This book has given me some clues to european history. I never understood why northern Europe (England, Scandinavia, Germany...) developed so much since XVII century, becomming more prosperous lands than southern countries like Italy or Spain. Dawson explains what happened during the "Dark Years" (500-800 A.D) in Europe, and there we may find an important difference between northern and southern countries. Recomended for deep thinking people on History.

SCAM AND EGGS is a fine mystery anthology that contains mostly contemporary contributions, but also has two enjoyable historicals including a spin on First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln that will open readers' minds to this intriguing much maligned figure. The book also contains three well written Jeri Howard tales, which by itself would be a winner especially since the retired Seville couple is also in attendance (these awesome novels include KINDRED CRIMES and NOBODY'S CHILD among the eight or so books in the series). The remaining tales include a military mystery and a modern day updating of a fairy tale relocated from Europe to San Francisco. Finally, this delightful ten-story collection includes three never before printed tales. Fans of short but suspenseful mysteries will gain much pleasure with Janet Dawson's strong aggregate.

Harriet Klausner

This book proves that Aussies aren't just eccentrics who make quirkylittle films about ballroom dancing or killing crocodiles. This wonderfully sane and practical handbook assumes that any young writer will be prepared to, indeed want to, work in ALL of the fields of writing for the screen - not just features or hot television series.

In other words, the writer doesn't pretend that there's a direct pipeline or a magic formula to going from Nintendo to Hollywood screenplay in one jump. This book covers all the likely places you're going to have to work in - from educational video, ads, sitcoms, and so on but more importantly new media. There's a terrific chapter on multimedia scripting which doesn't appear to be covered by any other current manual and a unique chapter on animation with some quite extraordinary storyboards.

To be honest, this book is a bit of a surprise. This book is a great antidote to all those books and film manuals - let alone courses - that insist on formulas like the hero's journey, character arcs and so on to the exclusion of the kind of originality and excitement that produces movies like "Being John Malkovich" which, thank heavens, obey no such rules!

This book gives you the juice to go out there and sell!

Robert Dawson's photographs are so moving. He captures moments that are truly beautiful. His books (Along the Cowboy Trail and this one) make wonderful gifts for those horse lovers and cowboys/cowgirls!

Continental Europe in the 1830s was well on the way to making Christianity irrelevant. Britain's turn would come and already the Church of England was shocked to find its ancient sources of revenues and its ability to manage its own affairs effectively challenged by a liberal and secularizing Parliament. The Oxford Movement (OM) was created in 1833 to reverse that trend. In the end it did far more. It also revitalized the Church of England both as a force for Gospel truth and for a sacramental view that everything in this world is a kind of language pointing to a higher, holy transcendent world which all men are invited to attain.
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Historian Christopher Dawson's brief overview of the OM's first seven or eight years is masterly. It rewards repeated reading. First written a hundred years after the OM began, THE SPIRIT OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT was almost unique in its day for flagging three facts.
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The first fact is that the driving, almost demonic, force behind the Movement was the young Richard Hurrell Froude. Froude was the most gifted person whom John Henry Newman had ever met. Froude's unceasing nagging had the effect, over time, of removing every last one of John Henry Newman's inherited Protestant detestation of the Papacy. Without Froude, said Dawson, one could not have predicted that Newman would become a Roman Catholic Cardinal.
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The second fact which Dawson convincingly and virtually uniquely among historians sketches is the impact of Calvinist theology on the young Newman. This theology John Henry imbibed from his Low Church Evangelistic parents and later at school from one or more teachers and from his reading in church history. Till the end of his days Newman, undisputed leader of the OM, firmly embraced Catholic views first learned under Calvinist auspices: the Majesty of God, the Incarnation and Predestination of the saints. As today's Baptists and Presbyterians become aware of Newman's abiding albeit critical Calvinism, they may join those Anglican/Episcopalians and Roman Catholics who see in the writings of Cardinal Newman a way to stitch up shattered Christian dogmatic unity. Newman is not normally presented as indebted to the thought of John Calvin or of the Geneva school of theology.
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Thirdly, Dawson illustrates at work within the microcosm of the soul and conscience of Newman an evolution which Newman presented in THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. There Newman argued that the one true form of orthodox Christianity, led by the Holy Spirit, will absorb all that is good in the world and cultures around it: Platonism, Aristotelianism, Protestantism, while rejecting what is untrue or harmful. Newman also believed that God gives each human person from birth the wherewithal to find Him, to transcend the limitations of his or her particular family or time in history, to respond to God's voice echoing in conscience and to find the true religion or at least move in its direction under guidance from the Holy Spirit.
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Similarly, John Henry Newman himself is presented by Christopher Dawson as evolving towards God: reading the Bible as a youngster much as he read the Arabian Nights, then at 15 becoming and ever remaining a converted, pro-active Christian. This fervor endured for a time at Oxford but was challenged then fleshed out by Newman's flirtation with rationalism and liberalism. He then moved into High Church Anglicanism and its belief that it had added nothing to the faith of the Greek and Latin Fathers of the early church. Relentlessly Newman's conscience moved him toward Rome, fighting every step of the way. Finally, he converted to Roman Catholicism only when sadly convinced that he could no longer save his soul in the Church of England.
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Dawson's THE SPIRIT OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT and its very brief supplement NEWMAN'S PLACE IN HISTORY are unlikely to be unsurpassed as short, brilliant introductions to Hurrell Froude, John Henry Newman and other giants of the early days of the Oxford Movement.

t was an act of vengeance, but Chad McClintock finally knew how to get even with his father. He'd seduce the young copper-haired beauty who was about to become his stepmother! Kristy Donovan was nothing but a fortune hunter anyway, and he had no qualms about carrying her off to an isolated cabin in the woods. But Chad was not prepared for the fiesty young woman whose flashing green eyes turned his angry passion into helpless desire. And even as Kristy cursed her arrogant captor, she warned to his sensual touch.

This book is lots of fun to use while traveling around Sonoma Valley. You can't go a mile or two anywhere in the valley without passing by some landmark that's been written up. Each point of interest is described with an amusing story behind it. There are also fun (and scandalous) vignettes that relate to the Sonoma history.

All in all the perfect book to accompany any wine tour.

This is an incorrect ISBN listing for "Tales of the Spectre Kings," which is more properly found under 1-928999-01-8.

This supplement is an update of the original 1991 supplment "The Spectre King," including most of the original materials and a new sequel adventure, "The Tale of the White Horror."

A friendly note from the publisher, Peter Corless of Green Knight Publishing.