Palmer, Palmer, Palmer, Palmer. This book kept my attention. The book was pretty good. It was a quik read. Acording to the author, Palmer,the people of Nova Scotia rely too much on their fish. They should find differant ways of getting food.

I love reading about Canada! I'm a Canadian and can relate to how things are run when it comes to enviromental protection and government. Being a native of Robb, Alberta I know how plundering natural resources can become a problem to survival. Like the people of Flowers Cove logging has been a terrible hex on the people of Robb. I have never been to Newfoundland but I hope to see how well the author, Craig Pamer protrayed the situation by visiting there myself. I would recommend this book to any chap that wants an outside perspective to an inside problem.

Granted, it wasn't one of Linda's most exceptional books, but it was great all the same. Savana Rezanov Mackenzie is a Russian-British young woman who is totally loyal to her English heritage. Her family is wealthy and well-to-do, but her Russian relatives have disowned her because of her British father, and she longs to be loved and accepted by her mother's family, since she has no other. Caught up in the British-American fight for power in the Northwest, Savana becomes a spy. Then, she meets Trace Wilder...a dangerous American spy who has many disguises...soldier, rancher, sailor. Trace becomes her protector, but she is confused as to her loyalties. Should she do as she planned, and stay Trace's enemy, for a cause she really doesn't believe in...or follow her heart and trust him?

You will enjoy the banter and romance so typical of Linda's books as Savana and Trace suspiciously travel on a contraband-holding ship...and the thrilling chase and action scenes at the countess's palace. Though it wasn't fabulous, I liked it a lot and I'd recommend it for a nice cozy fireside read, or when you're in the mood for romance and adventure.

I've waited forever to read this book. It was well worth the wait! Romance, adventure... longing to bridge gaps in family relationships. I've read this book in a day! I couldn't put it down. I've really enjoyed the characters Trace Wilder and Savana Mackenzie. Savana is a British-Russian young woman who reluctantly becomes a spy "for the good of the British Empire." Trace has identities like:spy,soldier,ranch owner and ship's captain with the goal of seeing the Pacific Northwest have the Stars and Stripes flying over it. Savana is torn between her attraction and her loyalties and wants to meet her long-lost grandmother for the first time. Baron Peter Sarakof promises to reunite Savana and her grandmother, but at what cost? Trace finds himself fighting to protect a woman whose loyalites are questionable and knows that in his "business" that emotions could mean his downfall. It was a great book and I wasn't disappointed. I'm looking forward to see what Linda Chaikin has in store for us in the future!

Byers writes with remarkable sensitivity and perception. He takes you into the lives,...indeed, the souls....of his characters. His writing style is smooth and flowing,....a perfect bok for an fternoon in front of a fireplace. The best short stories I've read since Tina Brown took over the New Yorker.

I have read an advance copy of this book, and I cannot find enough superlatives to describe it. Byers employs an understatement that is both simple and profound. His hands-off storytelling puts the reader in the middle of the emotional and psychological dramas that he creates. His characters are real, and we feel their thoughts as if they were our own.

Byers' star is undoubtedly on the rise. This debut is only the beginning of a long and promising writing career.

I bought this collection because Michael Byers was teaching my writing workshop at Oberlin College and I thought I should read his work while he was reading mine. Though I already had great respect for him as a teacher, I now have great respect for him as a writer. The prose is beautifully crafted and his characters are real and engaging. It's a cathartic read and I highly recommend it to anyone who thinks the art of the sentence is dead.

I feel that this book is writen so well that it could have been a true story. It tells the way of life with out the auther trying to show only one side. It can be a little crude in spots but I feel that it only makes it all the more real. If you have any intrest in indians or rodeo life, you should read this book.

This book got me back into reading fiction for the first time in years. I asked a friend who reads a lot of different authors for something, and he said try this one. So I did, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I live in California, but am fond of the Pacific Northwest, and have done a lot of travelling there. Lesley has a fine ability to evoke what is special about the land and people of this area. The book has some interesting accounts of the ways of the tribes in the area, such as the Celilo, a fishing tribe whose prime fishing grounds are wiped out in one poignant scene by a newly constructed power dam.

The story follows Danny Kachiah, a Nez Perce who barely ekes out a living working the local Rodeo circuit as a bronco-rider. He is trying to re-assume the role of father after his divorced wife is killed in a car accident, leaving him with his estranged son, Jack. But it is Danny's relationship with his father, Red Shirt, that is central to this book.

Danny is haunted by the memory of his father, a tough, smart old Nez Perce, and by the remarkable stories his father has related to him over the years. Throughout the book, it is the memory of his father and of the cultural traditions of his tribe that Red Shirt has passed on to him through his stories and teachings, that guide his actions as he attempts to get his life back together, and especially, to re-establish his relationship with his son.

I basically read "Winterkill" in one sitting. It's an excellent story about fathers and sons and the family history that both brings them together and also creates walls between them. Through the principal character, Danny Kachiah, Lesley weaves an absolutely engrossing story of a contemporary Native American family. In the process, he also tells something about the nation (in this case the Nez Perce of Eastern Oregon) and its history, and how this history weighs down on its descendents. The story is never anything but believable-the characters are very realistic, and Lesley's portrayal of life among the "reservation Indians" is brutally honest. Also, there is no climatic "redemption" or catharsis or any of the other cliched conclusions that can usually be found in similar "family drama" literature. This is what makes "Winterkill" so much like real life, as it deals with slow growth and the painful ups and downs that generally mark interpersonal relations. There's not much more I can really add here, except to say that this is the best piece of fiction I've read in a long time.

I picked up After Nirvana by accident at the bookstore, thinking it a history of post-grunge music. I was suprised to find a novel whose action takes place in and around my own neighborhood in downtown Portland, Oregon. I purchased the book and found it to be an easy read. The story is about a teen-age "gutter-punk" who turns to male prostitution to survive and his friends. The story is told in an informal manner like it's being told to us by the author anecdotally. There are also several narrative jumps back and forth through time, a technique that is confusing at first. The first thing a reader notices about the book and Mr. William's writing style is that it is detailed. Every bit of minutae surrounding the characters is told in geographic detail. Being a resident of downtown Portland, I found the references to real-life locations exciting. Seeing what, to myself, are everyday locations told in such detail became the main pleasure in reading the book. Unfortunately, it's the same detail that may put off non-Portlander readers. It's as if the author knows the reader is from Portland and throws in the references so that there is no confusion as to what or where he is describing, but to a non-resident without such knowledge, the detail is lost and can even be confusing. The story itself seems to be a rather cliche'd re-telling of My Own Private Idaho and Basketball Diaries. No remarkably new territory is covered. After Nirvana, by Lee Williams, is a great in-joke for Portland residents, but the joke is unfortunately lost on everyone else.

After Nirvana is Lee Williams' odyssey of five runaway teens living off the hard streets of Portland and Seattle. With a forcefully graphic style, Williams effectively and minutely details Portland's city streets, the hustling, the drugs, and the faceless sex. It is a staid, emotionless novel fully consistent with the emotional insulation of the teens. However, it also is a story where suppressed emotions occasionally break out showing the teens to be nothing more than cold, frightened, lonely kids. It is an interesting read, even though the ending is somewhat predictable. Overall, After Nirvana is an exceptional depiction modern hustlers and an excellent portrayal of street kids in the nineties.

This is not the kind of book I would normally read, and thus I enjyoyed it all the more for bringing me into a world I would not have otherwise known. This account of young people in what is apparently recorded as a "post-grunge period" reveals to us the chaotic life of four youngsters who find themselves misplaced and out of touch. (I don't say out of touch with "reality" because they have their own reality with which they are very much in touch.) We're basically in the mind of the narrator, but at the same time we're not because he's actually addressing us, almost as if he's telling us his story. What startled or rather impacted me most is that these youngsters have no plan, few rules, and much life. They live the moment, worrying little about tomorrow although in their own way they're always thinking about their next step and concerned about the future. Williams seems to have captured well the existentialist nature of these post-grungists, if that term may be used. In the end, the characters may be trapped in a world that has forgotten them, but they are freer than the others who surround them.

The historical perspective that is the core of David's book makes the positions of the adversaries in the Kennewick Man dispute more understandable. I expected a telling of the controversy surrounding Kennewick Man, and perhaps some suggestions about what the remains mean to theories concerning the peopling of the New World. What I got was a lucid history of the stormy relationship between Native Americans and archaeologists that forms a good part of the background for the Kennewick Man controversy. David goes some distance (maybe too far)to be charitable to all the players in this scientific soap opera. He makes it clear, however, that Native American remains are part of Native American history and identity, not specimens to be mined for cranial measurements and loopy inferences about intellectual capability. I am left with a nagging question that David doesn't address, but is at the center of this controversy: how do we KNOW the affiliation of human remains? Surely NAGPRA can't ascertain affiliation, although it can apparently assign it. In the absence of some rigorous examination of remains by qualified individuals we are left with the prospect of conflicting claims that characterizes "Kennnewick Man: The Soap". If affiliation is determined by legislative fiat or dueling attorneys, we all lose. Classifying remains as Native American because they are found in North America does some violence to common sense - are Toyotas indigenous because we find them here? Vine DeLoria's views notwithstanding, the peopling of the New World remains a story to be told. It is possible that the Americas were peopled more than once by groups from parts of the world that conventional wisdom has long dismissed. David closes his book with the account of a collaborative project in Alaska that offers a real alternative to the disputes surrounding Kennewick Man. Hopefully such cooperation will be a model for archaeological research, and the picture of Native American prehistory that it renders will be more complete because of its inclusiveness. All in all, a superb read that encourages us to examine our motives and to recall the obscenities that have occurred in the past, and almost certainly will occur again, for "Science".

History id the record of those event and people that happened in our past and the history are usually slanted to the side that the author wants you to believe. Most of these books I find hard to read so when Skull Wars arrived I was ready for another slanted look into American history, I was wrong, very wrong.

In one this years best readings, I found myself engrossed by how well the author was able to make his point and deliver hard facts to back up every statement. His look into the controversy that started in July 1996 in Kennewick, Washington is one of the most compelling books I have ever read.

Follow along and look into how the discovery of a 9,000-year-old skeleton found in the Columbia River could create a stir in major anthropological and archaeological circles that may rage well into the 21st century.

David Hurst Thomas has written a book that gives you another look into not only American History, but also far more importantly Native American History and for that he should be congratulated. Check out Basic Books website for more titles, you won't be disappointed.

Skull Wars is a superb read - engagingly written and forcefully presented - it has relevance well beyond the anthropological and Native American communities. Thomas'interweaving of history, American socio-political history and the emergence of social sciences as practiced in the US is fascinating. He's packed an amazing amount of research into this volume. I learned much and disagree with little. Coming to terms with the issue of race in this country is still in many ways largely intractable, but made much more complex by issues of class. When compounded with the Native American experience the complexities are even more magnified.

The issues confronted in Skull Wars are particularly germane for those Native American groups that have retained some semblance of generational continuity. Thomas accurately touches on the "top down" weaknesses of the implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Thomas clearly articulates that there is not a one-size fits all approach to accommodating and reconciling the concerns of legitimately affected Native Americans and the archaeological community. The positive examples at the end of the book serve as models for much of the country.

I hope Skull Wars reaches the wide audience it deserves. I enthusiastically recommend it.

and come back with a glittering haul."

So plans Jonathan Raban, when he begins fitting out his small boat, well-stocked with both supplies and literary works, for a trip up the inner passage from Seattle to Juneau. Raban soon gets on his way to Alaska, the last frontier of North America.

The exploration that Raban undertakes on this voyage occurs both in the outer environment and inside himself. He explores, and describes in lush detail, the spectacular and stunning scenery of the coast. To Raban, these outposts of America and British Columbia represent the best of the sublime - a romantic concept which reveres the fantastic and unexplored in nature. Raban docks at many undiscovered ports, and shares these journeys with the reader. In addition to his travel, however, Raban learns a great deal about himself, particularly about his dual roles as son and father, in the course of the journey. Also woven into the text is a good deal of material about earlier inhabitants of the Inner Passage; both Native Americans and early European explorers of the coastline.

This is a beautiful book about the landscape, the sea, and its meaning to one individual. It is beautifully written and will not easily be forgotten.

Passage to Juneau is travel writing at its very best. Lyrical and soaring at one moment, darkly introspective at another, moods tracing the contours and texture of land and sea along the fantastic inner passage, this book hooks and engages the reader at every level. Raban highlights the interplay and clash of culture from the eighteenth century to the late twentienth, with an utterly unsentimental hand and eye. His rich and polished writing is a joy, and his personal involvement with his material reaches the reader's soul. Highly entertaining, richly informative, adventurous and deeply moving, this is one of the most affecting books I've read in years.

Jonathan Raban's carefully detailed journey from Seattle to Juneau is beautiful and haunting. His book not only documents this magical area of the world as it now exists, but also as it must have existed when Captain Vancouver led his expedition in the 1790s. Raban's frequent digressions into native symbolism, primitive sociology and life aboard Captain Vancouver's vessel are fascinating and give the book substance that makes it transcend any travelogue. Adding to this enthralling tale, Raban also shares with us important parts of two simultaneuous voyages -- the unravelling of his marriage and the death of his father in England. Glad to surmise from Raban's jacket photo that he should have time to bless us with more prose (he should stop smoking for the sake of us, his would-be future readers). If Raban continues to write, I hope he sticks to the pattern of weaving a variety of messages into his texts; long live the digression!

"River's End" by Nora Roberts is a well-written story, full of interesting characters and incredible descriptions. Olivia and Noah were very well-developed and both very likeable. The story covers many years, from Liv's childhood all the way up to adulthood. When Olivia was very young, her mother was murdered and her father was tried and convicted of the crime. The story revolves around the effect that one horrible event has had on Olivia's life, and her relationship with Noah, the son of the police officer who found her on the night of the murder. Noah wants to tell Liv's father's story in a book, but some unexpected events begin to indicate something no one was prepared for. The suspense builds effectively, and the ending is a big surprise!
Although I found the majority of this book very engaging, there were some passages and sections that were too drawn out and overly long that I had to force myself to get through.
Overall, however, this book is well worth reading and will leave you satisfied.

I have to admit, when I read the summary of River's End, I was not impressed. But since I am, and have been, and avid Nora Roberts fan for years now, I decided to give this one a chance. From the opening chapters describing the murder of Olivia's Hollywood-sweetheart mother, and the aftermath of the horror, I was glued. Olivia was four when she went downstairs to find her mother murdered and her father holding the weapon. The dialogue between little Olivia and her family and detectives was an emotional roller-coaster, especially since my daughter is at that age now herself!!
Twenty-plus years later, the story moves to memories and romance and a twisted mystery that left me completely confused, yet widly entertained (and very unproductive since I had a hard time putting this one down for too long.) Noah Brady is an ideal hero who helps drag Olivia out of the bubble her grandparents trapped her in as a child. He is a very strong lead for this story and you will fall in love with him just as I did. The character of Olivia (adult) was a little harder to accept for me, however you will find yourself envious of her strength and independence!
All-together I found the book a great entertaining read and a wonderful way to kill your time in an otherwise productive day!

My first Nora Roberts book - I'm hooked! The rich and detailed rain forest location in Washington State makes for a pleasant change. I felt as if I were walking the trails right along with Livvy and Noah! Livvy, Noah and all the rest are given an in-depth character description which makes them all the more realistic. While Olivia comes across as a difficult character at times, this is obviously due to the trauma she experienced as a child and the over-protective environment she was placed in by her grandparents. Noah has more than great patience in biding his time for her to come around. This was an enjoyable read and comes highly recommended! I can't wait to read all the rest of her books!

I grew up in the Tri-Cities and spent the first 19 years of my life living just blocks away from the Columbia River and there was a lot of information told in this book that I never knew. Harden does a wonderful job of relating the history of the Columbia River and the effects that the many dams built on the river had on the land, the people, the nation, and the economy. I thoroughly enjoyed his story and felt he handled well the many issues important to preservationists, politicians, and farmers.

I recommend this to anyone who lives in the state of Washington and is interested in man's permanent effects on this land.

Once in a great while a book comes along that is so beautifully written, with stories so well told, that the subject matter seems secondary to the writer's ability to sustain interest. For me, with little interest in the northwest (I've been there twice), this was such a book. It is from Harden's exceptional skill as a writer and narrator of stories that the Columbia River suddenly became of great interest as I turned his pages.

"A River Lost" tells the story and history of the Columbia River and the environmental, economic and aesthetic impact of daming that river in the first half of the last century. Especially interesting are the stories and points of view of those who work and live on its shores, the fate of the native indians who have lived in the region for hundreds of years and the differences in culture between the Starbucks yuppies east of the Cascades and the blue collar workers so dependant on the water and its billions in federally subsidized benefits to the west.

Highly praised in reviews by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, the Village Voice, The Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly, it is a great read for the information, for the writing, for a piece of American history.

When this book was written the current water, fish, and power crisis was in its infancy. This book foretold the inevitable conflict that now threatens the economy of the entire region. The documentation of the wasteful use of water by irrigators to grow crops that are unprofitable with a system paid for by taxpayers and electric ratepayers should be mandatory reading for all Northwesterners. If BPA fails and electric rates skyrocket the reasons are all spelled out here. Those who want to frame the debate as "fish versus Power" will find in the pages of this book that in actuality the real contest is between power generation and irrigation. My 16 years as a water resource planner for the Department of the Interior made me want to say "right on" with every page I read.

Amber Beach was the first book by Elizabeth Lowell that I have read. My friend read it and passed on the information to me. In a few words, I can say that Amber Beach knocked me off my feet. After reading this book, I became so entrapped into the story that after I had finished it, I just had to read the other books that she had written. Amber Beach is a thrilling story based upon the Czar's Amber Room that immediately disappeared after World War I. The main characters are Honor Donovan, a sister who is determined to go after her (disappeared but presumed dead) brother. Jake Mallory is a rugged man aborbed by the brillant heat of Amber. His business was kicked out of many countries when he becomes framed of stealing the Amber Room. Jake goes undercover to help Honor Donovan find her brother, Kyle. The sweet part of this book is the fact that a sweet romance developes nicely as the story progresses.This book is passionately intense and has intense passion too! The Donovan family will warm your hearts as you read more and more about them. The Donovan saga continues into Jade Island and Pearl Cove. So do what I did and take my advice. Read Amber Beach and you won't be disappointed.

I read this book because I saw the sequel, Jade Island, and wanted to read it. When I realized it was a sequel I searched for and found Amber Beach. I am very impressed by Elizabeth Lowell. I probably read some of her paperbacks, but unlike with Krentz and Howard, I didn't go looking for all the paperbacks I could find by this author. That has now changed. I enjoyed the family relationships, the romance, the action, the humor (esp. the sandwich eating scene), and the technical information. As much as I love and enjoy Romance, when I pay for a hardback romance, I want more than the typical contemporary harlequin/silhouette type book. This book/author has it in spades. I hope she keeps it up

Honor Donovan and Jake Mallory set the pages on fire with their fiery personalities and passion but both are afraid to trust and love. It was a great adventure with plenty of action, 'shady' characters and love scenes. Elizabeth Lowell really writes wonderful books, but I have one complaint. The endings to all her stories come so quickly that I feel I'd like to know just a little more, like a short epilogue about the wedding or honeymoon, etc., something so that I don't feel like I'm left hanging. I have read all the Donovan stories in this series that she has written so far and they are all GREAT! I'm looking forward to the last two brothers' (Lawe & Justin) stories. If you like a good romance with lots of action, suspense and steamy love scenes, you'll love this book and all the others in the series.