I just reread this book as a teacher/adult. I read it as a child almost twenty years ago, I liked it back then too. Very sweet and humorous. It is a great picture of Americana with Grandpa's automobile, Sunday after-church picnics, and party-line telephones! And then the pigs with the rotton apples during Mama's elegant party. Terrific!! I can see the characters in my grandparents.

Great way to remind children to get outside and play or read instead of sitting in front of the television. How did we survive with out video games? The computer? Wonderful to read aloud for quality time.

Beverly Cleary was my favorite author as a child. Now as a teacher and parent, I get to share her books with a new generation.

Emily's Runaway Imagination by Bevery Cleary is a good story. Emily is a girl who lives on a farm. She had some wild ideas. She wanted her father's horse to turn into a snow-white steed so, she tried to bleach it with Clorox. One of her good ideas was to set up a library in her town. I liked this story because it made me laugh. It's fun to read about crazy things kids do. The author wrote a realistic fiction to show us how to have crazy ideas. She also wanted us to see that we should not always do the crazy things that pop into our head!

Emily Bartlett just wants a library. So, her mother writes in for one, and guess what! Pitchfork is going to have a library! While waiting for the books to arrive from Salem, Emily feeds the hogs a treat, bleeches a horse, and scares her cousin half to death. Mama doesn't really know how Emily can get into so much trouble, she just says "Emily, don't let your imagination run away with you!" Emily does try, but hey, if you live in the west, during a time when cars are new, airplanes are hardley ever seen, and no one has dreamed up the TV yet, what are you supposed to do?

The Summer of Riley by Eve Bunting is a coming of age story of an eleven year old boy named William. William must deal with the recent death of a grandfather along with the acceptance of his parents separation.
His mother drives him into to Portland, Oregon to secure the one thing that could help William get through this difficult time during his life. He picks out a Lab from the pound which the previous owners had named Riley.
Riley is the best thing that has happened to William since the death of his grandfather, until Riley decides to chase the neighbors prize winning racehorse.
It this hearbreaking twist of fate, Riley is taken from William because it is the law in Oregon that any animal that chases livestock must be put to death. William and his best friend Grace must come up with a plan to save Riley while facing strong opposition. Will they have enough time to do what needs to be done to save Riley?
This book is heartwarming and charming. The young man William, who is the dominant character in this book, overcomes many obstacles that children this age can identify with. He must deal with death, the divorce of his parents, and a broken relationship with his father. With the absence of Riley, he must focus and deal with all of these stuggles.
I would higly recommend this book for any 4-6 grader or even any reader who enjoys a good animal story.

This book is about a boy named William. William's grandfather dies and his parent's are divorced. To help make things better his mom gets him a dog named Riley. William thinks riley is the perfect dog but one day Riley chases his neighbors horse. The neighbor calls a pound and the people come and take Riley away.They say Riley has to be put to sleep William and his friend Grace are trying to save Riley but can they? To make things worse the school bully is on the horses side and is trying to get Riley put to sleep. Who will win. Find out by reading this book. It is one of my favorites.

I gave this book 5 stars because I love this book. It shows how a young boy can grow a bond with a dog in a few days, and also how hard someone will work to save a life even though they might never see them again. I recommend this book to everyone who loves animals. This book is well-written and it kept my interest.
This book is about a kid named William whose grandfather died and his mother got him a dog to help him out with the death.Well the dog seemed perfect but it chased a old horse. And the pond was called Riley was supposed to be euthanized. William and his friends are trying to save his life.

As usual, Ms. Wilhelm created a great story, with plenty of twists and turns to keep the mind guessing. However, it smacked of bias.

The character of the murdered man, Gus Marchand, is flat. He's just a bad guy. He calls himself a Christian, but he is a hateful, bigoted, controlling man who demeans his wife and beats his children. There is no other side to this man, no balance, no reason for why he is such a person. It is as though Marchand has no good feelings about anything or anyone, and everything he has ever done is bad. Towards the end of the book, Barbara Holloway blames Marchand for everything, even the murder of a woman by her lover who feared he would be exposed, because "Gus Marchand was a zealot who was determined to impose his belief system on everyone around him."

In fact, anyone clearly identified as a Christian is painted with a broad brush of bias. The wife is a weak-willed woman willing to submit to Marchand's domination of the home and abusive manner towards those in the community who don't share his beliefs. The pastor of the Baptist church Marchand attended saw Marchand as a good, honest man who never lied, a hero in the home, and at the end of his testimony in court, he appeared the buffoon as he loudly launched into a prayer to protect the daughter from the devil. Many of the townspeople, who were also members of Marchand's church in the rural Oregon town, blindly followed along with his hateful rhetoric, and were too often just stupid.

Characters not associated as Christians were real people, humans that showed compassion, felt pain and anger, had high principles but demonstrated flaws, and so on. So much was well-written: one felt ill for the hatred and abuse Alex had wrongly received over the years. Unfortunately, it just appeared to have too much bias against one group to suit my tastes.

In this mystery,Kate Wilhelm uses a disfigured man as the main suspect for a murder and as the story unfolds she makes us aware of how much importance society places on looks.I thought this was an unusual premise for a murder mystery.As always her books are suspenseful,surprising and this story also has a happy ending.I highly recommend this author especially if you love the Pacific Northwest.

Loved it, but I had 2 choices for the who done it and it turned out they both played a key part in the suspence. Made you want to read on and find out how the other trials turned out, plus Shelley's futute plans. Love these court room dramas. Do all lawyers solve the crimes for their wrongly accused clients, or only in the mystery authors' minds?

As a frequent visitor to the Silicon Valley area, I find difficulty with the fact that there are still no books directed towards business travelers. This area is NOT a tourist spot, so I found this book, while historically interesting, not particularly helpful for my requirements. Practical advice like, "good luck finding a room during the week" was not included.

Silicon Valley is the subject of daily news, and is the home of so many marvelous inventions. Yet to the naked eye, the area is incredibly unremarkable. Martin Cheek has transformed my view of the area (I live here) and put interest in the otherwise uninteresting. For instance, I found out I live less than a mile away from a comedy club that housed the first pong (video game) location. It's still not much to look at. . . but hey!

I would recommend this book, not to the tourist (do people really visit Silicon Valley on tour?) but to the local. It will help you put the history in perspective, and it will make you a better tour guide. The reading is a bit tedious (more like a history book), but side stories about the more colorful characters make it all worth while.

My eyes were drawn to the unusually attractive cover of this book, for it has a perfect color photograph of the world famous Winchester Mystery House, a mansion with hundreds of rooms. That was built by the heir to the Winchester gun fortune, Sarah Winchester. By legend, a fortune teller told her to keep the building process going as a way to atone for all the Indians killed by Winchester firearms, and that as long as she did that she wouldn't die. In the past I couldn't suggest much more to Silicon Valley visitors than a visit to the Winchester Mystery House, or perhaps the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, which houses the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts west of the Mississippi. I simply thought of the San Jose area as being mostly a cultureless wasteland in suburbia, but things have certainly changed there. I was raised in the Bay Area, and over the years the occasional errand takes me through, but I had no idea that there were so many interesting things to see there. In part this is attributable to the accelerated urban development brought on by the computer industry, and in part it's because I didn't bother to monitor progress in the greater San Jose area, but that's also because no one had previously published a guide book filled with so much of its local history. Now that I have Martin Cheek's book, I look forward to my next visit for any reason. There's an article called William Shockley - Brilliant Weirdo (The author was de-emphasizing his subject's unpopular opinions about race) on page 19, and it explains how Shockley won the Nobel prize for being the co-inventor of the transistor, the cornerstone of the high tech industry. Speaking of controversial people, another interesting person is mentioned in an article on page 191: "The Holy City Of Hilltop Hustler "Father Riker." Denounced as an eccentric cult leader by some, Riker is also fondly remembered as the most colorful character in the history of San Carlos. From 1918 until about 1941 his Utopian community was active on a mountainous summit to the west of the downtown area. Riker's large signs advertised the greatness of the white race, and his original commercial buildings provided a great variety of roadside attractions for those traveling between San Jose and the seaside community of Santa Cruz. The old highway still cuts through the mountains, but Riker's businesses greatly declined when his stop was bypassed by a much more modern and faster highway. All that remains of Holy City today are a few private buildings: Riker's house, garage, a storage shed, and the timeless background of beautiful hills that his visitors liked to use as the background for their photos. Across the street from Riker's house, where the commercial buildings once stood, the owner of a modern glass shop (Which uses the name Holy City Glass Shop) keeps original copies of Riker's old newspapers posted up on his bulletin board. After getting introduced to that site through Mr. Cheek's book, I found out that there was a book in print by Betty Lewis titled Holy City - Riker's Roadside Attraction. I'll let you know how good that is after Amazon sends it.

Bravo to Mr. David for a fast-moving, highly involving time-travel thriller. With the grim subject matter (child murders, gang wars, etc.), you'd expect more explicit gore and street language, but there isn't much of that here, and there doesn't need to be -- David's story is quite compelling as is. Who is "Cradle Robber"? Who is the "Blue-Skinned Man" who interferes with his murder spree? And will Kyle Sommers catch either of them and learn their secrets?

Unlike a lot of sci-fi I've read, character development is well-done here. The prose is a little shaky at first -- repetitive and awkward in places, but once he finds his groove in the third or fourth chapter, David keeps the story chugging along, sometimes in unexpected directions.

There is a one-two punch ending, one part of which I saw coming (but thoroughly enjoyed) and the other, not as satisfying, but _Before the Cradle Falls_ is definitely worth reading, and one of the better crafted time travel tales out there.

There are some books that you have to allow a few pages or chapters to "get into" it; this book grabbed me from the first page. Something is always happening, but it's not confusing or overwhelming - the characters are easy to get to know and easy to distinguish. I really appreciated the personal tone of the story - I enjoyed "getting to know" the characters and their feelings, thoughts and motivations; it just adds a new dimension to the story to be able to see what's going on from the different viewpoints of the characters involved (not just to see one person's "side"). There's Cradle Robber, an elusive monster (who doesn't see himself as a monster, but as a kind minister who saves children from inevitable pain had they continued living) who has been traveling from city to city, suffocating young children in their beds and leaving a small baby toy in the dead child's hand. There's Detective Kyle Sommers, who has recently returned to work after taking a leave of absence to recover from his young daughter's death. Kyle feels an especially urgent interest in solving the Cradle Robber case because every time a child dies, his daughter's death hurts that much more. There's Sherrie Nolan, a dynamic woman in a wheelchair who believes in time travel and who puts herself on the line to help Kyle, young children, and people she's never even met. And there is the mysterious and elusive man in the hat and overcoat, who witnesses say has blue skin... why is his skin blue, and why is he showing up at numerous catastrophes, all involving children, in the nick of time to lend a hand in saving lives, but then disappearing before anyone can speak with him? Who is he, why does he leave newspaper-like columns for the detective to find that contain incorrect information about a crime or tragedy that has just occurred where he has intervened, and what is he trying to do? When the mystery man crosses Cradle Robber's path, a chain of events is set in motion that threatens to not only change the past and the future, but to destroy the present world as Kyle knows it.

Having read James F. David's previous books (Footprints of Thunder, Fragments & Ship of the Damned) I knew that I would be reading his latest, and with 'Before The Cradle Falls' David has come up with his most creative and entertaining tale yet.

The story begins full force with Detective Kyle Sommers getting a surprise phone call in the middle of the night to come take a look at a murder scene. Kyle is surprised to get this call for one major reason: since his daughter's death and subsequent divorce, he hasn't been doing well -- what with the extended drinking and hallucinations and all. Almost immediately things look a little funny. A young girl is murdered, and left in her hand is a toy rattle...the signature of a serial child killer known as the 'Cradle Robber' who started his sickening spree in San Diego and has steadily moved up the West Coast until arriving in Portland, Oregon. But an odd note left by an old man wearing an overcoat and a large hat has cast a large and strange shadow over the investigation. In the cryptic note, it gives details about the crime, but some did not happen the way it actually panned out.

Before long, the old man with the coat and hat show up at various near-tragedies in and around the Portland area seemingly bent on stopping crimes BEFORE they happen. As Kyle is put in charge of the 'Cradle Robber' task force, he realizes that many in the department have lost all faith in his ability to do good police work, so he is the first to reject the time traveler theory when it first comes to light. But how can you explain the sudden appearance of the old man in so many places where crimes are JUST about to happen? Is he causing the so-called coincidences himself? Is he the Cradle Robber, or is he working together with him to throw the police off track?

VERY interesting theories, and one incredibly engaging plot keep this story moving along in several directions at once, but don't worry, David keeps a tight reign on everything and he knows exactly where to take us. Kyle's reluctant sidekick, Sherrie Nolan provides us with plenty to think about as well as comic relief. Time Travel just isn't possible, according to a Professor at Portland State University, but the more Kyle & Sherrie probe into the Cradle Robber case, the more it seems impossible NOT to believe. Why is the old man being such a Good Samaritan in the first place...and if he can travel back and do some good at this point, why can't he put this same technology to use and go back and save Kyle's daughter, Shelby from her own tragic death? According to Sherrie, altering the time-line can and WILL have catastrophic effects on the environment -- on the scale of a nuclear explosion. The major problem that Kyle is having with the time-line theory is that it's just a THEORY. Since time travel is not even supposed to be possible, how can anyone propose a theory about altering the time-line when traveling through it isn't even possible? A LOT of questions like this are raised along with some moral questions about helping someone live when without the interference of time travel they would have otherwise died. Can we and should we do something if we know that we could avert a disaster? 'Before The Cradle Falls' is a great amusement park ride with all the thrills and chills in all the right places, and I might add, a very nice ending to boot.

On a side note, having grown up near the Portland area, I was VERY pleased how the city itself became a character in the story...everything from the locations to the local mini-marts that are exclusive to the Portland area. It put a smile on my face several times while reading this great tale. HIGHLY recommended.

Take a look at the Portland newspaper, The Oregonian, for January 6, 2002. An article recommending Opal to Northwestern readers also questions the authenticity of the allegedly precocious young Opal. Apparently, she turned up in Los Angeles without a diary or notes; two years later, a box of diary notes with a surprisingly literary, sophisticated mentality arrived at the publisher's. So: the book may be good, but it may have been written by the adult Opal as she was on the verge of mental illness.

Re: the reader review that said "This book's authenticity is in question..."

I refer you to the exhaustive research that Benjamin Hoff conducted and later decribed in his introduction to The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow that argues very convincingly for the diary's authenticity, and disproves and discredits her detractors.

Opal was the real deal, and a true genius.

I'll start out by saying that I have not read the original version of Opal's diary, nor have I read the book by Benjamin Hoff on the diary that is so highly regarded. When I first began to search locally for anything by or about Opal Whiteley, this book was the only one I could obtain. It did not disappoint.

I was led to seek out this remarkable work (written by a young girl of 5-6 years just after 1900) through singer-songwriter Anne Hills. I had heard Anne perform a song called 'Brown leaves' -- words of Opal Whiteley, set to music at Anne's request by her good friend, songwriting genius Michael Smith. She explained the background of the song to the audience that night, and I was deeply touched by it -- enough so that I began to look for the book the very next day.

Orphaned before she was 5, adopted by an Oregon lumberman and his wife and transported across the country to live in nearly 20 lumber camps by the time she was 12 years old, Opal turned to the beauty of the natural world around her and saw it like no one I've read before or since I discovered this amazing journal. Not only is her keen sense of observation astounding for a girl of her age, but the unique language in which she conveys it to us allows the reader to do away with any preconceptions that might be held, revealing our world in an entirely original, glorius light. It's almost like seeing for the first time.

A brief sample: 'Now are come the days of leaves. They talk with the wind. I hear them tell of their borning days. They whisper of the hoods they wear. Today they talk of the time before their borning days. They tell how they were a part of the earth and the air before their tree-borning days. In grey days of winter they go back to earth again. But they do not die.'

This young girl was possessed of an incredible mind -- she understood what she saw in the forest around her better than most adults, and she articulated it in such a way as to make it spring to life as only the mind of a child can do.

The writings, in their original form, were made by Opal on note-paper, wrapping paper, scraps of paper bags, whatever she could lay her hands on -- in the closely-spaced, all-capitals scrawl of a girl of 5 or 6 with little or no formal education. The scraps of paper remained hidden in the Oregon woods until Opal was 20 -- it's a micacle (and a blessing to us) that they survived. When she had retrieved the scraps, it took her 9 months to reassemble them.

There are many aspects of Opal's life that are still mysteries to us -- some of these are touched upon by the introduction and afterward by Jane Boulton, who assembled this volume, and by a postscript from Opal herself.

This is one of those books that will continue to touch and affect the reader for a lifetime -- Opal Whiteley's voice is a fresh, powerful and unforgettable one. If more people could experience the pure, unadorned beauty of the world through the lens of this work, perhaps the fight to preserve and protect our fragile environment would be an easier battle to win.

As a final note, Anne Hills' recording of 'Brown leaves' can be heard on her fine cd 'Angle of the light', available through amazon.com.

The school reunion might have gone wrong for Claire, but it sure was a treat to this reader. The mystery was excellent. I loved the way she went back and forth with tidbits on each graduate. Its just the way we do with our annual and old pictures. It was so real with wondering if you are too fat-too thin--or too wrinkled to go to the 20th. Great book.

[...]Claire Montrose is just an average woman like you and me who happens to stumble upon a mystery and decides to investigate. She is not a cop, no police training, etc. This particular mystery takes place at her high school reunion, which was fun as well reading about seeing everyone again and how their personalities from high school now mesh with what they have become. I am having my 15 year reunion soon so this was particularly fun for me. I love that the book was so fast paced. Right from the beginning you enter the story without a lot of unnecessary reading. It engrossed me and kept me enthralled and there were some very funny parts as well. If she writes more books like this I will buy them and I am now looking for others as well. (But please, Ms. Henry, save the single parents!) Now if we can just get an adult version of the Nancy Drew books!

Class of '79. The cheerleader, the wannabe, the brainiac, the murderer. Murderer? In this third installment of April Henry's Claire Montrose series, Claire and her dashing boyfriend, Dante, embark on a weekend trip to Claire's 20 year high-school class reunion. Upon arriving, Claire is flattered to receive a handcrafted heart-shaped box lined with her old yearbook photo from an anonymous admirer--well, flattered until popular ex-cheerleader Cindy Sanchez is found lying dead in the parking lot with a similar heart-shaped box in her hand.

Ms. Henry expertly guides us through clever twists and turns as Claire's lingering adolescent insecurities give way to an emerging self-confidence and savvy which just may keep her alive.

Anyone who has ever pondered attending a school reunion will enjoy this classy mystery lightly seasoned with '70's nostalgia and Ms. Henry's trademark humor.

Francis Parkman lived the Oregon Trail, slept it, ate it, marveled at it, and wrote an excellent memoir that leaves one with the feel of sand in your boots and the smell of buffalo roasting on the fire.

As a young man, Parkman went out west in 1846 to discover the American Indian. Setting out from Independence, Mo., Parkman proceeded to Ft. Larime (Wyoming), spent many weeks with a band of Indians as they hunted buffalo and secured life's necessities for the coming season, and returned to "the settlements" via Bent's Fort (Colorado) and the upper Santa Fe Trail. (Making this wonderful book misnamed since he was only on about the first 1/3 of the Oregon Trail and never crossed the Rockies).

What Parkman has left us is a wonderfully descriptive first person account of overland travel in the rugged west and the life of the Indian (as viewed by an outsider).

The strength of this book is in the details. Parkman has a keen eye whether it is turned towards imposing landscapes, Indian village life and travel, or buffalo hunting. This book has a gritty feel that paints the grandeur of western vistas as well as the hard reality of subsistence life (both Indian and white traveler) lived outdoors in a frequently unforgiving land.

Parkman's voice does have a 19th century feel. Modern readers will find he over-introduces new subjects (ie, "since, reader, we are telling of a buffalo hunt, now is a good time to acquaint you with the manner in which buffalo are brought to ground.") and the book does not have the flow associated with more contemporary writing. His attitudes towards Indians reflect the majority view of that time period and he was certainly at times a gratuitous hunter.

But the book's descriptive power, as well as the fascinating telling of life among the Indians and on the plains makes this well worth the time. This is a first person account that speaks of authenticity and gave me a feel for "what it must have been like." A good read.

This is a lively, energetic and realistic account of life in the 1846 American West. Parkman's "Oregon Trail" is considered a timeless, historical masterpiece and rightfully so. Only twenty three years old, he and his friend Quincy Adams Shaw went west "on a tour of curiosity and amusement to the Rocky Mountains". Stopping off at Fort Laramie, we acquire a taste of what life was like there in those early days of overland emigrants, trappers, traders, Indians and "ruffians". He then spends time with the Sioux, observing and describing their behavior, culture and customs while in the Laramie Mountains and Valley, and the foothills of the Medicine Bow Mountains. From here, Parkman and Shaw travel down the front range of Colorado to Pueblo, Bent's Fort and back to St. Louis via the Arkansas River. Being a very descriptive writer, we gain an insightful and vivid look as to geographical landforms and the characters who lived in those days. Excellent.

Before his death in the early 1890's, Francis Parkman would be hailed by many as North America's greatest historian. One of his first major works, The Oregon Trail, illustrates why. Written in 1847, the book chronicles an extensive journey by the youthful Parkman and his loyal friend Quincy Shaw the previous spring and summer. Parkman's express purpose was to see the "real" American West and live among "real" American Indians before their way of life passed forever. A vigorous young man, possessed of a keen intellect and observant eye, and already blessed with a rare and masterful prose style, Parkman chronicles his journey from St. Louis into the heart of the largely "unknown" American Plains. Peopled then by only a few white traders, trappers and ruffians, slowly pushing their way into the domain of the Pawnee, Comanche, Arapaho, Dakota, "Shienne", Snakes and Crows, the West was a truly wild and dangerous place - and Parkman revels in it, providing meticulous descriptions of the landscape, people, and struggle for life and lifeways that would soon be no more.

Along the way Parkman introduces you to the men of Fort Laramie (established and maintained by traders, long before soldiers came to the territory), lives amongst a Dakota band, hunts buffalo, weathers awe-inspiring Plains' thunderstorms and periods of drought, explores the Black Hills, the Rocky Mountains, and New Mexico. His journey takes him up the Missouri River, the Platte, the Arkansas and more. And far more than describe fascinating places and events, Parkman charms with full renderings of the characters he meets along the way: redoubtable hunter and guide Henry Chatillion, muleteer and cook Delorier, the dolorous Raymond and Reynal, jester Tete Rouge, hundreds of loathesome "pioneers", Indians Mene-Seela, Smoke, Whirlwind, Hail Storm, Big Crow and more. All characters worthy of Mark Twain. Plus, we are made witness to Parkman and Shaw's slow transformation from adventurous young Bostonian scholars to worthy "plainsmen".

Even before finishing his college studies, Parkman declared that his ambition was to chronicle the "struggle for the continent". He achieved his goal in glorious measure. Parkman's works on the founding of "New France", LaSalle's explorations, the French/Indian Wars, Pontiac's conspiracy, Montcalm and Wolfe, etc., remain standards today, rich source material for authors from DeVoto to Eckert.

His brilliance lies in the fact that Parkman was no "arm chair" historian. His research was not limited to books and papers found in libraries from Boston to London and Paris. He personally visited nearly every town, battlefield, and waterway he wrote about. Parkman was also deeply committed to understanding the effects of the English/French/American struggles for the continent on the hundreds of North American tribes that were caught in the middle. To wit, the "Oregon Trail" trip to the Plains of the 1840s was designed to assist the historian's mind in understanding what was lost by eastern tribes decimated during the wars and land-lust of the preceding century. Even then Parkman foresaw a similar misfortune for western tribes: loss of free roaming on their ancestral lands; extinction of the buffalo; the ravaging effects of disease, whiskey and other evils of white contact. But Parkman was no romantic. He refers to the various tribes and some individuals (both white and red) as "savages", revealing a touch of his mid-1800s Bostonian elitism, yet by no means can Parkman be considered a closed-minded misanthrope. His life's work, starting with The Oregon Trail, reveals far too much sensitivity and fairness of thought for that label to stick. Read this, then dive into Parkman's later work on the history of Canada and early America. It is astonishingly good stuff!

Well i guess the first is to say that this book is non-fiction. Its basically a bizarre travel guide to Chuck's hometown of Portland. The power of chuck is that he can take a place that i have never been to or have seen pictures of and make i feel like have lived there my whole life. Basically he explores all the aspects of Portland that most people wouldn't cover in a travel guide. These topics include: where to get a piece of bum in Portland, the strange museums, the sewers, and haunted places. An while most chapters have some really interesting stories, there are some damn boring ones in the collection. Things that you read and go "i really didn't need to know that," but luckily that only happened 2 or 3 times in the 176 page book. I think the real gems are the "postcards" that separate each chapter. These are autobiographical glimpses into Palahniuk's past and they give you a look at the man who would later write bestsellers like Fight Club, Choke, and Lullaby. Chuck made this book interesting and I'm happy to have read it. Any Palahniuk fans will enjoy this book for at the least the autobiographical postcards. For new Palahniuk fans i suggest this fictional work that i mentioned above and his novel Survivor.

As a huge Chuck Palahniuk fan, I loved this book. He takes you for a walk down all the streets of Portland that no one wants you to know about. Much of this book had me laughing aloud. Chuck's postcards that intersperse his travel guide give a glimpse into the author we know and love. Now that I've read this book I want to visit Portland and have some adventures. Chuck has breathed life into a city I didn't know much about before. Highly recommended!

Reading this travelogue makes one feel as though they now know the hidden side of Portland, Oregon that is really out in the open for all to experience. Palahniuk acts as a tour guide through Portland and the surrounding areas pointing out places of interest that one would not find in a typical travel guide. From haunted places, to Chuck's favorite restaurants, to quirky museums and wanton sex clubs, everything is here. There are even guides to local zoos and gardens. Thoughout, Palahniuk makes these places come alive to the reader through the narrative and history that he gives.

Between each section of the book, Chuck gives the reader a little glimpse into his life at various points from 1980 to the present. While this is not a true autobiography, it gives little glimpses into the life of the man who has given us such great novels. I found these excerpts to be the most interesting and enjoyable parts of the book.

While this isn't the usual Palahniuk fiction, it is a wonderful read and an insight into Palahniuk and the city he calls home.

If you like mysteries, then you should read about Barbara Holloway, super sleuth/lawyer who rescues another victim of shady proceedings. This one barely had any defense when Barbara is called upon to defend the wife of a man who was killed in an accident. Only, after an investigation, the man was discovered to be murdered and the spotlight of suspicion turns upon his wife. Barbara has to find evidence that the wife didn't do it ~~ and she takes you along on a journey of investigating what really happened that night on the mountaintop!!

Once again, Kate Wilhelm takes you along for a ride. She draws you into the story ~~ just look at the first sentence in the book ... "The rising sun is veiled with desert haze, rose-red streaks extending north and south against a royal blue that only gradually turns maeve." And there you go ... hooked into the story with its backdrop against the desert and the mountains.

Wilhem is a master writer ~~ everyone should try reading one of her Holloway books and once they do, they're fans for life. Wilhelm doesn't disappoint her readers!!

"No Defense" brings out the best in Kate Wilhelm's style of courtroom drama. The reality of the criminal courtroom in her series is really not the time in court (punctuated by unexpected admissions of guilt or anguish by witnesses or defendants, that you see in TV courtrooms) but the planning, strategy and negotiation that goes on before the trial starts, during the trial, in and around the offices of the defense and the prosecutor, and the location where the defendant is held until the trial is concluded.

Without the hystrionics, Wilhelm's courtroom may be a little too colorless for both, as well might her main character, Barbara,
who has no quirky behaviors or hidden secrets. Barbara's main relationship in life is with her attorney father - another reason why the series may be too boring for those who like the addition of sex and violence.

Nevertheless, the straightforward telling of a murder case that may have been a suicide was difficult for me to put down, and the final actions and reactions that reveal the murderer, and a lot of the town secrets, kept me guessing up to the final pages.
Throw in some terrific writing about scenic Oregon (most of us will learn for the first time about the desert in the eastern part of the state), and a bit of comedy connected with Frank Holloway's budding career as a writer, and you get a terrific tale that you will really enjoy.

A talented, award-winning novelist who can outcraft the "attorneys who are also novelists", Wilhelm will quickly become a favorite for you.

Combine a suicide which might be a murder, a young widow with a big insurance payoff, an old unsolved disappearance/murder, a rich family which controls the county, and a federal judge with secrets and you have the ingredients for a first-rate mystery. As this story unfolds and Barbara Holloway, a no-nonsense lawyer, comes onboard to protect the interests of the widow, we know that something dark happened and we know that more than one person is hiding knowledge of just what happened. Not until near the end, however, does the author unveil the explosive secrets. This novel will grab your attention from the beginning and the suspense will sustain you 'til the denouement. It is, in a word, excellent.