Back in early 1980's when Pocket books started issuing Star Trek novels, (even before they numbered them), Black Fire stood out as one of the best. Based on the then new premise of Spock as a savior of the Enterprise and the Federation.

Brilliantly written, Black Fire stands out still in my mind as an exceptional rendition of a Stra Trek story (even after reading several hundred Star Trek universe novels over the years)

Buy it if you can find it.

I loved this book, I read it about once every year. Spock in cloak-and-dagger mode is intriguing. As for an earlier comment,(SMALL SPOILER) his suicide attempt was, in fact, quite logical. He was crippled and his companions would not escape (and thereby warn the Federation) without him.(END SPOILER) As far as behaving as we would expect the characters do, I thought they did, especially the Spock-McCoy relationship. Nothing in the book was unreasonable, nothing insofar unreasonable as a lot of Star Trek V (the crew turning on Kirk for example) which is canon while Black Fire is not. BF is an excellent read, like a lot of the 80's ST novels like the Entropy Effect.

I read this book for the first time many years ago, and I think I've probably read it 10 more times since then. One of the most intriguing Star Trek novels ever. Sonni Cooper puts together a first class relationship with Spock and his Romulan friend. A must read (if you can find it).

I don't think there's anything profound about Dennis Cooper. As far as I can tell from having read this book and "Frisk", he writes the exact same book again and again, just changing the characters and circumstances slightly. Dennis has an agenda, and that's to make you squirm, if not with his nihilistic political worldview, with his graphic depictions of all manner of sexual expression, from remarking on the prettiness of pre-adolescent boys to rape, drugging, and dismemberment.

"Guide" is, as widely dicussed, probably the most celebrated piece of fanfiction ever written. Cooper gets props for writing a thinly disguised interlude wherein Alex from "Slur" gets picked up, stuffed full of roofies, and used as an amusing pawn in someone's fantasy life. It is extremely funny if you know anything about fanfiction, and has guaranteed him hundreds of sales from Blur fans desperate to pick up anything even vaguely smacking of their messiahs. (I am a fine example of this, as well as being interested in Cooper's oeuvre, and wondering if I could get through another of his books).
"Guide" is a little funnier than "Frisk", and that makes it a lot easier to get through. If you are even slightly upset or traumatized by the concepts of gay sex, pedophilia, or sexual violence, you would be well advised to stay away. However, if you think "Naked Lunch" is charming and brilliant, and you enjoy the smellier bits of "Le Chants de Maldoror" or "Our Lady of the Flowers", you'll totally dig "Guide", because it is really funny, if totally offensive to pretty much every slightly healthy member of society.

I read this book back to back with another that was dedicated to the author. I'd never heard of Dennis cooper so I didn't know what to expect. I was going to give it three stars but then I realized that was only because it was so upsetting. Along with how well written and engrossing it is, that's actually a reason to rate it higher, so I did. It was my own fear getting in the way. The real frustration was the absence of a moral stance. It's like Bret Easton Ellis that way - you have to make up your own mind about what's going on. You realize you're just getting angry because there's no re-assurance provided, you're totally immersed in a world with no ethical designations. This book is one of the more powerful I've read for that. I'd say this is about as transgressive and gutsy as writing gets. Glad I found it.

I couldn't put it down for more than a minute, I read it cover to cover and afterwards i curled up into a ball and cried. It's the most realistic, eye opening and simultaneously humorous and surreal thing i've ever read. passing it up is like passing up air on a sinking ship.

If you already have a college degree in TCP/IP this book might be of interest, but if you are looking for a book that will be of help to a non-expert this book isn't it. The chapters are written in a very confused way. At one point you think the author is talking to a child with overly simplistic language, then at the next moment he will throw in some advanced mathamatics that will completely lose you. You end up not understanding anything about the subject that you didn't know to begin with. I highly recommend looking elsewhere for a good introduction to TCP/IP.

This book is an excellent resource for people who have a little experience with networking or internetworking and want to begin to expand their understanding of TCP/IP. If you're like me and want to get a grasp on the basics before jumping into some serious routing / internetworking topics, you'll find this book essential reading.

This is a great book with great examples that help to stamp the ideas into your head. It's great for a beginner (I had no working knowledge of TCP/IP or any of it's utilities) and can provide helpful reference for more experienced readers. Like almost all of the "Sams Teach Yourself" books, there's almost no way to read the book and grasp the material in the allotted time frame (24 hrs - and this is a smaller book) but it is definitely worth putting in the time. You'll take away alot. Joe Casad and Bob Willsey do a very good job, although I feel that on a couple of occasions they should have given the explanation of a term before using it, instead of saying "this will be discussed in a later hour". Just one small gripe. Otherwords two HANDS up for this instructional guide through the world of TCP/IP Networking.

Neil Gaiman is one of the most inventive, respected and popular writers of fantastic fiction for many years now. His run on Sandman for DC Comic's Vertigo has put him in the league of other comic book greats like Alan Moore & Frank Miller...Alice Cooper is a rock legend, forgotten by many, but still... in the world of rock n roll. Alice paved the way for just about every popular "shocker" in the last thirty years.. He is the original showman, an Alice Cooper concert is a trip into a nightmare of violent acts and brutal punishments of torture, usually inflicted on Alice himself... But when Alice Cooper had an idea for a new concept album, he summond the talents of Mr. Gaiman to pen a story to bring his album to life... The story is about a young boy named Steven (a character first met in Alice's greatest solo album "Welcome to My Nightmare") who is the [brunt] of everyone's jokes...he's a scardy cat, and on a few days before Halloween, the boys come across a hidden theatre in the city and encounter a strange man in a top hat with creepy face paint (obviously Alice). The man offers one of the boys a ticket to his show...Steven is chosen and he steps through the doors alone into a nightmarish world where all of his fears will attack him and the mysterious showman will try to steal his soul.

This book is a must for Alice Cooper fans...

In a marketing event guarenteed to drive you nuts the first part of this 3 part series was initially given away free with the last temptaion CD.

This however is the collection and tells the background story of the Alice Cooper Last Temptaion CD. The story is loosely based on Something Wicked this Way Comes (a fact acknowleged in the book (check out Stevens school book)

The Story is competantly told as you'd expect from Niel Gaiman but the star hear is Zulli who makes Aices dark ringmaster look spectacular whilst keeping the air of shlock menace about him.

If you like Alice Cooper or Neil Gaimans work this is a worthy addition to your collection.

Alice Cooper continues to entertain and amaze, even in comic book form.

Superb art and story line tie in (by design) with Cooper's "Last Temptation" album, which is now refered to as the first of Alice's three part album series followed most recently by "Brutal Planet" and "DragonTown" albums.

I recommend this read for fans of Alice Cooper, comic books and creepy stories of the heart. Not fans of the above? Read "The Last Temptation" and you will be.

But please remember, "Nothing's Free!"

We've read all of Susan Rogers Cooper's delightful stories, including the six Sheriff Milt Kovak books, the (very difficult to find) two Kimmey Kruse stand-up comedian stories, and the previous six EJ Pugh mysteries. Obviously we like Cooper's great writing ability; one would swear she can turn a soccer practice carpooling chore into an event of note with her descriptive and insightful commentary on everyday life. All of her characters tend to be a little low profile, humble practitioners with an overdose of curiosity that leads to solving crimes, sometimes almost unwittingly. Unlike her sheriff, who of course was paid to catch killers, Kimmey and EJ are strictly amateurs who depend on cajoling friends and policemen into helping move along reasonably good plots.

In this story, EJ is far from her home (Texas), and is re-united with her three sisters (with spouses/partners along) in a contrived vacation in St. Johns cooked up by her mother who wants to see the girls "get along". Much of the story revolves around their childhood goings-on and/or their perceptions of each other's adult lives and situations in society. Hence, the plot is almost a little secondary to the mental and verbal meanderings in the Virgin Islands setting. There is a murder or two to solve, and even if a bit improbable in total, we're hooked enough by a few real clues mixed in with several red herrings along the way to feel some suspense. Indeed, we thought the ending fairly surprising, and hardly anticipated the ultimate culprit at all.

While we'd readily give almost all Cooper's books 4 stars, we don't think this one was one of her best -- maybe the unusual setting (although entertaining in itself in some ways) put our author off her usual game plan; and with none of the regular supporting characters to help out, we didn't know anybody here either. Still, the faithful will want to read this; and while many of her others seemed better to me, all 15 books are fun, worthwhile "reads" without demanding too much from us the reader but "enjoy". Why not ?!!

This was the first book that I've ever read by Ms. Cooper. I picked it up intially because I had been to St. John, U.S.V.I. a few times in the past, and wanted to see which sites were mentioned.

I liked this book, but I found the writing style to be a bit spare. I have no real mental image of what the protagonist and her husband look like, or whether or not I would like them if I met them. The story itself was interesting, and the sibling problems added a nice twist to the story. Actually, I probably would have liked the book better if the family relationships were the sole focus of the book (Ms. Cooper seemed to handle that well). The mystery seemed to be a secondary issue here, and the whole treatment of the crimes that were occuring seemed too lackadaisical.

Although I liked the book, I don't yet know if I care enough about the characters to read the other stories. I'll have to think about that for a while...

This is my first E.J. Pugh mystery. It was a very fast read, the mystery kept me guessing, and I liked the characters of the four sisters. The memories of E.J. and her sisters while they were growing up greatly helped in understanding the dynamics of their dysfunctional family. The mystery itself was good, clues were there, but not obvious. I will read the other books in this series with enjoyment. If you are looking for an easy fast read, this is it.

THis book is awful. The writer tried hard to write a good book about the German Army, but I almost lost my breth when I realized the amazing flaws the book contained!! Unbeliavable !! They are the following (amidst others!!!):

1)The German generals, according to the author, were all supreme masters in the art of warfare, incapable of comitting errors. All the blame for the errors and defeats, all of it, are responsability of Hitler alone; 2) Absolutely no mention, no mention at all, is made about the help that some units of the German Army gave to the extermination (of Jews and others) squads from the SS, mainly in Russia; 3) absolutely no mention is made about the fact that the Allieds knew almost every intended movement by the Germans, due to decoding of their ciphers ( Ultra, etc ); 4) Altough the writer made it clear in his introduction, no mention at all is made about the fact that war kills people. The coldness that he describes number of killed is astonishing - a typical war writer who apparently never saw death face to face;

Well, I'd recommend to you almost any book about the German Army other than this.

I have no idea why anyone would suggest that Cooper's book is flawed because it doesn't mention the Holocaust - it is simply not about that.

What this book does do is examine in detail the myth of Blitzkrieg and the inner workings of the command structures and way of waging war. Cooper lays out very clearly how the old myths were started, and describes very clinically how the German Army was a victim of its own traditions - both in its way of making war (modern "Blitzkrieg" actually can be dated back to at least 1866, as Cooper points out) and in its subversion by Hitler - obedience to a man (emperor of Führer) was the tradition by which the German Army ensured its own destruction.

Rivetting reading. I can't offer any deeper insight into the accuracy of some of the discussion - the earlier reviewers may have valid points about Engigma and the Russian Archives - but certainly this is the way to open one's mind to the idea that the German Army really wasn't all that revolutionary in its warmaking concepts.

I kept looking for Cooper to lay blame for the war on the Generals, or to absolve them completely - he does neither, as far as I can tell, though a book this dense needs to be read more than once for its full impact to make itself felt.

This book was first published in 1978. It's marvellous. You keep turning page by page following the intricate web of events that led to Hitler's eventual dominance of the German Army and its generals and field-marshalls !!! THe style is fresh and modern, there are plenty of data. Explendid, the best !!

I am a big Jilly Cooper fan and was very excited to see a new book out. I found it to be a really good read and was pleased to see that Tabitha Campbell-Black was one of the main characters. It was a bit different to the others, as the second half was a murder mystery. While the killer was obvious to me pretty early on, I still found it quite scary near the end. The only thing that was disappointing was that so much time was spent on the exploits of the secondary characters and not enough on the romances between the main characters, Lucy, Tristan, Tabitha etc. However, it was still a great read. I hear her next book will be set in the art world and feature Rupert's brother. I hope it won't be too long before it's finished!

I have read nearly every Jilly Cooper novel and I was slightly upset by the unfavourable reviews. While this book is different to Riders and Polo, it is still an excellent read. It is witty, wise, and great fun. Even if it is slightly unbelievable at times, I think it is wonderful. The characters are fantastic and i hope that one day i will be able to write such an exciting novel.

I am (yet another) huge fan of Jilly Cooper's!! I absolutely adore her characters, she actually dares to make the heroes and heroines into basic humans in the sense that they can all be rather nasty! She obviously hates hypocrites and loves animals which makes her even better!! Score! is admittedly not her absolute best, but since several of her other "Rutshire-books" deserve at least a six stars, well..... The book is full of funny one-liners and passionate people. I read it really quickly at first, because I was curios to see how the whole thing ended, now I am re-reading it for the language and details! I do hope she will write more...

Seeking to reprise his earlier success with The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper went on to write several other tales built around his heroic character Natty Bumppo (called "Hawkeye" in Mohicans and "Pathfinder" in the book of THAT name). In this one our hero is known as "Deerslayer" for his facility on the hunt and is shown as the younger incarnation of that paragon of frontier virtue we got to know in the earlier books. In this one, too, we see how he got his most famous appellation: "Hawkeye". But, this time out, our hero comes across as woefully tiresome (perhaps it's because we see too much of him in this book, where he's almost a side character in Mohicans). Yet some of Cooper's writing skills seem sharper here (he no longer avers that Natty is the taciturn type, for instance, while having the fellow forever running off at the mouth). But, while there are some good moments & excitement, this tale really doesn't go all that far...and its rife with cliches already overworked from the earlier books. The worst part is the verbose, simple-minded self-righteousness of our hero, himself, taken to the point of absolute unbelievability. He spurns the love of a beautiful young woman (though he obviously admires her) for the forester's life (as though he couldn't really have both), yet we're expected to believe he's a full-blooded young American male. And he's insufferably "moral", a veritable goody two-shoes of the woodlands. At the same time, the Indians huff & puff a lot on the shore of the lake where Deerslayer finds himself in this tale (in alliance with a settler, his two daughters, a boorish fellow woodsman, and Deerslayer's own erstwhile but loyal Indian companion Chingachgook -- "The Big Sarpent," as Natty translates his name). But the native Americans seem ultimately unable to overwhelm the less numerous settlers who have taken refuge from them in the middle of Lake Glimmerglass (inside a frontier house built of logs and set in the lake bed on stilts). There is much racing around the lake as Deerslayer and the others strive to keep the few canoes in the vicinity from falling into the hands of the tribe of marauding Hurons who have stopped in the nearby woods on their way back up to Canada (fleeing the American colonists and the British at the outbreak of English-French hostilities -- since these Hurons are allied with the French). And there are lots of dramatic encounters, with some deaths, but the Indians seem to take it all with relative equanimity, while trying to find a way to get at the whites who are precariously ensconced out on the lake. (It seems to take them the better part of two days, for instance, to figure out they can build rafts to make up for their lack of canoes -- and why couldn't they just build their own canoes, in any case -- and how is it they don't have any along with them since it's obvious they'll have to cross a number of waterways to successfully make it back to the homeland in Canada?) The settler and the boorish woodsman, for their part, do their stupid best to attack the Indians unnecessarily, getting captured then ransomed in the process, while Deerslayer and Chingachgook contrive to get the loyal Indian's betrothed free from the Hurons (it seems she has been kidnapped by them -- the reason Deerslayer and Chingachgook are in the vicinity in the first place). In the meantime the simple-minded younger daughter of the settler (Cooper seems to like this motif since he used a strong daughter and a simpler sister in Mohicans, as well) wanders in and out of the Indian's encampment without sustaining any hurt on the grounds that the noble red men recognize the "special" nature of this poor afflicted young woman (Cooper used this motif in Mohicans, too). In the end there's lots of sturm und drang but not much of a tale -- at least not one which rings true or touches the right chords for the modern reader. Cooper tried to give us more of Hawkeye in keeping with what he thought his readers wanted but, in this case, more is definately too much. --- Stuart W. Mirsk

"The Deerslayer" is, chronologically, the first of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, although the last to be written. It takes place in the early 1740s on the Lake Glimmerglass. Natty Bumppo, called Deerslayer, and his friend Hurry Harry March go to Tom Hutter's "Castle," which is a house built on stilts on a shoal in the middle of the lake, and it is practically impregnable. March intends to get Tom's daughter Judith to marry him. More love is in the air, for Deerslayer plans to meet Chingachgook at a point on the lake in a few days in order to help him rescue his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, who is a prisoner of the Hurons.

War breaks out, Tom and Harry are captured by Hurons, and the untested Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them. That sets up the plot, and there follows many twists and turns, ending with a very haunting conclusion. Although the book drags in parts, it's still pretty good.

I would caution you not to expect realism in this book. "It is a myth," D. H. Lawrence writes, "not a realistic tale. Read it as a lovely myth." Yes, Deerslayer is fond of talking, but take his soliloquies the same way as you take Shakespeare's: characters in both men's works meditate and reflect on what they are going through. So toss out your modern preconceptions aside and just enjoy the myth!

Cooper's final Leatherstocking Tale, The Deerslayer, depicts young Natty Bumppo on his first warpath with lifelong friend-to-be, Chingachgook. The story centers around a lake used as the chronologically subsequent setting for Cooper's first Leatherstocking Tale, The Pioneers. Tom Hutter lives on the lake with his daughters and it is here that Deerslayer (Bumppo) intends to meet Chingachgook to rescue Chingachgook's betrothed from a band of roving Iroquois. A desperate battle for control of the lake and it's immediate environs ensues and consumes the remainder of the story.

Throughout this ultimate Leatherstocking Tale, Cooper provides Natty much to postulate upon. Seemingly desiring a comprehensive finality to the philosophy of Bumppo, Cooper has Natty "speechify" in The Deerslayer more so than in any other book, though the character could hardly be considered laconic in any. Though the reason for this is obvious and expected (it is, after all, Cooper's last book of the series), it still detracts a tad from the pace of the story as Natty picks some highly inappropriate moments within the plot to elaborate his position. And, thus, somewhat incongruently, Cooper is forced to award accumulated wisdom to Bummpo at the beginning of his career rather than have him achieve it through chronological accrual.

All things considered, however, The Deerslayer is not remarkably less fun than any other Leatherstalking Tale and deserves a similar rating. Thus, I award The Deerslayer 4+ stars and the entire Leatherstocking Tales series, one of the better examples of historical fiction of the romantic style, the ultimate rating of 5. It was well worth my time.

Carmel March was found under a bush outside of Dr. and Mrs. Marline's home. She and everyone else knew she didn't belong, but she was raised along with the Marline's children. When Mrs. Marline dies under mysterious circumstances, her "uncle" comes and takes her away from the rest of the family, knowing that there was trouble on the horizon. Carmel's uncle is a captain of a boat, and he takes her with him on his journeys, finally leaving her in Australia with his wife. Later, as a young woman, she returns to England and discovers that the place she left is vastly different than the place she returns to. The once beautiful home is now empty and she discovers that Dr. Marline was hanged as a murderer. She's positive that the good doctor was not the murderer and has set herself to finding out what really happened. The story was slow in parts, and predictable in others. Also, the way that Victoria Holt tried to tie in black opals to all the important happenings is rather lame. It's not a bad novel, but not as interesting as some I've read.

As a child, I grew up reading Victoria Holt's books and when my future father-in-law gave me this book to read, I couldn't wait to finish reading my other books so I could read this one. And I have to confess, I was not disappointed by this book at all. It has enough mystery in it to keep me guessing and just a little romance to make me wish I was like the heroine and no gory details about any murder or anything. It is just a fascinating book to read especially while soaking in a hot bath.

Carmel March was found in the Marlines' garden at Commonwood House. And when tragedy struck the Commonwood House, Carmel was whisked away to Australia. It wasn't till when she came home to visit England again that she realized that the wrong man was hanged for the murder of the mistress of the Commonwood House. And she embarks on an eventful journey to discover the truth.

This is such an easy read and so delightful too. I snuck in my reading time in between unpacking boxes of books and I couldn't wait to read the next page ~~ so I would sneak off to read it! Holt does it again. I remember again why I was such a big fan of hers while growing up. And I would recommend her books to any mystery lover. She's one of the leading classic writers for the mystery world and you won't regret reading her books.

I had read "The Captive" some years ago and stumbled across this one again. This is a pretty good read. Its a slight mystery...who are the parents of Carmel, who was found under the azalea bush? Is she related to the gypsys camped in the woods?
And who really killed that mean invalid? You won't find out 'til the very end. Ms. Holt keeps you entertained along the way---Carmel has many an adventure and misfortune in her short life. She travels with her "Uncle" to Australia and lives there a while. Then shes back in England and involved in suitors, weddings and tragedy.
I noticed in the publication that Ms. Holt was born in 1906. That would mean this woman wrote this in her 80s. I am very impressed! The quality of the story and the reflection of life in it is well thought out and gives insight into whats important to be happy.