I think they are part of the reason I now live in Massachusetts...kidding, but they are tightly plotted mysteries set in pre-HIV Boston & Provincetown. Buy them lest they go out of print again!

Mrs. Leimbach's third and final book in a series of essays on farm life. This book is warm, and witty, as are all Mrs. Leimbach's books. She deals with the death of one of her sons in an open and sensitive manner. If you like Erma Bombeck in a country mode, this book will touch your heart.

This is a very readable book that moves you quickly along this biography of Alice, and her family. Page 16 mentions Teddy's attacks of asthma and cholera morbus, and his interest in animal specimens. Could this exposure to arsenic explain his problems? The book says the Roosevelt family was wealthy, but does not say how it was acquired. TR entered politics after his honeymoon, but the book does not tell why (p.25).

Alice's mother died in childbirth. TR's mother died the same day. Expected happiness was replaced by unexpected sorrow. TR left for the Dakotas where he tried out cattle ranching; he lost most of his fortune in the 1886 drought and the severe winter. He returned to NY and the steady income of a Government job, and married again. Young Alice never knew her mother, but only her stepmother (p.37). Alice grew up lonely with no playmates (p.41). She caught a disease that left one leg shorter than the other. Alice enjoyed her semiannual trip to her Boston grandparents, who spoiled her (p.37). Her stepmother would tell her that her mother was stupid, her father wanted to give her away, and TR proposed to her first and was rejected (p.47)! What a heavy emotional load for an 8 year old! Page 49 tells more about this disfunctional family. Alice was the only female member of an all-boys club where the boys dressed in girls clothes! Alice rejected Christianity and grew up a pagan with no formal education (p.53). Would she be considered an abused child today?

TR's enemies prevented him from a second term as Governor and shunted him off as Vice President. Then a lone gunman appeared and changed Administration policies. Alice began to socialize with the new-monied "Four Hundred" who disregarded old-money proprieties; TR and Edith held them in "high-minded contempt" (p.57). Alice had an income from her mother's parents. Was her behavior a way to gain attention from her parents (p.66)? Does this explain the rest of her life? There is a lesson here for any parents in a similar situation. Alice wrote "Father doesn't care for me ... as much as he does for the other children" (p.70). Alice was anxious to escape her parents by a marriage, like countless other girls from more humble backgrounds. It was a dynastic marriage: she got a rich heir of a Congressman, he got the President's daughter and a political ally. But change continued like a flowing river.

Page 113 shows an old political trick. Get some background facts before meeting a new person, then feed it back as a compliment in feigned admiration. It works every time! Page 129 tells how a political deal was made to keep a Bull Moose candidate out of Nick Longworth's district. Page 130 gives another example of Alice's perverse personality. She bragged about having caused her husband's defeat (p.131)! I wonder if her problems were genetic, or caused by her environment? The rest of the book covers the next 60 years of her life.

Chapters 10 and 11 make it seem that Paulina and the country would have been better off if Alice died in childbirth. What good has she ever done? These portrayals of the members of the Ruling Class will never be printed in your local newspaper.

I had the pleasure of taking an American Women Authors class taught by Linda Wagner-Martin at UNC Chapel Hill, and let me tell you, she really knows her stuff about Plath. She fascinated us with her tales of the process of writing this book. For a fresh perspective on the life and work of Sylvia Plath, this is a good one.

So far, this is one of the clearest, and easiest to read biographies of one of the finest (and most intriguing) female poets of the 20th century. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to know more about Sylvia Plath, but doesn't feel like sorting through endless fluff and interpretations of her work. This book simply describes the life of a tortured woman writer. Good job, great reading!

Wagner-Martin shows you a life of a woman writer who was treated badly by illness and Ted Hughes. There are alot of personal photographs from her childhood. She was also an excellent sketch artist!

My personal favorite collection of stories from Ballard, and many people I've spoken to also hold a fondness for this group of stories. Although many of the story concepts repeat the theme of the tragic female figure and the tortured man who loves her and gets caught in the dramatic conflict, it is a lush and expansive vision that weaves through the collection. The title refers to a fictional beach resort, a playground of burnt out executives and movie stars at play, or in retreat from the rest of the world. As with most Ballard fiction, you get the distinct impression that these stories are actually taking place somewhere, and perhaps Ballard has just changed the names to protect the decadent. The vivid details of living clothing, cloud sculptors and singing sculptures are so intense, it's a bit of a surprise that Hollywood hasn't adapted some of these stories to the currently CGI movie craze. Then again, like most of what Ballard writes about, that could be coming just around the corner...

The beachfront, decadent community of Vermilion Sands is the setting for each of the nine wonderful stories in this collection. Vermilion Sands is where the rich are. They vacation, they play, they search for lost loves, and above all, they are horribly narcissistic.

Vermilion Sands is home to the magnificent singing sonic sculptures, tall statues that emit music or atonal sounds when they sense movement. The marvelous sand yachts of the rich, their trained sand rays (giant white manta rays that float through the air), the cloud-sculptors, the living clothes, and the psychotropic houses all live on in the mind long after the stories have been read. Vermilion Sands is a striking setting, one of the more memorable in fiction.

The themes of the stories are fairly similar. Most dwell on unattainable or forsaken love. In "Say Goodbye to the Wind", a former model pines for her departed love. In "Studio 5, the Stars" an aspiring poetess dreams of tragic love. And so it goes in each story. But the stories are fresh and have enough energy to overcome a repetitive theme.

Ballard's futuristic city stands as a monument to the power of a memorable fictional setting. Indeed, Vermilion Sands is as powerful as Jeffrey Thomas's Punktown or Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris to use two recent examples. I'm hoping that Mr. Ballad has seen fit to write more Vermilion Sands stories in the 30+ years since this collection was published. I can only hope that I find more.

This collection of elegant, minatory stories about the has-been resort community of Vermilion Sands and the human flotsam that washes up on its derelict shores comprises some of author J.G. Ballard's most accessible work. His imaginative gifts and jade cool prose are everywhere on display in these stories. Sailplane artists sculpt the clouds into likenesses of their patrons. Psychosensitive houses are driven insane by their owners and bio-fabrics shimmer and pulse to their wearers moods. Ballard likes to create strange, surreal outerscapes and unite these with the straitened innerscapes of his protagonists, then narrate what happens next. In Vermilion Sands he exceeds wonderfully

A fast read and old-fashioned sounding written account of the Vermilion lighthouse and the replica in 1991 that finally replaced it.

There are also some local Vermilion, Ohio tales at the end of the book that make an interesting read, although they were probably added since information on the original lighthouse is quite scarce.

A sure add to your Great Lakes and lighthouse book shelf.

There is a good book somewhere inside these 800 pages, another inside view of family and political life and strife in the top echelons of Communist Chinese society. Mu's devoted parents had impeccable revolutionary credentials, and she grew up in a privileged Beijing enclave. She is able to give us a participant's view of the total dislocation of this world during the cultural revolution, during which both her parents fell foul of factional infighting and suffered prolonged harassment, including torture and imprisonment. Mu was caught up in the Red Guard movement, but also fell from favour with her peers. However she was eventually able to join the army, recruited as a reluctant opera singer, then trained as an army doctor. Later still she worked for the State Family Planning Commission, and made and escaped from a disastrous marriage. Her parents' marriage also could not survive the personal strain of events,and fell apart in a spectacularly public and vicious dispute, with public figures - and the press -- taking sides to influence the outcome. Although parts are fascinating, much of the book is written in a flat declarative style - is it limited English, or poor writing, the consequence of an education consisting largely of political indoctrination, suited to assertive slogans? While parts are quite compelling, and the detail may well be useful to genuine students of Chinese history, I wished the editors had helped the writer summarise her material and produce a book at least half the size.

This is a very compelling read for anyone interested in memoirs and/or history. I, for one, came away with a much different perspective of the Cultural Revolution than I learned in my university courses. Yes, it is long, a criticism from another reader, and yet its length is part of its strength. One wonders how many times history was going to repeat itself under Mao.
While it is a book about the rise of communism and how the cultural revolution took hold of China, it is also a story about a man and woman, their children, and the horrible toll that corruption in politics played in their lives.

Waterman spends most of the book whining. The three main threads of his complaint are the ecological devastation, how the native peoples were taken advantage of by the various colonizers, and how his one year old marriage seems to be on the rocks. When he talks about the stark beauty of the land, it is always in the same breath with how badly the place is getting ruined.
I read the book when I was in Baja California Sur in May, 2003. The place was beautiful, the weather was great and the people were extremely friendly. The book's doomsday predictions were very much out of whack with the reality.

I read the book after sailing the Sea of Cortez. It was a depressing book by a disenchanted romantic written during what appears to be the breakup of his marrage. The wife sounds great but he can't maintain her paddling pace and she does not share his penchant for whining.) If you are looking for a guide book to the Sea of Cortez, this book has little to offer. I meet some folks at Bay of Conception who were among the few who had received favorable remarks from the author. They were furious that he had totally distorted their comments. Save yourself the greif and try something else.

It's very well written and full of interesting information. but it's one of these misanthropic ecology tracts. Much of what he says is well justified but, considered as entertainment, it was so full of grouching about the adverse effects of everything on the environment that it ended up with too many sour notes.
I was struck by how close his moral attutudes were to those of the early missionaries he describes. He extols the virtues of mortifying the flesh, and relishes describing the hardships he has inflicted on himself. He keeps encountering residents who do not share his beliefs about how life should be lived. They commit such crimes as fishing and using toilet paper. They are not the original inhabitants of the country.

I am going to break this to potential readers gently. This is a pathetic story and a tired, frayed cliche. Don't waste your time.

Lindsay Phillips is the protagonist. Half-Navajo and half-Anglo, she chafes at being born out of wedlock and being raised by her stepmother and half sister. Her father, Jed is killed at the opening of the story and he sounded like a thorough rat. Lindsay's mother dies at or shortly after childbirth, so Jed takes the girl to his wife to be raised with his other daughter, Sybil. Lindsay has a maternal half sister named Alice, whom we meet later in the story.

Sybil is a cliche literary sociopath. Resentful of Lindsay from the outset, she torments the girl, cuts up her doll clothes (Lindsay's interest in making doll clothes led to a career as a clothing designer in N.Y.) and throws a pair of scissors at her, narrowly missing her face. Sybil is the classic spoiled antagonist who, unlike wine, does not improve with age.

Jed favors Lindsay and all but ignores Sybil. This is not good for family relationships. It is interesting that the stepmother, who has no name and is only mentioned in passing, readily accepted Lindsay and her father's open admission of adultery. Was she a saint or a martyr? That is never answered.

Sybil is consistently described as cruel and ill tempered. She does, however, marry one Rick Adams and move to Arizona. Out of this union is a daughter named Marilla. Lindsay has had a crush on Jed since she first met him at age 17. (She and Sybil were 8 years apart).

When Jed dies after a wild life in Arizona (Sybil and Lindsay were raised in Connecticut), Lindsay flies to Arizona to trace her heritage. Once there, she learns from her brother-in-law that her natural mother died shortly after her birth and that she, Lindsay, was born in Arizona. Lindsay was so clueless about her own history and Rick filled in the blanks. Interestingly, Jed was Rick's mentor. Sybil springs the news of Lindsay's half-sister, Alice on Lindsay.

Marilla keeps a safe distance from Sybil, who as we can guess by now, frowns on idealism, dreams and artist. Sybil resented Jed for rejecting her all of her life and dismisses his art as worthless. When Marilla shows artistic talent in pottery, she has to keep it a secret from the slithery Sybil.

Rick and Lindsay, as one could readily predict inside of 5 minutes end up as lovers. Sybil is killed by the husband of a friend after she plans to recreate the meal and the setting where Jed was killed.

Lindsay and Alice connect, Sybil is out of everyone's way and Lindsay and Rick become the cliche couple. This was a trite story and you couldn't even like the characters save for Marilla and Alice.