I first found this series at the library, and I have bought them all because I like them so well, I want to be able to introduce friends to them.
Literate, funny, the characters are eccentric and believable. And for all those woman who love Martha Grimes' Richard Jury, get ready for Jules. Catches the flavor of a small town and Montana.

Jamie Harrison is without peer - more novels about Jules please!

Jamie Harrison writes more into the first 80 pages than most authors put into an entire book. Characters, scenery, emotions, undercurrents and tensions between characters, they are all there. In a world of a lot of ho-hum writing, Harrison really stands out head and shoulders above the rest! I am reading her second book in the series, GOING LOCAL, right now, and it's another excellent book proving that the first was no fluke. For a book like this, I wish the ratings included more stars. It's just that good! Get it, read it, and put it on your keeper shelf. I'll be reading this series more than once!

I recommend using open space tehcnology and/or other large scale intervention techniques to mine the collective emotional intelligence of a group of people (this may be your company, or people from an acadamic field you belong to).

This book gives you the details on HOW to organize and facilitate an open space meeting - (what kind of location you need, how to organize the room, how to use break up rooms, how to facilitate, ...). You'll also get imporatnt rules and lessons for making this technology work. In short, it's pretty good at doing this "HOW TO" part.

WARNING: If you want to know WHY it works and if you want some examples, there are 2 other books to take a look at:

- tales from Open space (Harrison Owen, Editor, 1995)

- Expanding our now (Harrison Owen, 1997)

Good luck!

Patrick E.C. Merlevede, MSc -- author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"

Harrison Owen presents a hands-on, step-by-step manual for putting on an open space technology workshop. In OST workshops, participants basically set and facilitate the agenda with some guidance from a facilitator. Here, the book's examples are particularly handy. Owen suggests conference duration, agenda and techniques including how to set up a meeting, invite participants, prepare the logistics and meeting site, facilitate activities and more. While these workshops generally involve hundreds of people, you can also put on an OST event with as few as five. If you want to read gripping business philosophy, look elsewhere - this is a practical how-to manual, a task it accomplishes quite well. We [...] recommend this informative guided tour of the OST process to those who want to know how, because they already know why

When I particpated in my first Open Space, a friend told me to trust the process. At first glance, Open Space seems not to make a lick of sense or too "airy fairy" to work. Its a powerful process I've used this book as a guide to help me facilitate many Open Space sessions.

I highly recommend this book if you want to facilite Open Space---it provides many good ideas for before, during and after the session, covers when and when not to use Open Space, and gives the would-be facilitor the mind- and heart-set to facilitate Open Space well. I would not recommend faciltiating Open Space without first experiencing it.

I've used Open Space with churches, as a partnership-building experience, in organizational change, and in forming national government programs---in the right hands and at the right time, Open Space is a powerful process---this book gives you tools to facilitate it. Use it wisely and well!

I didn't realize that this was the second book in a trilogy when I started it (My fault. It was clearly stated on the front of the book). That may be why I found the numerous characters a bit confusing at first. But there is a list of characters and the villages they come from at the back of the book and that was a big help. I also appreciated the glossary of plants and herbs that were mentioned in the story. Despite the fact that I was unfamiliar with these characters and their past history with each other, the story was easy to follow. I found the details of life in primitive times, in the wilds of Alaska, mesmerizing. The suspense of what was going to happen to these characters kept me turning pages well into the wee hours. It isn't often that I find a book that so involves me, that the rest of the world just disappears for awhile. This is one of those books.

As with the previous books I have read by this author, she has the ability to keep your attention and spin out an interesting tale and leave you waiting for her next publication.

As with the other books by this author that I have read, she continues to spell bind and "spin" a good yarn. She has the ability to make you feel as if your in the story looking on.

I had some minor issues toward the end. During a meeting late in the novel, a character is forced to present wearing nothing but swimwear. This seemed a laborious way to make a point, and the silliness of the situation distracted me. The ending ties up messily, with everything resolved but in a manner that stretches the limits of disbelief. People are revealed for what and who they really are, certainly, but there's a lack of motivation behind their actions, and their deeds are not convincing.

I'm being deliberately coy, because all faults aside, this is a very impressive book. Harrison's writing style and the depth and breadth of his characters are beautiful. Reading on, you come to feel as if you know these people, and in most instances you genuinely care about them. Even minor characters are fully limned. Better still is what Harrison doesn't say. Jack Whitman tells us that his mother never liked his late wife, and in the next breath that he doesn't speak to his mother much anymore. Harrison lets us read between the lines in many such places.

A classical sense of tragedy runs through this book: that our lives are not foretold but shaped by us, and that we are often the sources of our own ruin. At the tale's end, you'll want to go back to the beginning, armed with a new knowledge of who these people are and what will become of them.

Bodies Electric is over all a good novel. The novel is about a man named Jack Whitman. In the beginnig of the novel, Harrison does a nice job introducing Jack, and this continues throughout the rest of the novel as well. By the end of the novel, the reader really feels as if they had personally met Jack, which to me, makes this a well written novel. Jack is a business man who works in a very large and well known media corperation. At first, I was not sure if I would really like this novel because I am not usually interested in things dealing with large businesses. However, I ended up learning a lot about big corporations and it was actually quite interesting. I would more than likely recommend this novel to someone looking for a novel to read. I would definitely suggest to go somewhere where you know you will not be bothered because I was unable to stop reading by the time I got to the last few chapters.

Fantastic! That's what I could only say to you guys without any chronicle backpains. I suffered a badback again last week and had to lie down in bed for 4 days. "Bodies Electric" had lightened my painful suffering for two days and enlightened me in the meantime. When I finished it, I could not help but shaking my head awkwardly on my pillows with amazement and appreciation. This review is also my "Thank You!" note to Mr. Harrison for this wonderful and profound painkiller other than Motrin 800 mg and Flexril. The only thing that I did not quite enjoyed is that when I finished reading, the ending seems to be a bit rushed and obscure. Mr. Harrison so far has created two profound, memorable yet lonely characters: Jack Whiteman and Porter Wren. Both are fatally driven to be a "tragic hero" and a living example of "The heart is a lonely hunter." Both have made you, the reader, to look at the faceless lonely crowd out in the street, on the sidewalk, in the concrete jungles, with new way of looking angle, finally realized and visualized that behind every expressionless face and worldly success, some of them might still with passion, love, warmth, sympathy, fantasy, desire, weakness, helplessness, tenderness, hopes and dreams. Harrion's artwork might not be easily appreciated by those under 30 who are still unconciously or subconciously reading books with their own different moral standards, with their bias social values or pre-judgement to approach a book, trying to categorize a book with the superflous commercial brands: "Thriller, Genre," words like "Suspenseful, whodunit...." These pathetic marketing stuff in fact, all got nothing to do with Harrison's works. Because he only told us two thing: "No matter what and why, no matter how and when, with wife and children or not, we human beings still got a darker side and lonely inner self. The spur-of-the-moment or your behavior, no matter how reasonable or logical at the moment, or vise versa, sometimes might just ruin everything you have worked so hard to have achieved or reached." Reading Mr. Harrison's books with any social value or moral standard is a doomed wrong start albeit to appreciate his greatness.

Celebrated gay erotica author Kenneth Harrison has a hidden jewel in this compilation of shorts that, between the lines, share something of a common thread: to some extent, the "boys" are coming of age and, most of the time, with a "daddy," or older (i.e., experienced) "teacher." Some of the book's hottest entries that the reader will literally salute include "Randy's Pleasure," "The New Boy in Town" and "Mr. Kempton and the Birthday Boy" (talk about blowing out the candles!). Compared to some of Harrison's other works, "Daddy's Boys" may be the best in his body of work. Not only do the searingly hot words Harrison employs as a master wordsmith, he evokes some of the best provocative and sexual fantasies that, by each story's end, we a little ticked that our real daddies weren't like the ones in this book! The man-to-man sex is graphic, a HUGE turn-on and even throws in some romance that helps lift some of the stories to the level of mainstream fiction. Even for the discriminating reader who's not interested in romance and is looking solely for a quick turn-on and scorching material that oozes with lust and other stuff, this collection is a winner! Bet no one in real life had daddies like these!

'The stories in this book are as timeless as the common thread that runs through them: the pleasures of boys (of legal age) and men. These are stories that deal in the deeper more hidden desires we sometimes try to suppress. Among the stories included are: "Disciplining a College Boy," "Mr. Kempton and the Birthday Boy," "Frank and Kyle," "The New Boy in Town," "Randy's Pleasure."'- From Leyland Publications

I've never read anything quite like this book. These stories are better than what you get in the mags. The best stories were the roommate one and the one with the guy who was a con artist.

One again, Shirley Harrison has woven a superb mystery with many surprising twists. She has a flair for writing sensual romantic story lines that tease and excite the reader. The absence of profanity is a pleasant plus! I'm hooked on this new writer.

Mystery and romance woven very well into a good read!! Sela afraid to love thinking "a curse" has been placed on her. The author weaving nice clues leading to an explosive conclusion. Ben being the man to break the barrier to Sela's heart and help her overcome her fears. Wonderful book.

Clairvoyant and psychic are terms Sela Bennett is all too familiar with; the words describe the talents that have flowed through the women in her family for over two
hundred years. When two of her suitors meet untimely tragedies, she starts believing what her grandmother calls her 'dangerous fortune', is true. Afraid to jeopardize another man's life, Sela swears off men and hides out in her hometown, Fairlight, Georgia.

Ben Russell, a world traveled architect is doing research for a documentary on old Southern churches. He is invited to study the design of the church in Fairlight. Of course he has no patience with small towns or superstitions. But Ben is an opportunist, he sees this pretty country girl as some fun for the summer, so he sets out to defrost her heart. They clearly have different agendas, but what transpires between them surprises them both. And they finally start to suspect that the strange things that are happening are not really super-natural.

This is Ms. Harris third novel, and as with the others it is laced with mystery, romance and enough charisma to capture the most discriminate mind. -- Reviewed by aNN Brown

In this collection of greatest hits by Swinging London plankholder David Bailey, we get:

Celebrities of the time, including pop artists, pop intellectuals, TV presenters, English film stars, and the emerging British rock glitterati. Of these last Mick Jagger appears the most frequently, evolving from A Portrait Of A Famous Person Taken By David Bailey to the most notorious man in show business by the end of the decade. A close second is fading golden boy Brian Jones. Among the more conventional celebs are Terence Stamp, Michael Caine, and Peter Sellers. Stamp is so young and unformed here that it is hard to recognize him at first; Caine is reduced to a pipe & black frame glasses Everyman; and Sellers' portrait looks like a Roman bust.

Documentary pictures of potato-nosed East Enders, including plenty of studio portraits of crime bosses the Kray brothers. Bailey won their respect for having come from the East End himself and achieving success. But, one photo shows the Kray twins with Bailey sitting in between, visibly hoping not to get bumped off.

Lots of images of the original super-model, Jean Shrimpton, mostly from Vogue layouts but also plenty from other photo dates as well. There is also a generous helping of photographs of model Penelope Tree, whose face Bailey aptly described as "an Egyptian Jiminy Cricket." We also see lots of other perfectly turned out Vogue models.

There are some exotic shots of Nepal and some snaps from his military service in Singapore, but the focus is in the main on early Sixties London. Though the book is not arranged chronologically, one can see his technical development, as he incorporates other photographers' ideas like askew framing, daylight flash, and tent lighting. There is a color section, but gorgeously inky b/w is the star here. Many of the subjects have been shorn of the celebrity that no doubt added to their portraits' impact, but that's no barrier to enjoying this big collection.

If your'e looking for a book to take a trip back to the late 50's through the 60's this is a good way to get there. The fashion and ad shots of Jean Shrimpton and other models of that era are a kick. Anyone into nostalgia of those times will find this book interesting, David Bailey seemed to be ahead of his time in his style and his photos are thought provoking as well as great pieces of art. He had some great friends (male and female) that became his subjects. I wish there was a book #2 to follow--this book made me want to see more of his work!

Bailey birthed the look and this book is chock a block full of it. It's a visual feast with very littly written clutter. A pity that there just wasn't a bit more...

Maybe I'm being unfair to Harrison, but I can't help but feel that he would have been better off leaving the Eden series at one book. West of Eden is such an incredible read that anything following it must, of necessity, fall short by comparison.

Return to Eden is by no means a bad book. It is, like every Harrison work, an enjoyable read that holds the attention well. Unfortunately, it accomplishes almost nothing. When the book ends, all is pretty much the same as it was at the end of Winter in Eden. Humans and Yilane continue to live separate lives, trying to avoid each other as much as possible. There are hints early on in the book that we might be about to see a revolution in Yilane society, with the Daughters of Life on the verge of making a philosophical breakthrough and proselytizing male as well as female young (why else spend so much time showing how a male Yilane can develop into a mature individual if freed from the harem?). But nothing comes of it, nor does anything of significance come from Kerrick's resolution to break with his Yilane past. Return to Eden is a pleasant read, but anyone looking to experience the magic of West of Eden will be disappointed.

This third volume of the Eden trilogy brings everything to a satisfactory but predictable closure. There is enough left open to hope for a possible "Back to Eden" in the future.

The relationships between the Yilane(dinosaur) and Tanu (human)are almost as good as the Lizard/Human relations in Harry Turtledoves' World War series. The story is much richer simply because there are not as many story lines as Turtledove keeps going.

A really good read but I think only available in pricey trade paperback. I was able to easily find all 3 in used shops with very little trouble.

The bueauty of Harrison's Eden series is how much he draws you in to the point that the entire world seems as if it could really exist somewhere. Think 'Lord of the Rings' without all the UNNECESSARY details, and a story that moves muvch quicker.

I selected this book based on the customer reviews. You folks sure let me down this time! Roots of Murder is so bad that I declined to share it with my circle of mystery-reading friends. The prose is flat and simplistic, written at about a 6th grade level. The characters are undeveloped stereotypes, with the possible exception of the protaganist, and she is a pitiful excuse for a detective. I expected to learn something about gardening, flowers, or the Amish, but there's no attempt to educate the reader. The worst thing is that there are some plot elements with the potential for hilarity -- like when the heroine is cold-cocked by a dangling corpse or when she tries to drive with a python slithering around her leg -- but it falls flat. Don't waste your time on this one.

Roots of Murder is fun not only because of a delightful and unusual sleuth and an interesting plot, but also because of its insight into Amish lives. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I bought this book on the basis of recommendations at this site as well as from DorothyL mystery list. I did not go wrong following the opinions of those readers.I found the writing to flow so smoothly that it was impossible to put down until I finished. A great read for a winter day. The characters and setting were quite realistic. Bretta is the kind of person I would like to know. The mystery was complex and clever. The only quibble I have is that for a "Gardening Mystery", there was not much depth in that area. Perhaps the series title "Florist Mystery" would not draw as many readers. I hope the characters I came to like so much will be around in a series of many more. I recommend this book without reservation to anyone loving a good mystery of the cozy variety.

As one would expect from Harrison, Winter in Eden is well-written, and attention-riveting. Its biggest failing is that it follows West of Eden - an incredible novel in all respects. Winter in Eden, while worth reading, seems undeveloped, less focused. Perhaps it is the absence of the Vainte/Kerrick dynamic. Perhaps it is that the Yilane are now familiar and no longer wonderous strange. Or perhaps it is simply that perfection is seldom captured twice.

I enjoyed this book better than the first. Maybe it's the development of the story, or just revisiting an incredible alternative world. Harrison is a master storyteller and the concept of dinosaurs not going extinct, and making slaves of humans, is mind-boggling. Like other readers, I wish the series were longer.

Happily, I have found another series that is remarkably similar: the Dinosaur Wars series byThomas Hopp. Written recently, they have one advantage over the Eden books. The intelligent human-sized dinosaurs are feathered and bird-like. This is more realistic according to modern science, but Harrison couldn't have known what would later be discovered in China while he was writing of scaly, almost amphibian dinosaurs in these books. Ah, well, everything evolves, including our view of what an intelligent dinosaur might be like. Also, Hopp writes of dinosaurs returning to the present-day world we live in, not an alternative. So there are some cool tank battles and cruise missile counterattacks. Again, an evolution of Harrison's concept.

Hooray for both authors. Long live the subgenre!

This is truly first rate sci fi, with grand conceptions and epic sweep, fascinating characters, and a sense of wonder. All this is deepened in this volume, but it is less fun than the first, as sequels usually go. It also depends on a bluff that I found disingenuous.