This is the first of John Shannon's Jack Liffey mysteries I've read, though I see it's the fourth book in the series. It gave me a fascinating glimpse into the Vietnamese community of Orange County, LA, as well as introducing me to a central character I immediately want to more about. Jack Liffey is no super-hero, but a decent sort of guy trying to do his best in a crazy world (and some aspects of Liffey's LA are definitely crazy!). John Shannon is a great writer who keeps the reader interested throughout, and I can't understand why he isn't much better known. 'The Orange Curtain' is highly recommended.

The Orange Curtain was my introduction to John Shannon. I am now going to read the previous titles. Here is a writer with remarkable skills, both in narrative and in characterization. As well, his hero Jack Liffey is a man of such thoughtful intelligence that he stands well above the usual macho-jock types who play leading roles in so many series. The creation of Billy Gudger is something rare: a fully rounded view of loneliness personified and of how cruelty and isolation can shape a killer. Unlike the two-dimensional bad guys with incoherent rationales who kill people from some warped sense of personal satisfaction, Shannon has, in Gudger, drawn a portrait of a sad, even forgivable, young man with no social skills, and a deep and terrible thirst for knowledge and for friendship. It is to the author's credit that the exchanges between Liffey and Gudger are sadly revealing of the souls of both men; and the final section of the book is a fine example of how tension can be tightened, then tightened some more, then more, before something finally snaps.

Here is an author to watch; he is an extraordinary writer, with insight, wisdom, and great feeling for his characters.

Jack Liffey finds missing children and, in THE ORANGE CURTAIN, he must look into the strange (to him at least) culture of Orange County (formerly a bedroom community to Los Angeles but now a major center in its own right). The Orange County culture he investigates includes the ultra-rich, Vietnamese merchants and gangs, and an insane young man who flirts with genius.

It is the characters that make THE ORANGE CURTAIN stand out although certainly author John Shannon handles adventure well enough (with both physical and psychological challenges to Liffey). Both Liffey and insane Billy Gudger have their own challenges in dealing with others, rendering Liffey the one man who may be able to communicate effectively with Billy.

Shannon's touch for characters also applies to minor characters. Liffey's daughter Maeve, for example, is a delightful 13 going on 30.

THE ORANGE CURTAIN is less a mystery to be solved than it is a set of observations into human nature, the intermingled but distinct societies of Southern California, and the challenges a man must face to stand himself in the morning. Does that sound heavy? In this case, it isn't. The novel is a fast read with several great a-ha moments.

Highly Recommended.

This lady brought me to love a land and people in a manner I never dreamed possible. A must read for the romantic as well as the pedantic.

... this writing is like the geography [of Baja], desert surrounded by water. Rich, yet sparse; full, yet hungry. Like Mexico, full of soul. This book is much more than a regional tale: it is the beginning of a literature of Baja ...

I bought this book and it was so enjoyable that I read it in one sitting! I read constantly, but I can only think of three or four times in my life where I've read a book straight through. It's a wonderful story and I can't wait to pass it on to some friends...

I love this book. I was checking it out of the library for information and decided I had to have it. If you are a beginner it speaks in clear understandable language. If you are experianced, it covers all aspects of gardening and in a clear organized manner that helps you plan your entire year. His check off lists are handy and his attitude is what makes this book so enjoyable. Buy one for yourself and one for a friend.

This is my garden bible. Although I use other specialized garden books like the Sunset Western Garden Book for detailed plant info., this is the one that tells me exactly when to do what to which plants month-by-month, including how-to sketches. There's nothing better for SoCal gardeners!

I am just beginning the adventure into the world of gardening. This is our first house and after two years my husband and I are finally installing our yards. I was looking for a definative book about how to garden in Southern California, Ms. Welsh's book more than fit the bill. Her book is full of gardening ideas and monthly schedules that spread the chores out over the 12 months of the year leaving a lot of time for enjoyment. As a novice, I now feel more confident cruising the nurseries and homecenters looking for the perfect plant because I have a better understanding of the maintenance and care needed.

I borrowed this book from a friend, and I am upset that I have let this treasure sit in my apartment for 2 months without reading it. This book is awesome! The writing is simple, wisdom-filled and flavorful! Without making her characters heroic, you find yourself admiring them, because they are so human... full of good, but full of frailties at the same time. I didn't want this book to end, and I'm about to order any book of hers that I can get my hands on. Ms. Cooper is a good writer, with an obvious love and respect for her craft. More than that, without being preachy she manages to impart insight into human nature. I loved this book! The book and the woman who wrote it are classics!

I'm enjoying the work of J.California Cooper more and more. I've never been one to read short stories but I'm hooked now. Each story touch my heart and reminds me of someone I know. I feel as if I'm sitting on the porch talking to my grandmother when I read some of these stories. So heartwarming. God's Blessings.

A wonderful, quick read. Her stories touch the heart and some even make you say "you go girl". Iloved this book and would pass it on to many friends. You won't put it down!

Ruth Farley is a rock. She is stubborn. She is strong. She is self-centered. And she is as undeniably irresistible as the natural stone sculptures in Monument Valley.

Ruth ventures West, determined that she will not yield to society's limited expectations and dull conventions for women. She will live on her own in her beloved canyon. She will build her house where that huge boulder rests, the one two men have told her cannot be moved. She will have sex and enjoy it, thank you very much. She will do it all despite the cost to herself and her loved ones. And Ruth exhibits all this staunch feistiness in 1920s rural, tiny-town America.

In Ruth, novelist Susan Lang has created a character who arrests the reader's interest and refuses to free it. She is far more compelling and believable than another female character untypical of her time, Jane Smiley's Lidie of The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton. And she is as intriguing as Kate Horsley's Sara Franklin, another young woman who travels to the Southwest in Crazy Woman.

The novel's only flaw is that it seems a little rushed toward the end. But perhaps that is only because Ruth is so fascinating that we don't want to let her go.

In 1929, barely 21 years old, Ruth Farley heads west and claims a homestead in an isolated canyon in Southern California, at that time still the land of rough-and-ready miners and cowboys. What is she looking for? She doesn't quite know, but she knows what she doesn't want - a conventional woman's life of settled domesticity. To her this means she must be totally self-sufficient and independent. Ruth is stubborn, brave, strong, and subject to fits of free-ranging lust that she is not always successful at keeping under control, although she makes weak attempts at it. With 21-year-old chutzpah, she has the delusion that she can spit in the eye of conventional norms for women without paying a high price for it, and she protects this delusion with a cavalier disregard for what people think of her.

Part of her delusion is that she can carve out an independent life for herself in an isolated mountain region without the help and support of neighbors, and a major early story line of the book is her stubborn insistence on moving, entirely alone, a boulder that must be removed before she can lay the foundation for her cabin. The boulder could be easily moved with the help of neighbors, or by using a couple of horses and rope to drag it to a new location, but Ruth is determined to do it herself. The story of her struggles with the boulder, and her eventual triumph over it, becomes a metaphor for Everywoman's struggle to achieve independence against overwhelming odds, and any woman who has learned from hard experience that "what doesn't kill us makes us strong" will identify deeply and emotionally with this element of the story.

Unfortunately, succeeding at moving the boulder by herself reinforces Ruth's delusion that she doesn't need anybody. The rest of the book is a harrowing account of what she pays for this delusion, coming close to death at the hands of violent men and again at the hands of Nature, and seeing the first true love of her life killed because she is a white woman who has taken an Indian lover. Ultimately, of course, she has to learn to see life, Nature, and people as they really are - complicated, unpredictable, sometimes violent, and sometimes unexplainably compassionate.

If the book has a weakness, it is that even though Ruth is complex and multifaceted, some of the other characters are rather flat - her Indian lover Jim, for example, is unbelievably flawless. But in the context of this compelling story, I wasn't bothered much by that. I was much more impressed by Lang's tackling of reality themes I seldom see novelists deal with: a woman struggling with the paybacks of unrestrained lust, for example.

True "literary" writing expresses the universal through the particular, and in my view this book may well become a classic parable of what we pay, men as well as women, for defying cultural norms, and what we must do to come to terms with those norms without losing our truest Selves in the process.

Susan Lang does the impossible in her book, Small Rocks Rising. The story is as big, bulky, and unwieldy as the boulder her main character, Ruth Farely, encounters in Chapter One, while the writing is frequently as polished as any gemstone.
Amid fast action and female lust, there is the slow revealing of Ruth's background. The complex composition of Ruth's character comes from her half-breed mother, a strong-willed aunt, two years of finishing school, training to be a nurse---and the will to be free of it all.
This novel rings with the authenticity of place, and of a woman's unambiguous sexual longings. In Ruth's insightful self-talk and dreaming, there hangs the reality of a woman alone. She is impatient with life and all the people she encounters in her struggle to forge a place for herself in the wilderness. Ruth is an unconventional woman whose thoughts and actions are well ahead of her time. Her courage is matched only by her desires.
As the novel reveals Ruth's story, it also reveals a parallel to the male myth of passage, initiation into adulthood. Ruth experiences the trials of being alone in the extremes of nature, life-sapping heat to freezing snowstorms. She also encounters the extremes of the nature of men---violent to tender. She loses her way in the wilderness of the mountains and her own desires to discover she has the resources not only to survive, but to overcome all that nature, and man, has to throw at her.
Overall, the novel is a great read. Let's hope there is more.

For those of us who were fortunate enough to be in Washington on that cold morning in October, 1987 and see the entire AIDS Memorial Quilt unfurled for the first time, we should thank Cleve Jones for both his idea of the quilt as a memorial to those who died of AIDS and this wonderful book he has written. The quilt has almost become a cliche for some of us now-- we have seen it so many times in so many different variations and sizes-- that I did not believe I could be so moved and relive that intensely emotional and poignant day in October. I was wrong. I was taken by Mr. Jones' sincerity and utter lack of egotism. He is remarkably candid about his own life as he takes the reader through his own experiences as a young gay activist in San Francisco, his role in the history of the quilt and his own diagnosis with HIV.

Mr. Jones reminds me of things I had forgotten or repressed: a lot about the heroism of Harvey Milk, for example, the awfulness of Anita Bryant, the indifference of the first President Bush who was too busy to see the quilt, of President Clinton, along with Mrs. Clinton and the Gores, who was not too busy to pay tribute to those who had fallen. We get to see some of our national celebrities in a new light: the gentle Rosa Parks, the beautiful Elizabeth Taylor frightened at making a speech, and finally Jane Fonda who can only be described as totally silly in her adoration of Tom Hayden.

A friend of mine who has seen the quilt in its entirety many times and is active in the Names Project in his hometown in Maine says that he can only read this book a little at a time. Yes, it's very viseral, sometimes painful, and it will make you cry.

In the Epilogue Mr. Jones writes: "My hope is that one day AIDS will be over and we will have to look upon all its different aspects: how it drew a country together from across cultural, ethnic, and religious divisions, and how it was, like the Holocaust, a crucible of definition. I think the Quilt will have a role in this discussion and a place in our history as memory is preserved and recreated imn this symbol of our natural desire for commuity."

And you, Mr. Jones, will have a place in that history. Many Americans cannot thank you enough for that.

Cleve Jones has done many wonderful things for the gay community. Now he adds this wonderful, heartfelt memior. This volume is more than "just" a memoir, it's a rich and rewarding history lesson, an eye witness account. Throught the past twenty-five years Jones has been a witness to murder, a victim of hate crimes, an activist for gay rights, a rioter, a mourner, a survivor and a an ambassador of hope and good will. This is the story of the AIDS Quilt, from its beginnings to its eventual recognition as an international symbol of peace, reconciliation and unity. Cleve Jones takes a refreshingly candid, warts-and-all approach to telling his story. He depicts himself as an ordianry man responding to extraordinary circumstances in the only way he knew how. Past imperfect, but always willing to do whatever was necessary to bring his message to the people, Cleve helped to put a human face on AIDS.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt has been the most humanizing, uplifting and unifying symbol of the battle against the AIDS virus. As an activist, viewer of the Quilt, and twice a volunteer, I read Mr. Jones book greedily. People need to know what he has to say. People need to know the impact their actions can have on world perceptions; that they can make a difference. People need to know the history of the epidemic - reflected in the experiences of a person immersed in the culture impacted first: how the gay community, so brutally attacked, fought back and set up the protocols now being used by all sectors of society all over the world.

The book is a good read, very accessible, as simple as the concept of the Quilt and as insightful. I thank Cleve Jones for giving humanity the Quilt and this telling of how it came to be.

This was a great, handy book to have while visiting southern California. I have been on two of the tours so far. Both were accurate and fun. I am origianally from California, but live in Dallas now. This was a nice way to refresh my memory of the area, and find out new places to see. It is a must have if you are planning to spend some time in the southern California area.

You will have fun reading this handy little book even if you don't go on the variety of tours it has to offer. The concise, often humorous, descriptions are full of little known facts on people and places all over L.A. There are museums, parks, landmarks, cemetaries and unique attractions I never knew existed and it was a great experience seeing them for the first time. Most of them were FREE! Pocket Guide to L.A. is not your typical Hollywood guide book. It is a entertaining and educational activity book that covers a wide range of interesting places to visit again and again. It would make a great gift.

What a great Book! This is the best guide to L.A. that I have seen. Not only does it contain over one hundred of the best attractions, but it also has five self-guided tours around the greater Los Angeles area.

Four of the tours stop at famous landmarks and the homes of the biggest superstars in Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Pacific Palisades. Celebrity biographies are provided for more then 60 of the greatest stars of today and yesteryear. Some of my favorites include Brad Pitt, John Travolta, Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hoffman. Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, and Elvis Presley.

The final tour is a walking tour exploring downtown Los Angeles. This tour unveils the various cultures, historical facts and gives you a feel for the future of the city of Los Angeles. Featured are water parks, beautiful gardens, mini-museums, three different ethnic communities, architectural feats, and much more.

Not only does the book have very accurate driving directions, but it contains GPS coordinates for those who like to navigate with GPS. Additionally, it contains a very innovative GPS Adventure Game which is a type of cross word puzzle where you are given GPS coordinates and clues. You travel to each GPS coordinate, read the clue and determine the answers. The game's route follows pretty close to the route of Adventure Tour I, so you can play the game at the same time that you go on the tour. For example, one clue is the tomb inscription, "She did it the hard way". The GPS coordinates take you to Forest Lawn Memorial Park to Bette Davis' tomb. Another clue is "A winged lady holding an electron", and you are guided to GPS coordinates at The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences where you see a thirty foot Emmy (the answer) and many more busts of the greatest television stars.

The book was well planned and is very convenient. I highly recommend the "Pocket Guide to the Best of Los Angeles" to everyone.

saxenian argues that silicon valley's competitive advantage is the vast network of small firms that compose silicon valley and cross pollinate each other. she compares the valley to the route 128 area in boston which she classifies as detrimentally hierarchical, even puritanical.

The best book I have ever read concerning High Tech culture. Everyone should read this book to better understand how to motivate info exchange and networking among our society and world.

Contrary to one of the other reviewer's comments, the importance of this book is in showing precicely that it is not the "endemic" culture of Silicon Valley, but rather the innovative institutions and networked relationships in Silicon Valley that explains the region's success. A great contribution to the literature on embeddedness and network forms of organization.

Peter Decker and his wife Rina are enjoying family life with her sons and their new baby daughter when Rina's old friend Honey Klein asks to come visit. Rina is surprised because they hasn't been in close contact with Honey in recent years, but she agrees to the visit. Meanwhile Peter works with his partner Marge on a case involving an entire family who have suddenly vanished. The husband is a diamond dealer, and there are many motives for a possible murder, most of them having to do with money. Coincidentally, after Honey comes to the Lazarus home, her husband, also a diamond dealer, is mysteriously killed. Peter's quest for the truth in these matters eventually takes him and Rina to Israel where they pursue missing persons from both of these cases. As usual, author Kellerman weaves interesting facts about the orthodox Jewish religion as well as Peter and Rina's evolving family life. The trip to Israel adds an extra dimension to the story, and the total package is very satisfying for a mystery reader.

In my book 'Sanctuary' is one of the best in the Peter Decker/ Rina Lazarus series. The story revolves around the missing husband of Rina's friend. The search takes Rina and Peter to Israel where we are treated to a fascinating tour of the West Bank and the diamond trade in Israel. What makes this entry so important today is the portrayal of the continuing conflict and violence that shapes Israel's future and her people. It is a pleasure to read a book that is both thoughtful and fun to read.

My only other suggestion if you are new to Faye Kellerman is to start at the beginning with 'Ritual Bath' to see the relationship between Rina and Peter unfold. Then read all her books in the order in which they were written. Its a great series.

In my book, this title vies with 'Ritual Bath' and 'Justice' as Kellerman's best. As with 'Ritual Bath' the reader is treated to the all encompassing traditions of Judaism. Although the Honey Klein angle seems to get more emphasis in reviews, I found the diamond merchant subplot more believable and fascinating. Descriptions of Israel and the West Bank were super--I enoyed the travelogue. Faye, give us more!

This excellent Greenleaf novel opens with Tanner recovering from a gunshot wound in a hospital. He meets a young woman there who has many more problems than himself. She gets him back into "life". But later she is found murdered. Tanner has made promises to her and intends to carry them out. Villains had better beware. Great stuff!

Strawberry Sunday, by Stephen Greenleaf, was nominated for an Edgar Award, 2000 -- and reading it, it's not difficult to see why. This is a mystery novel with a social conscience and a wry sense of wit. It begins with the hero, P.I. John Marshall Tanner in a hospital recovering from a gut shot and mourning the death of his close (cop) friend Charley Sleet, but most of the action takes place in the California Salinas agricultural community. Tanner has resolved to find out who murdered Rita Lombardi, a fellow hospital patient who wants to better the life of farm workers.

There are lots of red herrings, wonderful characters, and witty and often hilarious dialogues with them (and with himself). Tanner often reaches wrong conclusions and gets plenty of egg on his face, but in the end he prevails; he's a tough guy with loads of grace. Strawberry Sunday is a punchy, funny, touching novel. Read it.

As a long time fan of Greenleaf and Marsh Tanner, I thoroughly enjoyed Strawberry Sunday. I love books that inform and challenge me as well as entertain, and can always count on this author to accomplish that.

A rumor has been circulating that Greenleaf planned to retire the Tanner series, and with the last book seemed to have done so, in a most excruciating way. With this book, Marsh has been returned to me and I can imagine him, one of the rare really good people, continuing to do what he does best.