This graphic novel contains issues 20 to 25 from the popular comic book series witchblade. Events in this book takes place right after the huge family ties crossover event between the Darkness and the Witchblade. The witchlade is now in the hands of one of Sarah's greatest adversaries. Just like the previous issues the artwork is brilliant. There is one thing i don't like though. The artwork is done by more than one illustrator. Each illustrator has a very different and unique style of drawing. The look of the characters and story keeps changing. Besides that everything else is good. For someone who just started to pick up on the witchblade comic book series and want to get their hands on earlier issues this is a good collection to get their hands on.

Whether you are a fan of the comic, the book series, or the television series, you will enjoy this one. It is based on the comic book and, therefore, is made as such.

The Witchblade and its owner(s) are just as tough as ever!

I was glued to this one! Awesome!

Rachel Fortune inherits her grandmothers planes and helicopter and Rachel intends to put them to good use. She is a pilot and she loves her job. She is good at what she does and she is just as stubborn and pigheaded as her grandmother Kate. Rachel needs an airstrip and after at first being told no, Dr. Lucas Greywolf finally gives in and agrees to lease her the airstrip that he owns. Lucas thinks Rachel is a rich princess type that has never done a hard days work. Lucas is constantly suprised by the things that Rachel does, and slowly he must admit that he was wrong about her. Unfortunately, after one day trapped on a mountain they end up in each others arms and as a result Rachel is now pregnant. So many obstacles of their own doing stand in the way of them being happy. A near tragedy may be the key to bringing them together.

Again, another Fortunes Children series book that I have enjoyed. Rachel reminds me a lot of Kate. I can not wait to read about Adam next.

This book helped me a lot. It's awesome and I'm sure that it will help a lot of other people.

By Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor
University of Illinois News Bureau

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A new book of previously unpublished writings details daily life at one of the weirdest creative writers' colonies ever to operate in the United States - or perhaps anywhere.

In the book, readers can sample the writings of some of the renegades who enlisted in Lowney Handy's dysfunctional little colony in rural Illinois in the mid-20th century. Against all odds, some of the men went on to successful careers in writing - including Handy's first student, James Jones.

In "Writings From the Handy Colony" (Tales Press), one quickly discovers that Handy's philosophy of teaching gives a whole new meaning to the term "struggling writer." More a warden than a muse, and untrained in teaching and writing, Handy drove her disciples hard and controlled their every move. She forbade alcohol and rich food, and prescribed enemas for writer's block. Once a month she'd haul her students across the border to a Terre Haute, Ind., brothel. Above all else, Handy stripped writers of their egos before building them up again. In 1964, she wrote to colonist Jon Shirota, now a successful playwright: "The secret is to offer as little hope as possible, the writer has such an abundance that he will cheat himself, in the exuberant and self-praise of his own enthusiasm."

Two of the three editors of the new book were colony "insiders": Don Sackrider was Handy's second student and Helen Howe was her close friend. George Hendrick, the third editor, is an expert on Jones and an English professor emeritus at the University of Illinois.

As evidenced in the book, Handy's own writing was often incomprehensible, but she was a perceptive, albeit unorthodox, editor, Hendrick said. In addition, along with her tough love and bizarre copying exercises, she gave her students the confidence to believe in themselves as writers.

While the most fascinating contributions to the book may be Handy's letters to her colonists, all of the works "carry the flavor of the 1950s," Hendrick said, "and show what one writer's colony was doing." Over 20 years, the Handy Colony drew some 70 drifters, rebels and struggling writers.

Even before her intimate and professional liaison with Jones, Handy lived in a subterranean world, drawn to unfortunates and misfits of all stripes, "so it was consistent that she would take on Jones, who had gone AWOL and was very troubled at the time," Hendrick said.

Handy's father had been sheriff in Marshall, Ill., and his family lived in the jailhouse. There, Handy observed all kinds of down-and-outers. Later, she became "a perfect housewife," Hendrick said, who helped her husband climb the ranks at the oil refinery in nearby Robinson. Once her husband succeeded, she became the outcast, working with pregnant girls, troubled soldiers and then writers.

The way Handy saw it, "There is no more than a hair's breadth between the artist and the criminal," as she wrote Sackrider on March 15, 1950. But "the artist graduates out of the criminal class and looks into his heart and writes - or else he watches those around him with a cold clinical eye and writes about himself as he sees them. That is the way Jim writes. ..."

This charming book transforms boring history into an entertaining tale of a girl and her family from Boston living in Charleston, SC during the months leading up to the beginning of the Civil War by the attack on Fort Sumter. The reader senses the inhunanity of slavery through Sylvia's experiences. Your child will understand history like never before after reading this book.

I bought this book expecting the usual (impractical) tips about saving money and the environment at the same time. What I found was a book full of VERY EASY suggestions. For those of you about to make a major purchase (house, refrigerator, washer/dryer, etc.), there is plenty of information for you as well. But the majority of the tips (and $$$ savings) come from things that anybody can do. Definitely worth the investment.

The title is slightly misleading as the bulk of the narrative focuses on the first-person accounts of Laura Glenmorris and her daughter Medora, as told to George Delmont, the young philosopher. Smith parodies the romanctic/Gothic genre of the eighteenth-century while simultaneously using both modes to her own advantage. She critiques the English legal system, especially as it relates to women, and the views of Delmont, and other philosophical idealists, as inadequate to fight against the corruption of English law. Originally published the same year as _Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman_, 1798, fans of Mary Wollstonecraft should enjoy this novel for Smith shares many of Wollstonecraft's social views. Additionally, fans of Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen should also enjoy _The Young Philosopher_. The inset tales are suspenseful and humorous while the main plot of the novel is more complex than a simple love story between Delmont and Medora (told by an omniniscient narrator). As a student of Smith's romantic poetry I was pleasantly surprised to discover this enjoyable and thought-provoking novel.

The page-long Heart Sutra is one of the most popular Buddhist texts and is chanted every day in Zen monasteries. This small book is a commentary on the Heart Sutra by the Japanese Zen master Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1768). Hakuin goes through the Heart Sutra a word or phrase or line at a time, commenting usually with a paragraph of prose followed by a verse. Translator Norman Waddell adds helpful notes about the Buddhist doctrines, Chinese folktales, and so forth, that Hakuin refers to. And the book is illustrated with Hakuin's own calligraphy and paintings.

Hakuin writes in the incisive, poetic, paradoxical style that I think of as "Zen-speak" when it gets imitated poorly, but this is the real thing. Hakuin's writing is lively, funny, often sarcastic or scatalogical.

Here are a couple of bits that I especially liked, to give you a sense of Hakuin's style: Commenting on the line "Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form," Hakuin says, "A nice hot kettle of stew. He ruins it by dropping a couple of rat turds in. It's no good pushing delicacies at a man with a full belly. Striking aside waves to look for water when the waves _are_ water." Commenting on the phrase "is delivered from all distress and suffering," Hakuin offers this verse: "The ogre outside shoves the door, / The ogre inside holds it fast. / Dripping sweat from head to tail / Battling for their very lives, / They keep it up throughout the night / Until at last when the dawn appears / Their laughter fills the early light-- / They were friends from the first."

(If you'd prefer a commentary in a more ordinary, explanatory style, try Thich Nhat Hanh's "The Heart of Understanding" or Albert Low's "Zen and the Sutras," which includes a chapter on the Heart Sutra. Donald Lopez's "The Heart Sutra Explained" is a dense, scholarly examination of seven Indian commentaries and two Tibetan commentaries on the Heart Sutra.)