This is a very good book to read and is full of suspense there are times when the story line seems to wonder but all in all i would recomend this.

I've not read many techno-thrillers and am a big fan of the John LeCarre school of spy novels, so I was delighted to find that "Kolymsky Heights" combined the best elements of action, adventure, and intellectual suspense. Johnny Porter is a great spy, and it would be nice to read of his exploits again, but as others have suggested, this is a book that can be re-read and still thoroughly enjoyed. Davidson's plot twists keep you on the edge of your seat, but the fascinating details also keep you thinking, and amazed. A great read!

Not in many years have I read a book that kept me in such torture for so many pages. Will the hero uncover the mystery behind the secret Russian factory in Siberia? Davidson is a master of keeping you in suspense. Also one of the best love stories in any spy story, altho it probably doesn't take up ten pages in the whole book. I've on my fourth read of this book. I still find it full of suspense! A great book to study for any aspiring writer of thrillers.

I am a fan of Ms. Graham's romantic suspense books. The first one I read was DROP DEAD GORGEOUS. For some reason, this one did not live up to my expectations since DROP DEAD GORGEOUS left me gripping to the very end. This one is still a very good book with an interesting storyline. However, at times I found it difficult to follow some of the dialogue. The dialogue was choppy, jumped around a lot, and did not flow easily. I did not find all the typos that the other reviewers mentioned. There were a few but they did not deter me away from the story. I did notice the inconsistencies, however, but probably would not have picked it up if it weren't for the reviewers here at AMAZON pointing it out.

I did have a little bit of trouble with all the different characters, so I drew a flowchart of the 3 homes on the peninsula and how all the characters were related to the people living in the houses. The killer was not too surprising since it seems like everyone in the book was a suspect. However, other parts in the end was surprising and the total outcome was positive and uplifting. It was also interesting to read about the geographical areas of Florida, since I love Florida!

All in all, it was still a great book and I recommend it for romantic suspense readers. However, I rate it a star below DROP DEAD GORGEOUS.

From the ghastly, engrossing first page through the suspense-filled surprise ending, Graham's new novel reads like the book Mary Higgins Clark has been trying to write for years. Graham manages to make one actually feel the sweaty atmosphere of hot, humid southern Florida, so much so, that as one tears through the the pages of this pulse-pounding and ever-so romantic thriller,this reader found himself mopping his brow on more than one occasion. As for characters, each one has a rich and unique personality, seldom seen in the genre. Ms. Graham's moments of humor are apt, never calculated and always derive honestly from the characters, as well as being welcome tension breakers. If you've never read a Heather Graham novel-GET THIS ONE! For suspense, romantic or otherwise, it just doesn't get any better. Bravo! Ms. Graham. You've done it again!

This book has all the elements of entertainment, love, murder, mystery, as well as family values. Ms. Graham's books are always entertaining; however, she has outdone herself with this one. The characters were believable and passionate and the suspense was so great that I was not able to put it down. I can't wait for her next book and certainly hope that she will continue writing murder/mysteries.

This is one of those books where the back cover pretty much tells it all. And the book doesn't add anything. The hero is predictable - bad boy trying to make good. The heroine is predictable - little rich girl trying to make good. A brief encounter in their youth and all of a sudden they're star-crossed lovers. I don't buy it. When critics say romance is formulaic, *this* is what they're talking about.

It's not that I disliked any of the characters. I just didn't *like* them. I felt nothing towards them. Hero loves heroine. Yawn. Heroine pines for hero. Ho hum. It was as if Miller was going through the motions without adding any feeling into the book. The only reason I gave it two stars was because I didn't *hate it*. I mean, I didn't throw it at the wall... I just didn't care to turn the page.

When I want to read a great Western, give me a Lorraine Heath over this any day. Then I'll get characters I care about and a storyline that will break my heart. One Wish, on the other hand, was thoroughly forgetable.

I picked this book up on a rainy Sunday morning and was so taken away by it. I had read it all by mid-afternoon. This is another small town where two kids meet by accident. Little Charity offers a kiss or a wish. Young Luke not very excited about a kiss says he will save his wish for another time.

15 years later, they meet again. He was a poor soul with a bad reputation... now grown up, rough, rugged and handsome. Charity is still young at heart looking for magic under every rock.

The characters are very well developed and it is wonderful to read about them falling in love. The test of faith is will they stay together. It has all the details of a western town... cattle ranchers, gunslingers, stubborn father, the saloon, and a gold shipment robbery.

I felt wonderful when I finished because I felt so taken with the idea that the WISH was hanging over them. They did not need it but it helped secure their happiness. If you like this book then you will also enjoy her Springwater series.

I thought that this book was excellent. My mother had bought it (she is into romance novels) and when I had finished a book of my own, she suggested I read it. I was not really enthused to be reading a romance novel but decided to give it a try and I must say I NEVER PUT THE BOOK DOWN, I carried it with me religiously so that I could sneak a read every time I got a chance!

The characters were very likeable and were easy to relate to. Right from the beginning to becoming intrigued with the story and it's characters and right at the second meeting of Charity and Luke - you're hooked! I must say that I don't blame Charity for falling in love with Luke, I think I fell in love with him myself!:)

This is a great read and I recommend it to everyone!....

Charles Black, a former investment banker and a tough-nut chairman of the Fed quits his job in a struggle with the White House over rising interest rates. But he's persuaded to stay on for a while as a special envoy to represent the Fed at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Swiss-based institution that serves as the industrialized world's clearinghouse for payments and monetary information.

So imagine Black's rude surprise when he arrives in Basel, Switzerland for one of the BIS's regular monthly meetings. Instead of the warm welcome he had been receiving for the past four years as a Fed chief, he is arrested, jailed, and charged with using his exclusive knowledge of U.S. interest-rate moves to mastermind the most audacious insider-trading scheme ever.

Intrigued yet?

As the conspiracy begins to unfold, Black finds himself no more than a fall guy for a shadowy Sardinian financier, a conniving Swiss lawyer with a desk full of secret bank accounts, and the real inside trader--a corrupt president of the Swiss National Bank. In this mix of characters lies the potential for a Hitchcockian drama of a victim mixing it up with his tormentors as he tries to clear his name. The Set-Up journeys from San Francisco and Washington to Switzerland, Sardinia, and the wilds of Alaska, where the plot against Black falls apart.

On the good side, Erdman keeps things moving with his descriptions of shady Swiss dealings, and prison life. Big Swiss heads come off as men of impeccable social standing but a flexible moral character. That's an all-too-common shortcoming among the Swiss big-money set that Erdman seems to have studied closely during his life as a doctoral student and banker in Basel.

But this is also my minor grouse with the book that is supposed to be more of a thriller than a treatise on global finance. Expect a fair bit of digressions into the minutiae of international banking including an introduction to the innards of derivatives markets. Which was great for me personally, but these are in fact slightly piquing in terms of the novel's flow.

Nonetheless this is all worth the ride if you are in the market for a financially inclined thriller. Recommended.

I love financial thrillers and have read most of Paul Erdman's fiction, but this is by far the best. Not only does he expertly take the reader through the world of derivatives investing and international banking, he paints a picture of Switzerland from Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse to the most remote parts of the Alps that makes you long to get on a plane and go there (and I have been there--it's worth it). The plot moves fast, from the point of view of every character; his knowledge of German, Swiss-German and Italian is impeccable, and the story culminates in an around-the-world chase that keeps you from putting the book down. I can't wait for his next one.

I was a young GI in Germany in 1969 just learning to appreciate "the Trib." I remember one article that caught my eye: a young American banker working in Basel at the sub of a California bank was arrested for trying to corner the world cocoa market! He failed miserably, and in the process wiped out his employer's equity base. As if the young banker, named Paul Erdman, did not know enough about Switzerland already, he was to learn more, from many months inside a Swiss jail. I next noticed Erdman several years later. He had written a novel, "The Billion-Dollar Sure Thing." I read it and liked it, and later learned that he had begun his novelist's career in that Swiss jail. Erdman's subsequent novels have never disappointed. He is the master of the financial thriller, an unfortunately under-populated genre. "The Set Up," like all of Erdman's fiction, takes place largely in Switzerland. Charles Black, former Chairman of the U.S. Fed, is arrested at the Basel airport as he enters Switzerland. (Erdman reminds us, as he never fails to do, that Basel's airport straddles the Swiss/French border.) He finds himself in the maws of the Swiss power structure, comprised of a hundred or so rich and powerful Swiss men who are, in Erdman's eye, as amoral and as slimy as any in the world. No Swiss Heidi-types here. (Had Erdman been successful in cornering the cocoa market he would have been hailed, not jailed, by this group for furthering the cause of Swiss chocolate!) To divulge any more of the plot would be cheating. Suffice it to say, there is lots of (1)German- Swiss bashing,(2)Deus ex machina that stretches credibility, and (3)untranslated "Schwietzer dooch" and other languages. There is also a woman/mate of the male hero who is sharper than the hero himself. This theme is present in most Erdman novels. Erdman has produced eight novels in a quarter of a century, about one every three years. When I haven't seen one for a while, I start looking in book stores. This year I did something different: I searched for Erdman at amazon.com. Sure enough, he'd written a new book which I ordered immediately. The several days it took to arrive in the mail was an eternity as I anticipated reading a new Erdman. It arrived, and did not disappoint. Erdman remains at the top of his form!

The first time I read this book I thought that it was great. I loved how it was tragic and romantic and I thought the hero was great in a dark brooding kind of way. The second time was not so good. I picked it up not realizing I had read it a long time ago and even though I realized it pretty early on, I kept reading it anyway. I wouldn't recommend doing that. It didn't hit me with any emotional impact at all. The sex scenes were the only reason I actully finished it.

This book was okay. The hero was pretty much a jerk and I didn't like his relationship with the heroine especially with him being married. But for some reason I liked the book, although not enough to read again.

My absolute favorite romance novel. This is a book that you will not be able to put down. I have read it and read it again, and I never tire of it. It truly is a heartwarming love story. I highly recommend this book. And on that note, I would recommend anything written by Karen Robards- she is a great author and I have not been disappointed by her yet.

This one combines the best elements of the "cozy" and "suspense" styles of mystery-writing. The protagonist is Tracy Cavanaugh, a recent law school graduate who clerks for a justice of the Oregon Supreme Court.

During her last days at the Oregon Supreme Court, one of Tracy's clerk colleagues is murdered. That murder is followed shortly by the murder of the justice who employed the murdered clerk. The murdered justice's estranged wife, herself a brilliant prosecutor, soon becomes the prime suspect. At the same time, Tracy's year of clerking is up, and she goes to work for renowned defense attorney Matthew Reynolds, who is defending the accused wife.

This is definitely a better novel than "Undertaker's Widow", which was the first Phillip Margolin mystery I read. Most of the primary characters are well-drawn and memorable. The plot is unpredictable but doesn't stretch credulity. The last 75 pages give the plot several twists before the ultimate solution is revealed. The book is captivating and well-written throughout.

This book provides one more example of the foolishness... several years ago, to change the rating system from a 10-star maximum to a 5-star maximum. This book is a cut above Hazel Holt's "Mrs. Malory, Detective in Residence", to which I gave 4 stars. It is also a definite cut below Elizabeth George's novels, all of which deserve 5 stars. I will stick with my contention that only real literature deserves 5 stars, and this isn't real literature. But it's about as good as genre mysteries ever get.

"After Dark" is about Tracy Cavanough finding her best friend dead and then Justice Robert Griffen being killed with a car bomb. Are the two killings related? Abbie Griffen, wife of Robert is charged with the murder of her husband. Tracy has just been hired by Matthew Reynolds, the best defence attorney there is. Together they set out to prove Abbie is not guilty. But, is she? Has she snowed Matthew Reynolds? You think it is all figured out then, Bang, you are off again with a new twist. It was hard for me to rate, I nearly gave it a three, but is a little better than that, I guess. I got lost during the first several pages because so many names were thrown at me. I also thought the description of some things went into to much detail. Such as what makes up a piece of metal, or how a picture can me made one time and looks like another time. All in all it was fair.

I had not read Margolin before I read After Dark. This book was a great read, had great character development and I was sad it had to end...The only great joy I received was knowing I found a new author to read with many books yet to read or listen too..His story telling is superb and he hides the ending well enough that even if you think you know...it twists you around to doubt your own conclusions..then surprises you...
I could be more detailed about the charaters...but why enjoy this book like a well wrapped gift be surprised and enjoy this gift of a book!!!

If reality hasn't intruded into my daily life, I think I would have finished this book in an afternoon. It's that engrossing.

This book explores the relationships between Kate and Lucy ~~ two women with two children and their husbands. It is a complicated relationship burdened with secrets and dreams. When Lucy finds out that her son is diagonosed with cystic fibrosis, the relationships began to unravel.

I would have given this book a five ~~ but when Lucy blurted out her great secret, it was written very awkwardly and there wasn't enough depth into the story to give the readers why she panicked like she did. And Lucy was way too pact with her husband's trangressions with her best friend ~~ if it was me, despite me making the same mistake seven years earlier ~~ I would still be raging and fighting for my husband instead of taking everything passively and hiding my head.

Other than that, this book is well-written and enjoyable!! I really hated to put it down ~~ as I want some answers to my questions! But it is thoroughly enjoyable! I highly recommend this book to anyone with an afternoon off from work. It's one of those lazy days to spend on this book. Take it out to your hammock and swing in the spring breeze while reading this book!

4-25-02

The emotions are exaggerated, the plot a bit contrived, and the characters somewhat stereotypical. Still, this is an inviting book to while the day away with. Nancy Thayer brings her considerable talent to bear in this story of two families that truly love each other. The wives are best friends, the husbands very close, the children devoted to each other. Into this idyllic setting come secrets, death, terminal illness, infidelity, divorce, and all the other elements that make for an interesting read.

Protagonist Lucy West married young and, although she loves her husband Max, she is vulnerable to other men. Her character is tested as she decides to whom she owes more loyalty---her husband or her best friend Kate. Over the course of a ten-year friendship, husbands are swapped and friendship is tested to its limits as Thayer takes the reader back and forth in time in this soap operaesque saga set in Nantucket and surroundings.

What could have been a strong book on the power of friendship falters slightly by forced situations that are wrapped up a bit too neatly for this reader's taste. Still, this is a worthwhile story, though not as intriguing as Thayer's earlier effort, THREE WOMEN AT THE WATER'S EDGE, which I would whole-heartedly recommend.

I'm a long time fan of Nancy Thayer and have read everything that she's ever written. She has a gift for capturing the ins and outs of family life and the conflicting emotions that women go through as they marry and have children. wondering is this all there is or was I meant for greater things?

This novel is no exception. She writes convincingly of what it's like to be a mother of young children. In one chapter, the main character, Lucy, is sitting in her attic, seeking some much needed solitude, and thinking that while she is happy with her life, could she have done more with it. Should she have? She wonders what her beloved aunt, an adventerous free spirit would think of her life today if she were still alive. She also captures perfectly the longing that women feel to find that perfect friend, someone they "click" with instantly and can let loose and be themselves without fear of censor or judgement.

The only flaw in this book is the soapy plot involving the paternity of Lucy's son and using a potentially fatal genetic disease to propel the plot forward. This has been done in countless novels, including Daybreak by Belva Plain, who used it much more effectively.

Aside from that minor quibble, this is a good book to enjoy while lazing in the sun on a warm summer day.

I can only think that this was a book that Fern Michaels wrote but couldn't get published and now that she's successful they decided to release it in paperback. The story on the book jacket sounds better than the actual story. In fact, the book jacket description isn't even accurate. The main character is appealing and sympathetic which kept me reading. It was a nice easy read, something of a page turner--great for waiting in line or for soccer practice to be over.

However, if you are looking for a mystery that is going to keep you in suspense--forget about it!! I had the ending pegged a third of the way through. You're only reading to confirm what you already know. Fern Michaels can do much better.

I liked the element of suspense which is something new for Fern Michaels books. The characters were real, the situation realistic and the animals wonderful. I know this is going to be a best seller. All my friends are reading it and like it as much as I did. Thanks for a great summer time read.

This book was excellent! I truly felt a connection with the character Abby due to her insecurity. Although the ending was kind of predictible, the storyline flowed very nicely. This was my first Fern Michaels book and certainly won't be my last!

After reading Jenny Siler's most recent novel, SHOT, I could not wait to read her first two novels: EASY MONEY and ICED. I just finished EASY MONEY and I must say that it is interesting to see the development of a writer. In MONEY, Siler has created another hard-boiled gun toting take no crap heroine who is innately the equal of any man and smarter. Allie Kerry is a courier for a guy who might be best described as a low rent Lothario with no scruples and probably the first 'guy' in Allie's life. Joey has asked Allie to pick up a package in Washington State and deliver it to Houston. What happens next is a wild ride across the underbelly of America with some volatile ingredients: a nice blend of CIA intrigue, concealed drug ops during the Viet Nam War, shootouts across the country from Bremerton to Miami and enough action to satisfy any adrenaline junky. One cannot help but believe that there is a little of Siler in each of her women characters. Siler is described as having worked as a forklift driver, a furniture mover, a grape picker, a salmon grader, a tutor to deaf students, a waitress, a sketch model, and a bartender. Blended with Siler's rather formidable educational background at Andover and Columbia her writing skills are just simply fabulous. Nothing like life experience and intellect to make a novel hum with the excitement and adventure created by Siler in EASY MONEY. Her poetic and lyrical style and interesting character creations are in a word flawless. You won't soon forget Joey, Mark, Chloe, Cyrus, Darwin, Willie Phao and John Wykel: all of these characters are well fleshed out and each has a certain edge that makes him or her unforgettable. Jenny Siler is the real deal. Siler is to the West what Faulkner was to the South. Someday, Siler will definitely be included in the pantheon of great American writers.

Red hot and rolling, nothing comes easy for Allie Kerry, especially the money, as she races her blue '69 Mustang cross country from Seattle to Key West in Jenny Siler's excellent first novel, "Easy Money."

Siler's artful and edgy prose, fleshy characterizations, and tightly-wound plot, gain her instant access to the male-dominated pantheon of American mystery writers. Her heroine, Allie Kerry, goes against the grain of convention and offers a welcome new perspective on the Chili Palmerized genre of tough guys.

Not to be fooled, Allie Kerry is as street-smart and tough as they come. She is a free-lance courier for a Miami shyster and former lover named Joey. She makes her deliveries without asking questions and carries a gun, sometimes three, yet still fears most of all the normal life she has never had.

"Of all the sh*t I have to deal with when I'm working--bungled connections, bad packages, cops--the most difficult thing for me is the American family."

Allie Kerry lost her mother and was brought up by a doting drug-smuggling father, a Vietnam vet who carried home a dark secret that comes back to haunt them both thirty years later. He is found with a bullet in his head, and Allie suddenly finds herself battling the vicious ghosts of her father's past.

It is the news of her father's death, and a job for Joey along the way, that puts Allie on a long road home. But the pickup in a Bremerton pool hall goes bad and, moments after her contact slips a computer disk in her pocket, she finds him dead on the men's room floor. What was supposed to be easy, "easy money," turns into a cross-country chase for her life. Dead bodies litter her trail from Seattle to Key West and pile up at home in an incredibly cinematic and realistic shoot-out with the bad guys.

Jenny Siler's thriller is a triumphant debut. Her writing is solid. She draws on a colorful imagination and makes the most of her considerable talent to shape a tight story. She knows the geography between Seattle and South Florida like a Teamster, and covers Nixon's secret war in Cambodia with the insight of a vet.

"Easy Money" refuses to drag. Siler delivers original characters and authentic themes and pulsating suspense. Her star has nowhere to go but up.

Jenny Siler's debut novel is fantastic!!! She writes the thriller genre better than just about any writer I've read, and she gives us an action hero lead character that's a woman -- FINALLY. It's been said there are really only two kinds of stories: the journey, and the stranger come to town. Women have largely been denied the journey in western literature. Well, with "Easy Money", Jenny Siler gives her beautifully written, haunting heroine the journey, and what a journey Ali Kerry's cross-country odyssey is, filled with colorful characters and tense action. I can't wait to read the next one.

Dr. John Mack is a serious, careful and courageous research. Consider. If you were a Harvard Medical School professor with a Pulitzer prize and a sterling reputation would you endanger it for the sensationalism of "alien" abduction? Even if you were confronted with evidence of strange events, why put up with all the headaches? That Mack did proves him to be a true man of science, one who investigates phenomena instead of prejudging it as valid or not valid.

Mack is not saying outright that alien abductions are "real." He is saying that something is happening that leaves a real and lasting effect on people. These events have certain characteristics in common. Mack is mapping the terrain features of a new psychological continent using the case histories of individuals who have come forward. These individuals are also taking serious risks.

In truth the issue is not alien abduction per se, but what Mack calls the politics of ontology.

Personally I have had more than my share of "interesting" events. Mack's book, though not overtly written for this purpose, is a guide by which those who quietly keep to themselves may evaluate how their experience compares with others.

If you are interested in a serious exploration of this topic, this is the best book on the subject.

The author has his feet on the solid ground on what he wrote. Facts are exposed. Conclusions remain open. He has the caution not to believe literally on every aspect obtained by the investigation, subjective but very significant nevertheless alternative explanations are suggested, remaining to the reader the final opinion. The author is a professional senior psychiatrist teacher. The main method of revealing facts here in this book is back-regression by hypnosis, to the time of the events, with the professional know-how not to induce, but to open individuals forgotten experiences. What for me states the quality of this work, and book, is it was done always with the goal of making the life of the persons studied a better one, not just to extract them material for a book or project. The quest to reveal and to solve the inner live problems of the people involved, and then to inform there is something REAL in the alien abduction subject. The book may deep influence some people lives, if the reader get confronted with similarities with one self or close people cases; 5 star indeed.

As a contactee myself, I found the nature of the information assimilated by the abductees in Dr. Mack's book to be consistent with my own personal experience. Though each individual filters information through their own sphere of reference, Dr. Mack concludes that the experience of the abductees ultimately changes their world view, expands their environmental consciousness, and adjusts, positively, our basic egocentric view that we humans are the only species important enough to remain on our planet. I personally have found this expansion of consciousness into an empathy for all forms of life to be true and consider it to be the primary reason for contact. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone interested in contact, abduction or shamanic experience. The stories told by the abductees are as fascinating as they are unique to each individual. I felt a sense of anticipation with each page I turned, not wanting to stop reading until I had read the experiences of each abductee and wishing there were many more such accounts included before this exciting read ended.