This book is very interesting but it is also very gory. It is a nonfiction picture book that is appropriate for young adult readers. Every image has a description of the picture that captures your attention, and depending on your personal interest, leads the reader to the narrative on the same page.

Looking for a high-interest read for a reluctant grade 6-8 reader? This should do it! Stunning photographs of human remains accompany an interesting text. But this one isn't for the nightmare-prone. Make sure you read through the book to see that it is appropriate for the child you hand it to. The text addresses a variety of ways bodies become mummified, how bodies decay, how and why human remains are studied by scientists, burial customs, and also makes a case for respecting human remains. The book has some interesting science and supports the Investigation and Experimentation strand for grades 6-8, and the Earth and Life History standard for grade 7 (California Science standards).

This book is informative, but the index does not match the page numbers so it is not possible to reference topics at-a-glance. I had to return it.

This book is a MUST for a Poodle buyer! It has everthing you need to know about the raising of Poodles. Breeders: A very good book to give to someone buying a Poodle from you!

The story is basic, and a little boring, about a little girlbeing in her aunt's wedding. I didn't care for the illustrations. Iended up returning it, and it's box. I ordered the little ring bearer, but it took so long to deliver, I canceled it.

I bought this book (and it's companion book, "The Ring Bearer's Big Day") for our Flower Girl and Ring Bearer. They absolutely loved the story(s). Just perfect for our 5 year old Girl, and 7 year old boy. They really prepare the kids for all the fun of being in a wedding. Thank you for having it in stock!! It was a little hard to find, but WELL worth the effort.

Much of the same comments I made about the "Builder's Guide to Wells and Septic Systems" apply to this book. Although oriented more towards a home owner-builder rather than a professional home builder, it still lacks detail on septic systems. There is no discussion of sand mounds, which account for about 90% of all installations in my region of PA, or other alternative system types. About 1/3 of the book relates to septic systems and the balance to well and water systems.

If you are interested mainly in wells, this is probably not a bad choice. If your desire is to design your own septic system, then I think this book is lacking.

Matt

Book reads like a textbook. However, very detailed information provides good fundamental knowledge of the topic.

Sadly, Anne Perry seems to be losing enthusiasm - this latest in the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series started off badly and degenerated into a boring and tedious read. The usual cast of characters that were vividly portrayed in the previous Pitt books either made cameo appearances (Aunt Vespasia and Charlotte's mother, Caroline) or were conveniently absent (Charlotte's sister, Emily and her husband, Jack). Perry seems to have gotten hung up on the issue of militant feminism in this latest book, and this has severely impacted the "detecting" aspects that were present in her earlier books in this series. But all is not lost - Pitt's boss, Cornwallis, appears to have fallen in love - with the wife of a Bishop no less! Is this an echo of what happened to Pitt's previous boss - he fell in love with, and married, a widow? I hope that Anne Perry does better with her next Pitt book. Me - I would prefer Lindsey Davis's Falco series any day.

In the late 1890s, what did it mean to be a woman in England? What did it mean to have a religious faith against Charles Darwin's new theory of evolution? Anne Perry at her finest draws the reader to experience what only one could have imagined. 10 years after Sarah's death in Cater Street, dashing Dominic Corde has taken the cloth of the curate, sharing the home with Reverend Paramenter and his family and Unity Bellwood, 'a new woman', who has a passionate belief in educating women, having the vote, and Charles Darwin. Religion and those who follow it are fodder for her mockery of such arachaic notions. So, who causes her violent death at the bottom of the Paramenter's staircase? Thomas and Charlotte must traverse through some of marriage's most difficult tests and examine their beliefs, when it appears as if Dominic might be the murderer. Jealousy, freedom to choose who one might wish to marry, passions that cause people to act and react, play an intricate ! part in this latest Perry, making the reader question are some choices worth dying or are desires and wants as useless as crying over split milk?

Perry's latest Thomas and Charlotte Pitt Victorian novel is yet another splendid "affair." As an historian, I would still say that novelist Perry is one of the finest Victorian era, zenith-of-the-British-Empire historians. More than anyone else, she has brought to the forefront the texture, darkness, light of the Victorian era, with its nasty social problems, its deep sense of caste, its range of crippling discrimination, its arrogance and cruelty - and the courage and stamina and wisdom of its common folks. This novel is no exception. Perry always takes a contemporary social problem of today, traces back to its origin or presence in the Victorian period, fashions a mystery around it, captures a reader's sense of outrage at that "ancient" abuse - and hopefully, reminds one of the continuity of that abuse to today. The focus this time is on a philosophy and a disdain and the ends some would go to insist on one's own truth.

Whenever she comes! to town, my question to her is usually, "What is your next book about?" She always, remarkably responds, "I am working on two now, and I think you will find the plots interesting." Her mind is as creative and active as anyone I have met. Amazing.

Like most of the other reviewers here I found that Charlotte Gray didn't come close to Birdsong - but maybe it is unfair to compare the too. Charlotte is a good read. I came to care deeply about all of the characters and was eager to see what would happen to them. The one part of the story that rings false is the love story between Charlotte and Peter. Much like the granddaughter in Birdsong, this plot seemed contrived as a way to tell the rest of the story. Faulks is at his best describing life in "Free" France and the people who lived there. His prose brings the landscape and even the smells to life. From anyone else this would have probably been considered a wonderful book, maybe it's just that from Faulks we've come to expect a bit more.

I have had to reflect upon Faulks' 'Charlotte Gray' for some time to refrain from critcising it unduly. This is, quite genuinely, a convincing and well-woven story that will greatly appeal to first time readers of Faulks, yet still it may be a slight disappointment to those who have read 'Birdsong'.

In itself, 'Charlotte Gray' is an accomplished novel by a gifted storyteller. - Our eponymous heroine is a complex and fairly intriuging lady, but in my opinion was less well conceived than the characters who accompany her in wartime France. The Jewish father and son, who aid Charlotte in the Resistance and in her search for her missing lover, are particularly compelling.

In criticism, the concentration camps present in 'Charlotte Gray' would have benefited from the visceral style Faulks' employed in his description of the First World War trenches of 'Birdsong'. Unfortunately, the horrors of the Second World War are not described with the clarity or power present in his earlier book.

This one was my personal favorite of the trilogy. Eventhough I felt little connection with Charlotte, her perils kept me reading. The subplot of Andre, Jacob and Levade certainly stole the show. Faulks seems always to beautifully represent unjust and tragic contrasts of society during war. The historical detail is rich and convincing. I wish he would now write from a Jewish perspective.

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. Can someone please tell me why so much hype concenring this "child prodigy"? Yes, at 12 years old she was good, however not as amazing as America percieved her to be. Now, years later she's gotten worse, and still everyone fusses about her! and now the next thing i see, we have to read about her life so far? please! she seems very shallow according to this book, to tell you the truth, she doesn't seem interesting enough or have enough depth to her to write a book. she just seems like a one-dimensional money-making machine that once showed potential and now is just something to make money off of. I'm sorry if this is cruel, but that's the price publishers risk when releasing nonsense like this.

Charlotte Church may seem like an interesting girl and I hate to spoil the rumors, but she is not. Reading this book was like tripping over onto a pair of scissors into my eyes. Of course, reading the book was not as thrilling as that. Charlotte Chruch has no business to ever write again and I pray that her voice don't get broke or she'll have nothing left.

Perhaps I should have gotten this book and read it earlier, as the changes that are on the horizon for Miss Church make a lot of what is in the book appear dated, even irrelevant.

The fact is that a lot of the book is not much more than adolescent chatter about her family, her friends, and her hometown, some of it is charming, but some of it is no more than filler and no help to a reader who wants insight into her or her music. In fact, she does not talk a great deal about her songs or her music except in the most cursory way, especially those on her first two albums (although admittedly the book was out before her fourth album). However, the attentive reader of this book will be less surprised at the coming changes in her music, as she all but comes right out and says she isn't into classical music and longs for a more pop direction.

Also notable is the fact that Charlotte is somewhat inconsistent about things like her faith, talking in one chapter about how going to church isn't about being Catholic and how she prays in her own way, and in another about how meeting the Pope is the closest you can come to meeting God. Most notable is that she talks about having learned the lesson about watching what she says in public after joking publicly about how she wanted to to snitch a teaspoon from the White House and the media being all over her case, yet the lesson was apparently unlearned in the wake of September 11th.

There is absolutely no mention of her change in management except in the most cursory terms, when in fact the change led to a lawsuit by her fired manager, Jonathan Shalit, in which Charlotte counterclaimed "inappropriate tactile conduct" (per People Magazine). The fact that the suit settled for 2 million pounds paid by Charlotte casts some doubt on those allegations.

The fact is that with the coming changes, this biography is both out-of-date and incomplete, and it will be interesting if ever there is an unauthorized one.

The trouble I've found in reading this novel is that I cannot put aside the feeling that no one other than Jane Austen should have the right to continue her own work; putting aside that thought, however, I still find it hard to praise a book which is born of a pen so obviously inferior to that of Austen. While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this weak imitation is not a worthy successor to the original piece. One should not pass off recycled words and ideals as continuing in the Austen tradition. The author's comments on this review board trouble me a great deal,although her personality is irrelevent when we're judging her pen; few objective judge of literature would declare this a good sequal to P&P, and the need to cite someone else's opinion in a short posting so full of stylistic and grammatical errors shows a real insecurity regarding one's own work and total contempt for opposing views and criticisms which I find shameful in a writer. Instead of reading this thin scrap of a book, the reader would benefit much more were he to re-read Austen's rich original.

I waited a long time to get my hands on this book, as the inter libery did not hold a copy. ... I was very disappointed in the story it started out well but I found that it lacked something. The story is mainly about Charlotte Collins and her daughter whom the youngest of the Darcy's son's falls in love with. To me it needed more bite to the story, as it was too short and I felt that more could have been added which would have made the story much more interesting

The subtitle of this novel is "A gentle, Jane Austen-style joke," and it provides an appropriate lens through which to view this charming short novel. The characters -- chiefly the mature Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth Bennet, and Mr. Darcy, as well as Charlotte's daughter Eliza and Elizabeth and Darcy's son Henry -- are nicely imagined and true to Austen. The author touches on how the Austen's characters and their children would respond to the intellectual climate of the early Victorian era, which adds interest to the story. Newark's playful references to characters from other Austen novels may not suit everyone's taste, but will likely amuse others who share her fondness for all of Austen's characters.

This was a dull read that I had to force myself to finish. The plot wanders aimlessly and is hard to follow. Mnay of the other continuations are better than this so I would recommend saving your money.

Even casual readers of Jane Austen understand that all her writing exists within a certain range. All her novels contain some variation of certain plot elements - the hero, the female rival(s) for the hero's affections, the decoy hero, the wouldn't-marry-him-even-if-he-was/even-though-he-is-worth-10,000-a-year anti-hero. Austen's genious was not in original plotting, but in her use of this formula to explore character, human nature and society. The opening chapters of _Charlotte_, those penned by our beloved authoress, set up all these elements brilliantly. Unfortunately, when Julia Barrett takes over the narrative, we find no social commentary (forgiveable perhaps since Ms. Barrett does not live in the society described), but more importantly, a plot which ambles about as non-sensically as a drunk who has lost his sense of direction. The heroine spends most of her time outside the hero's company, and a considerable time outside of Sanditon and away from most of the characters introduced. The characters clearly intended by Austen as rivals disappear from the pages between their introduction and their marriages, approximately 90% of the story. I can hardly critize Ms. Barrett for not writing in Austen's style or with Austen's formula. I only expect such deviations to be done well, in a manner that is internally consistent with the characters introduced, which _Charlotte_ is not.

I truly enjoyed this novel, as much as I did its predecessors "Presumption" and "The Third Sister", I think, though each of the three had its own individual, special delights. Though by no means an expert myself in Jane Austen or late 18th Century England, it seemed to me that "Jane Austen's Charlotte" like the two others, did indeed "engage and entice" back into that world, and I believe they kept to the "great lady's" own standards of wit, warmth, and intelligence.

I think the aspect of these novels, and most recently "Charlotte", that impresses me the most is the prodigious imagination required of a writer in today's world to imagine and bring to life these very real-seeming characters in an age not like ours at all in so many ways, especially in language. Julia Barrett definitely has a "felicity" with language much like the "great lady". I loved the turns of phrases, the chapter beginnings, the extremely insightful observations on human nature, both its strengths and foibles, and above all, the way she, like her wonderful predecessor, makes the characters individualistic and memorable without a lot of physical description or observation.

And, the satirical asides and situations in "Charlotte" seem to have more contemporary resonances than in the previous novels or even in Jane's. I was constantly smiling and even laughing out loud at Lady Denham and Mr. Parker and how they got caught up in the seashore health fads and get-rich-quick enthusiasms of the "new day" dawning in England in the early 1800s. If they could only see the modern world mania for "development" and dubious investments as well as today's corruption and avarice gone wild almost everywhere.

Like Jane Austen, Ms. Barrett brought the story to a close most satisfactorily with the heroine getting her fairly predictable education in life and a fine, upstanding husband to boot, and with little collateral damage to those relatives and loved ones least guilty of the shenanigans that brought Sanditon to near ruin. Barrett really did open up "Charlotte" to the rest of the world, hinted at in her two previous works as well by the "great lady" herself in her later novels, but she also somehow maintained the high level of wit and charm and intelligence that are so enjoyable in her mentor. So, kudos and many thank yous for another very enjoyable visit to Jane Austen land. As with a few other books I've really enjoyed, I'm sure I'll take them down in a couple of years to re-read. And, I'll definitely recommend them to whomever I run into who seems capable of enjoyment of such a high order. To those who think no one should "sully" Jane Austen's memory or tread on her legacy, I say nonsense and challenge them to give Julia Barrett a try. Jane Austen has indeed a worthy successor these days. I eagerly await an addition to the canon.

This book certainly entertained me for a couple of hours despite its far fetched plot (yet another mad woman?) and not well developed characters. The author thought a lot about how Jane and Rochester might interact as a married couple, given all that had happened to them, but if you are looking for the technique, vocabulary and "voice" of Charlotte Bronte, don't look here. This book is really a glorified romance novel and as such can be enjoyed as mind candy of the most frivilous sort. None of the supporting characters in this book would have behaved in the manner that the author conceives, if she remained true to the time of the story, but it is interesting to see her extrapolate from the original plot and set out on a modern tack. I am sure she had fun writing this novel, although I don't believe she is as deep a scholar of English lierature as is A.S. Byatt who in Posession totally created the "voices" and different language of the two poets. And all the editing mistakes - if I were the author I'd be embarrased with such an edition.

I read this book, despite all the bad reviews I heard about it. And though some parts were a little off, the book itself was interesting. And it helped passed the time. I do agree with most everybody about the sex scenes. They were a little...un-needed and explicit. The overall plot was okay. Interesting though. I didn't expect it. Whoever would have thought Jane and Rochester would meet up with yet another crazy woman.
The one thing I particularily did not like was the fact that Rochester wore an eye patch over his blinded eye. I just can't imagine him wearing one. Edward Fairfax Rochester was definitely not a pirate!

I was eagerly awaiting someone to write a sequel to one of my favorite books, Jane Eyre. While the narrative wasn't terrible, there were too many editing errors in this book to make it one of my favorites. Also, Jane's estrangement from her husband was not believeable - certainly not within character.