If you buy this book, you wont learn how to BBQ. It doesnt cover enough (or any) on selecting meat, selecting the BBQ smoker, proper cooking technique, etc. But what you do get, that makes this a worthwhile purchase, is a huge amount of great recipies. Where else can you be be looking for BBQ sidedishes like potato salad and coleslaw, and find multiple recipies of each?

This is a FANTASTIC BOOK. It has a great deal of useable recipes in it. Unlike alot of cookbooks that just have a few. I highly recomend this cookbook. Would give it 10 stars if i could.Happy Barbecueing. It's time to fire up the Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker.

An absolutely wonderful kitchen tool for anyone who likes rubs, sauces and BBQ. My husband and I use this book religiously at least once a week and everything is great! The sauces and seasonings work well with all types of meat! BBQ certainly isn't just for breakfast anymore!

Written for middle school students, this history is spiced with tales, photos and sidebars seldom seen in history books. My daughter loved the book because these characters match her fictional favorites for fortitude and impact. "Hey, Mom, listen to this..." Apparent exhaustive research, unusual photos, strong creativity. The story-telling charm is off-set, however, by misspelled words, omission of prehistoric eras, and rewrite of characters who are not socially mainstream or exemplary. Kansas was more diverse and colorful than this book portrays. Was truth thinned to assure that the book would "sell" to schools? History is meant to be rich. It is about life, itself.

Well- it's about time! This book will let the world know that there much more to Kansas that those drab monochrome tones we see every time we watch the beginning scenes of the Wizard of Oz!. While still being very informative, this book was a real pleasure to read. It's done in a "story style" that was certainly more interesting that the boring old history texts of my youth! The book really allows the reader to relate to the many fascinating historical figures as genuine people rather than mere ghostly gray figures of days gone by. The whole book simply struck me as "being about real people for real people". The great original artwork and wonderful photographs and post cards were the "icing on the cake". Well done to the team that assembled this fine work! I hope its serves well those curious to know about the Sunflower State for years to come!

I have read this book and I found it a great read! The art work is very good. The Kansas school children should feel special to be able to use such a informative book. The photos are super and there are so many of them! The end of the chapter postcards are really a neat idea. This brings Kansas history to a level of interest for everyone. Wish my state had one like it.

If you enjoy western novels, such as Little House on the Prairie and Lonesome Dove, you will enjoy this novel by Irene Bennett Brown. From the moment you begin reading, you are drawn into the lives of her characters---from main character Meg and her tumultuous past, to lives of orphans Lucy Ann and Lad, to the antagonist, rancher Jack Ambler. Romance is quietly woven throughout the story, but is not a main focus of the novel. Brown writes simply, with no bad language or sex. And the lives of her characters are believable, as well as her description of wild, western Kansas in the late 1800's. This is a book you will love and even your grandma could read and enjoy.

This book is the BEST book i've ever read!! It's a great page turning book of women and children on the open plains of western Kansas.

Irene Bennett Brown wastes no time in engaging the reader with heart-warming characters and a suspenseful, yet logical plot. This book is a marvel of accuracy in depicting details of homesteading. The story races right along, yet evolves so logically from real life/real time situations that the reader is never in doubt that her characters set-backs and triumphs could have happened just the way she describes. It is to Brown's credit and enormous skill that her lean pared prose still gives a masterful portrait of sympathetic characters worth writing about.

Michael Bishop, Nebula Award-winning author of No Enemy but Time, has just released Blue Kansas Sky, which collects four of his short works - one never before been seen in print - in a single volume. These stories showcase his mastery of different genres, and provide the reader with an sampling from various phases in Bishop's writing career.

"Blue Kansas Sky" is a moving story of a young boy in 1950s small-town America, who struggles between his love for an uncle just released from prison and loyalty to his mother (who blames the man for her husband's death). Bishop incorporated many details from his own childhood to make this tale come alive. There's no science fiction here at all - just an engaging tale, extremely well written. Michael Bishop is adept at incorporating fresh words and unexpected turns of phrase without making the reader scramble for a thesaurus.

In "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thurbana," a well-to-do Afrikaner "ghosts" in and out of reality after a freak auto accident and is forced to watch as the security police interrogate two black laborers - one who plays around with cosmic string theory as a hobby; another who receives pirate radio broadcasts courtesy of a metal plate in his skull. This story is very difficult to get through - not because it is poorly written (indeed, just the opposite); but because it captures in chilling detail the horrors of the old Apartheid system.

"Cri de Coeur" (Cry from the Heart) tells the story of a man who must cope with the responsibilities, and revel in the joys, of raising a son with Down's Syndrome aboard a generational starship seeking to colonize another star system.

"Death and Designation among the Asadi" deals with a human anthropologist living in the wilds of an alien planet, struggling to understand the enigmatic rituals of its lion-maned hominids - without losing his sanity. [After reading this story I asked the author what I should do if I didn't fully understand it - read it again, or embrace the mystery? His answer: "Death and Designation" is my Solaris (a novel by Stanislaw Lem). Real aliens, Lem implies, defy comprehension because they ARE alien. On the other hand, you could read my novel Transfigurations, which incorporates the novella, and which more than one critic badmouthed for explaining rather than embracing the original mystery. They may have done so with some justice.]

Blue Kansas Sky is a wonderful collection of stories that I heartily recommend. It's published by Golden Gryphon Press (a small firm specializing in anthologies).

Blue Kansas Sky is a collection of 4 novellas spanning 3 decades and the full spectrum of Bishop's talent. The title story is a sweet, poignant coming-of-age story set in Bishop's semi-fictional Van Luna, KS: it's all about life and growing up and the random difficulties of doing so. The last line is guaranteed to send you reeling. "Cri di Coeur" and "Death and Designation among the Asadi" are stunning morality tales in the guise of science fiction; as usual, Bishop's characters, no matter where or when they are, portray humanity at its most believable, wanderers who find hope in the most fragile of circumstances. The ringer for me, though, is "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana," a magical-realistic look at the horror of racism, the sin of inaction, all neatly and convincingly tied up with the Theory of Everything. Quite simply: amazing.

This is a collection for fantasists, for realists, for anyone who enjoys one of our best unsung writers at his very best.

Michael Bishop is a Nebula and World Fantasy Awards winning author. Blue Kansas Sky showcases four of his best novellas under one cover. These superbly written stories include Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thuban; Cri De Coeur; Death and Designation Among the Asadi; and the title piece, Blue Kansas Sky. This outstanding anthology is enhanced for the readers with an informative introduction to Michael Bishop and his writing by James Morrow. Blue Kansas Sky is "must reading" for Bishop's legion of science fiction and fantasy fans.

This book is an excellent design source for anyone interested in older quilt patterns. The book features color photos of 800 quilt blocks with captions giving the name of each and the approximate size of the original block. Included are patterns and piecing diagrams for 200 of the blocks. The blocks are all pieced with vintage fabrics for anyone who is interested older fabrics. Just a wonderful book!

If you are interested in quilt history or in the names of traditional quilt blocks, this book is an invaluable tool. Carrie Hall sewed and collected various quilt blocks along with their names in what is now an encyclopedia of quilt history. I have used this book both for inspiration in my own quilt block making and also for historical interest (which blocks were named after political events, etc). Definitely one to have on your quilt book shelf.

This is an excellent resource book for those interested in quilt history. The more than 800 blocks were made between 1900-1935. Both pieced and appliqued blocks are shown in color. The pattern section of more than 200 blocks range from easy level to difficult. The template section is very easy to use. Each block is shown in color and then in sections with all template numbers listed. All blocks in this section have been converted to more standard sizes and could be converted to other sizes with relative ease by any quilter. A fantastic book and a must for any quilter's personal library!

Although Don Coldsmith story tellig was as alway great this book left me wanting more. It seemed incomplete, it left me hanging on several of his story line that he was telling. He had too much of caractors for the story that wasn't even connected to each other. It was like he was forced to write this story and to make a deadline. Alot of the story line was great but incompete, Their story just stopped without being finshed

This is another great novel by Coldsmith, but I too agree that he seems to jump from one family to another, never connecting them in any way. I kept expecting for an earlier character to pop up in a chance meeting with newer characters but that just didn't happen. He took you from the experiences of one group to another which I loved, but never picked back up on a group to let you know if they found their destinations or not. Maybe this is the start of a new "saga" series! Each novel could fill in the blanks on one of the families/groups.

I purchased this book because I am an avid reader of the Spanish Bit Saga series and upon seeing the title SOUTHWIND, assumed that this would be the South Wind character that I had been waiting to reappear in the Saga series. She doesn't even make an appearence here so I am at a loss as to what happened to her in the series or why this book was titled such.

Never the less, this book makes for wonderful reading. Just don't expect it to fall in line with anything Coldsmith has written yet.

I have every book I know that Mr. Coldsmith has written, I think it's hard to pick which one is the best, because everything he writes is great. This book proves he is the best author on this subject ever!! He is also the only author that I look for whenever I'm in a book store ot grocery store. Can't wait for the next one. Vicki from Ks. G

Lee Killough has got 3 very good novels here. Set in alternate future around to Law Enforment Officers (Leo's), you actually get 3 books for your money:

1.The Doppelganger gambit - which is about fraud and murder 2.Spider play - industrial esponage 3.dragon's teeth - political games.

These are classic 'opposites complement' each other character novels. However, the author convincly drags you into her future society and her characters are likable.

I'd also highly reccomend this author's other novel(s)'bloodwalk', which is a more contempary 'vampire-detective' novel(s)

Writing a science-fiction mystery is a task difficult to do well -- either you get too involved in the SF aspects, and slight the mystery (or, worse yet, make the mystery impossible to legitimately solve because it turns on things that don't yet exist), or you concentrate on keeping the mystery scrupulously fair to the reader and wind up killing the Sense of Wonder that is essential to SF.

Usually SF mysteries are good mysteries but mediocre SF or Good SF but only middling mysteries... or, worst of all, bad SF and bad mysteries.

Which brings us to Lee Killough, who has quite nicely performed the trick three times (though i must say that the second of the three novels here reprinted is the weakest of the three, it is by no means a Bad Story).

Part of the equation in a story like this is to create a viewpoint character the reader will enjoy following and through whose eyes the society and background of the story will be presented, and Killough's Janna Brill and her aggravating partner, "Mama" Maxwell fit the bill perfectly.

Janna and Mama are "lions" ("LEOs" -- "Law Enforcement Officers", in an example of the plausible future slang that Killough uses just enough of to give a sense of time and place, but not enough to require a glossary or footnotes), in a time when cops can no longer carry lethal weapons, when the internal-combustion engine has been outlawed and when giant ramjet starships carry colonists in suspended animation to new lives on distant worlds. And when the SCIB Card -- a universal ID card -- has supposedly made it impossible to avoid leaving a paper trail of your day-to-day life that documents where you've been and when you were there. And it's the death of a partner in a firm that specialises in outfitting colonial companies that drives the first story, in which we first meet our intrepid heroes. Mama is sure that killer is the dead man's partner... but his card records prove he was nowhere near the scene of death at the time of the crime.

In the end, justice is served and the stories all reach a satisfying conclusion.((Incidentally, based on the three books from them i have so far, i would pretty much recommend automatically buying anything you see with the Meisha Merlin imprint...))

Bridling Chaos by Lee Killough is about 2 mismatched cops partnered together to solve murders. Originally 3 separate books (Doppelganger's Gambit, Spider Play, and Dragon's Teeth), this book is an excellent read. Janna By-The-Book Brill and Mama Blue-Sky Maxwell are distinctly different personalities and play well (and sometimes bounce) off of each other. Ms. Killough has invented innovative and futuristic technological and scientific advances, street people, police jargon, clothing fashions, laws, vehicles, police methodology, personal and legal relationships, politics, etc., while at the same time making it evident that her future could easily evolve from our current. Some of the touches that enhance the immediacy and realism are the news announcements and police dispatch calls that are interjected periodically throughout the book. Bridling Chaos is an exciting, fun, solid science fiction / murder mystery / cop/detective story. I strongly recommend it.

The writing is very smooth but the writer spent too much time to paint the veiled several key characters with very very long paragraphs, sometimes a whole page only got about 1-1/10 long paragraphs which were usually very tiresome to focus and read. The prose style writing may be very good but also kills the pace to an almost dragging, snailingly crawled monologue styled narration, just like the late man who rode a bus and look outside the window, the smoky glass made everything distant and vague and made the scenary going back and disappeared. A mystery should not be written like a some kind memorial stuff lingering in yesterday. Like a chess game, both players got to meet the time limits, reading a novel or mystery is the same thing, you just can't have too much time wasted in blabbing and making the reader waiting too long and too much

Girard has an ability I usually don't find in this genre, to give detail of settings and people to make you feel you are there along side them. Rather than the typical supreficial, get to the story nature of mysteries, it goes several levels deeper. The people become very real and you care about them as much as you care about whodunnit. The people are not some stereotype. The weaving of contrasts and similarities between the three main characters puts us on a level with them, we've all been there in some way. What starts out as bleak lives, mistakes are made, hope is lost, leaves the reader feeling there is a future. I can't wait for his new novel to come out.

"The Late Man" is an elegiac, beautifully written novel whose story happens to fit the constraints of genre. But to say that it is not strictly speaking a "genre novel" is meant as praise; this is a beautiful book that sneaks up on you and lingers with you long after you have turned the last page. I recommend this book to all "genre" lovers- be they crime novels, detective novels, or murder mysteries- who want a little more weight, a little more feeling with their entertainments. "The Late Man" makes me hope that this was not a one shot from Mister Girard; that many more novels of this caliber will issue forth from him.

On the great prairie lands of the United States, in the late 1880s, Laurel McBryde's life with her widowed father is exactly what she wishes it to be. She reads, makes photographs and is treated as an equal by her father. But when he dies on her twenty-first birthday, leaving her in the hands of her mother's family, Laurel's life changes radically. She is expected to marry, and to that end the Hartmoors press her to give up her most unfeminine behavior, her radical ideas and her belief that she is the equal to any man. Only one man in Chisholm appreciates Laurel for what she is, and he is not only married and of a different class, but there is a shadow over his past that threatens even their friendship.

Boy, can Michelle Black write! Her "Lightning in a Drought Year" is a tremendously moving, compelling novel about life in gilded-age Kansas. The plot is simple; it's a coming-of-age story involving the best sort of romantic heroine, a woman who has learned to think for herself, and it requires her to butt heads with those who uphold the status quo. But while her presence changes them, as it will in all good novels of the type, they change her as well, and this is tremendously refreshing because it acknowledges that any person at any age, no matter how enlightened they may seem, can have room for change and growth in their lives. Watching Laurel come to care for a family which at first seems horrid and stifling is one of the joys of this book. The story is told with a less-is-more restraint that compels readers to do a lot of the work for themselves, to bring their own feelings and experiences to the act of reading, which I find the most satisfying sort of storytelling.

One of Black's major strengths is characterization. She doesn't show her hand too quickly, but is careful to remain in Laurel's point of view, allowing the reader to see and understand only what Laurel does. Moments of extreme discomfort are broken by touches of unexpected kindness and humor, which are in turn squashed by rigid attitudes and expectations. It's an effort to get to know the Hartmoors, but the effort pays off. By the end I might not have agreed with any of their attitudes, but I felt a true affection for them. They are sublimely human and prone to all the human weaknesses as well as strengths. They do things for selfish reasons, but when a situation calls for selflessness and honesty, they come through, sometimes grudgingly, sometimes with infectious good humor. By comparison, Carey Fairchild, Laurel's lover, is not quite as well drawn as the others, but that's not necessarily a drawback. He's a nice change from the overwhelmingly masculine, square-jawed, often obtuse but always in control romantic hero who has become an awful cliché in romantic fiction. Carey is fallible, weak and strong by turns, loving, selfish, thoughtful and thoughtless, and if we don't see as far into him as we do the Hartmoor family members it is perhaps because Black is so consistent in her point of view that we perceive him through Laurel-tinted glasses which see the faults, but make them look smaller. As for Laurel, she's refreshingly girl-next-door. I was with her the whole way; never once did Black lose me with inappropriately gushy descriptions of her beauty, her brilliance or her spunk.

Michelle Black is a treasure; she has a strong, sensible narrative voice, an eye for believable characterization and the ability to make the most out of a simple plot. On the strength of this book, I've ordered the e-book version of her previous title "Never Come Down."

Ms. Black writes a compelling love story intertwined with an equally compelling social drama. Though slow to start, the pace picks up nicely about midway through the book. I was afraid the the plot was somewhat predictable at first but was pleasantly surprised to find fascinating plot twists that enhanced and underscored her lively and believable characters. I look forward to more books by Ms. Black.

I LOVED THIS BOOK! What an amazing story set in Victorian Kansas encompassing quite a number of sub-plots with a very satisfying conclusion that has you cheering and wanting more! There are lots of lawyers out there who write...or think they do, but Michelle Black is a writer who just happens to practice law. To those lovers of language, this difference will become known to you with the very first page. This is a gifted, new writer and this book is truly worthy of Oprah's list! I hope that a third book makes an appearance soon!

This book is all about Ida Kate. When her Mother dies, she is left all he chores, and can't attend school. A friend of Ida Kate's mother dies also. Her father sent away for a mail bride (that is where two people send lots of letters, and then the lady comes and they get married). Her friend's step-mother was very nice, so Ida Kates father decided to try. When Caroline (his mail bride) gets there she brings a big surprise with her. This is a very good story!

It's 1878. Ida Kate Deming and her father live on a farm on the Kansas prairie, several miles from the nearest town. Since the death of Ida Kate's mother, she has had to take on the household chores: cleaning, mending, cooking, etc. It's a big job for a young girl, and it doesn't leave enough time for Ida Kate to attend school or see her friends much. Small wonder, then, that Ida Kate is excitedly looking forward to the arrival of the mail-order bride that is coming from back east to marry her father. Trouble arrives with the new member of the family, however. Her hair is the wrong color, she's too short, she cooks too well and sings too well, she isn't allergic to the cat, and her handwriting is different from the handwriting in the letters they received. Who is this woman, really? What happened to the woman Ida Kate and her father were expecting?

While portraying the hardships of life on the frontier in the late 1800's, "Riddle Of The Prairie Bride" also gives kids an intriguing mystery to sink their teeth into. "Formulaic" it may be, but this is fine for kids. A plot with too many complications could be overwhelm a young reader. My ten-year-old daughter got quite caught up in this tale, and wanted to "keep reading" each evening until we finished it. Readers of other "history mysteries" will not be disappointed with this one. If you have never read one, give one a try.

Ever since her mother's death two years ago, twelve-year-old Ida Kate Deming has done all the housework for herself and her father on their Kansas homestead. The year is 1878, and life on the prairie is difficult, dangerous, and lonely. Ida Kate's father has decided the time has come for him to remarry. He puts an advertisement for a wife in an eastern newspaper, and a young widow, Caroline Fairchild, who has a one-year-old son, responds. Ida Kate is eager to have a mother and a brother, and her father is eager to once again have a wife. But all is not right with Caroline. Soon, Ida Kate begins to suspect that Caroline may not be Caroline at all, but someone else entirely different. But if "Caroline" is an impostor, what happened to the real Caroline? And are Ida Kate and her father in danger? This was a wonderful addition to the History Mysteries series that brought alive life on the prairie in the 1870s. Ida Kate was a spirited, adventurous heroine. I reccomend this book to all those who enjoyed the other History Mysteries books.