It became obvious within the first five pages of Chapter One that the author had no insight into the life of Mrs. Blair. She spends her time citing old newspaper stories and whining about how she was not allowed into Mrs. Blair's inner circle. Cherie Blair is one of the most intelligent barristers in the United Kingdom today. I look forward to watching her climb ahead in her profession. She has also been a very loyal wife and mother and deserves our admiration. Instead, she is criticized for trying to protect her family from neighborhood gossips like McDougall.

Connie is a nice girl from a small town with a twin sister and a father who owns the local hardware store. She gets the opportunity to go to Philadelphia to live with her glamorous aunt, who is a buyer for an upscale department store. Connie is only 17, and even for the period in which this book was written (about 1950), it isn't very realistic. Connie gets a job at the department store as a model (the store hires young girls to walk around wearing the clothes the store sells) to help her aunt find out who is stealing from the store. The mystery isn't much - Trixie Belden has the same plot device in The Mystery of The Queen's Necklace, and the characters in that book are much more interesting. Connie Blair is quite dated, and the writing isn't engaging. The cast of characters (Connie's aunt, sister, parents, revolving group of boyfriends, a variety of employers) are one-dimensional, and the book is dismissive of higher education, and not just for women. The author has a real chip on her shoulder about college, and it shows.

Having read several books by Emma Blair, I was looking foward in reading "Passionate Times."
The book starts out at the end of World War 2 and tell the story of a British Soldier Reith Douglas who has been injured and lost his memory. Returning to Glasgow and his wife Irene, he does remember Irene said that she was in love with Billy Boyne a true Villian and Irene's abuser. Once he remember his pre-war life, Reith becomes a gangster himself and starts having affair with Catie Smith. As the years progress these three people's worlds are going to meet.
I have to say that I was about 100 pages into the book, until I realized that this book was really bad. So do yourself a favorite and just skip it.

I've also read 'The Curse', the first in the trilogy and i felt as though this second book wasn't progressive enough and Blair could have just as easily fitted both together, if not the third part of it too. In comparison to the first book however, I felt that this one offered more. Some crucial developments occur in it at least. From what I've read about the third in the series, ('The Beast') I gather that it too, has not progressed much so I guess in terms of action, this book is perhaps the more entertaining. Since I last read it, I have become an anti-romantic and I would not recommend this to readers who don't particularly enjoy the whole 'love conquers all' ideology because Blair just totally throws that in your face throughout the book...that seems to be her motif. While you need not completely avoid this book for its sub-plot can still be interesting, just be wary as it can start to seem a little unrealistic and maybe even tacky.

When word got out that "The Twilight Zone" would make its move to radio with Stacy Keach filling in for Rod Serling as
host, the response was generally on the order of, 'Uh,
how can you go from TV back to radio? And why
Twilight Zone to make the regression?' Well, the producers
of the series obviously saw no problem with it...they
pay CBS their fees, get the product on the shelves,
and collect the cash from the sales.

This is, unfortunately, another example of an

over-commercialised, slapdash attempt to sequelize a classic masterwork. If the effort is an attempt to make "Twilight
Zone" accessible to the younger generation, there's no need...you can go pop in a tape or DVD and watch the original
episodes. But this seems to be a case of taking Shakespeare
and cutting out all the middle English, in attempt to make the plays more universal.

The producers hooked Dennis Etchison, an otherwise superlative

writer, to "expand" the great old stories
of Rod Serling (and yes, the stories of Richard Matheson,
Chuck Beaumont, and other writers are going to be
adapted for radio as well, sans a few segments
that don't work well on radio including Matheson's
near-silent "The Invaders" and Serling's highly visual
"Eye of the Beholder"). Sadly, it is all too apparent
that Etchison knows, deep down, that the work of
the old writers can't be topped. For a show like
"The Twilight Zone", whose domain was almost like
a world parallel to our own, with the entire universe
as its breeding ground,
to take its stories and bring them back to the mundane and the reality-grounded
as radio programs is pointless. These first two sets
really come off as no more than bland recitations of
old stories that fans know inside and out from the
original TV versions.

The actors for the first series of eight dramas
include Jim Caviezel, Lou Diamond Phillips, Tim
Kazurinsky, Jane Seymour, James Keach, Blair Underwood,
Kim Fields, Chris MacDonald, and Ed Begley Jr.
Of these, only Jane Seymour does a credible job
as star of Serling's episode "The Lateness of the Hour"
(which originally starred the late Inger Stevens).
Tim Kazurinsky and Lou Diamond Phillips do earn
their paychecks with fairly humorous performances
in episodes "Mr. Dingle the Strong" (originally
starring Burgess Meredith) and "A Kind of Stopwatch",
respectively. The rest of the actors quite obviously
have no clue as to what they were doing, reciting
all their lines as if read directly from a cue card
(which in fact is probably what they did!)

In the role of ersatz-Rod Serling, the narrator,
Stacy Keach pretty much mails in his performance.
His readings of the intro/closings are but
lacking the gripping sincerity and meaning that
Rod always imparted to each and every narration.

Further hampering the dramas is the inclusion
of sponsor commercials, which pop up several
times. The CD versions are all one continuous
42-minute track with no option of fast-forwarding
through the commercials unless done manually.

In short, this new radio series does not yet offer
anything that the original series didn't. The
days of good ol' radio are gone, never to return.
But there are many more of these dramas still yet to
be released. Collections 3 and 4 have already
been released and do offer some nice sound
effects and a fabulous performance by Morgan
Brittany in episode "The Passersby". So perhaps
there's hope. Brittany is the first actor who
appeared in the TV series, to star in these dramas,
and more celebrities are reportedly going to
appear in future installments. Stay tuned...but
keep the volume on low until the producers come
full circle and prove their worthiness to carry
Rod Serling's gauntlet.