I really liked this book, so the title was corny and the plot followed a formula but it was a very well written book. The only thing that I'm disappointed at is that it confirms my suspicions about this certain publisher.

The Steeple Hill Love Inspired books are a line of inspirational romances from the ... romance publisher Harlequin. And the book business is a business, but I felt disappointed that this particular author also writes ... romance novels herself.

Look her up in amazon and her web page even lists ... romance novel. I live in a big city, and am a new Christian but I don't want to support some publisher that's out to take advantage of Christians money, and especially some author that writes racy novels.

I was the first reader to review this book and when I found out about the author's former questionable books, it was disappointing. I've had a change of heart since then. Since I don't know the author, I'm not going to be judgmental anymore.

Truth is that this book is very well written, but it feels very cliched. The town that the main characters live in is so out of the ordinary. They live in a small town where most people get along with others, remember Mayberry from the Andy Griffith Show? That's how this town is.

On some levels its hard to relate to the characters, I think that this book is geared towards those raised in the church. If you weren't raised like that, & didn't have a story book life, this might not be appealing.

Although I liked reading it, well...I wished that the book was more contemporary. On the plus side, the book is well written, fun, and sentimental.

I have enjoyed Sweet Accord as well as Testimony. It gives the understanding of how God would like "all" relationships to be. And reveals the struggles "humans" go through to become perfect. We are never going to be perfect in this world, we are working towards that perfection with the help of God's grace and mercy. Even though some may feel Ms. Mason and others are being hypocrites by writing about both spiritual and worldly situations, the fact of the matter is they both exist. I believe writers have the talent to bring light to what is happening in the world. With the conclusion that there is always hope. I don't feel disappointed in a writer unless the story has no direction. I applaud Ms. Mason and other writers for being couragous enough to be honest. As a Christian now for many, many years, I have learned you can't understand someone unless you look beyond the surface. How can you help if you can't understand their situation and stuggles. Sweet Accord and Testimony both have many good examples of that. I feel Sweet Accord was beautifully written. This will definitely be one to share.

I hope someday the Tigrinya language will get its due. This book does not even adequately explain how words are pronounced. Frankly, I wonder why the author even bothered.

Tigrinya Grammar by John Mason is the best book on the market for learning Tigrinya grammar. The problem (or is it?) is that you have to learn how to read Tigrinya to use the book since there is no English transliteration of Tigrinya words. This would pose a problem for a true beginner who does not yet know how to read Tigrinya *BUT* once the reader attains a basic grasp of reading the language, he/she will reap the benefits of proper pronunciation in Tigrinya since the reading of this language is delightfully phonetic! What you see is what you get, unlike trying to learn how to read English or French! Initially, learning how to read Tigrinya presents itself as a daunting task since there are over 200 characters in the "alphabet", but there is a system that makes memorization of all the characters individually unecessary. Rudimentary ability in reading Tigrinya can be acheived in less than a month of moderate study (approximately 7 hours a week) but consider that you may have to seek out a Tigrinya speaker to demonstrate proper pronunciation. If you do not have access to a Tigrinya speaker, there are cassette tapes available from the publisher of Tigrinya Grammar, Red Sea Press, that may help you with proper pronunciation. There are also computer software that can help you learn proper pronunciation.

If you are looking for a superficial survey of Tigrinya or some practical Tigrinya for travel to Eritrea or the Tigray province of Ethiopia where Tigrinya is spoken, you would be better-suited purchasing Tigrinya Phrasebook by Leonardo Oriolo (Red Sea Press) in which all the Tigrinya words/phrases are transliterated in English for those who can not read Tigrinya. If you want more than a superficial survey of the language, then I would have to say that Tigrinya Grammar is the best resource out there; once you have a basic grasp of reading Tigrinya.

How to Say It : English-Tigrinya-Italian, also by Leonardo Oriolo (Red Sea Press), is an excellent book to supplement Tigrinya Grammar for serious students of Tigrinya. Since I have yet to come across a competent English-Tigrinya/Tigrinya-English dictionary, How to Say It is the closest thing to that with many up to date terms, although by no means as extensive as a typical dictionary in most languages. Although it can serve as a basic dictionary, the bulk of How To Say It is composed of Tigrinya phrases which are a valuable supplement to Tigrinya Grammar's comparatively limited base of Tigrinya phrases. However, as with Tigrinya Grammar, How To Say It also requires the ability to read Tigrinya, which again is feasible within a month of moderate study.

These two books are the dynamic duo of the serious Tigrinya student who wants to learn a unique language for which there are limited learning resources. Good luck in your studies!

Note: All the books mentioned in this review are available from Amazon.com

I wish that I had found this book five years ago, when I first started learning the Tigrigna language. I heartily endorse this book for anyone learning Tigrigna. I've shown this book to people who's primary language is Tigrigna, and they've asked me to order them copies to give to their children. This could be a problem, as 90% of the book is written at the college English level. The author gives many Latin and some German examples. Still, I urge anyone, who is struggling to learn to speak the Tigrigna language, to buy this book.

The book concentrates mostly on crosswing boomerangs and those built along the same lines. These are a lot of fun to make and fly but if you really want to get into the real thing (sport booms, not "hunting") there are better, more informative books available.

Mason tells how to build and throw an assortment of throwing objects besides the boomerangs, built out of wood or cardboard. As well, he suggests forms of competitions and judging. He puts a big emphasis on safety -- boomerangs and throwing sticks were designed to bring down small game, or even enemy warriors, so they require care in use. This would be a great addition to the after-school or summer fun program of your park, club, or school. It's also fine to do by yourself during the hours the playground is empty.

This is the first Perry Mason story written by Erle Stanley Gardner, published in 1933. This is the first and only Perry Mason story I have read. I've heard that the tone of these earlier works are a little 'tougher' than the stories written in the following decades. The first half of the book certainly follows the hard-boiled tradition, as Mason acts a more like a private dick than a lawyer. But a lawyer he is, and the second half settles into a court-room drama. What does Perry Mason have up his sleeve that will rescue a young lady and her new husband from charges of murdering her uncle to ensure her inheritance?

An enjoyable, light read, although Gardner's writing is a little pedestrian and the build-up to the court case is a little long, with the trial itself resolved a little perfunctorily.

Frances was accustomed to doing things her way. However, under the terms of her father's spendthrift trust, she was powerless to marry until age 25 unless she risked being cut out completely. She retained Perry Mason to break the will, despite it's iron-clad terms which gave her uncle absolute power over the fortune in the trust.

The will did leave a loophole - if her uncle died before the terms expired, Frances would get the money absolutely. So it was completely in her favor when Frances's uncle was murdered - until she found herself as the prime suspect.

This was Mason's first recorded trial, though not the first book (The Case of the Velvet Claws was the first, and had no trial scene). He handles it expertly, but it all comes down to a typical Perry Mason trick to confuse a witness. It works, but not as well as some of his later works.

This is a nice little book if one is really interested in a sampling of some of the people in Sicily. However being of Sicilian decent I found it somewhat offensive. The reading is easy enough but I was hoping for something complimentary and not degrading as this book appears to be.

This book stands on its own thanks to its rare beauty, not because of its author's imprisonment.
With its lyrical tone, cristalline yet misty quality, it is a very good book to read, and an ideal introduction to the rich and varied italian literature.

My father told me that most of the old Sam Spade-type of books were of the same ilk as this one. They're certainly not bad, but they leave something to be desired. "Death" seems to be written with great care and attention as the murder happens and the mystery begins, but then it just ends. It seems to me that the author was given a page limit and once he reached it, he simply "solved" the crime. The criminal isn't necessarily someone we've ever met before, it isn't someone integral to the plot, it doesn't make sense - it just is.

Zubro made me feel cheated. I was teased with an engaging read, only to be left unfulfilled by the outcome. When you read a mystery there should at least be enough clues for the reader to make some viable guesses at who the murderer is: that just isn't the case here.

This is my favorite in the Tom and Scott series. For one thing the picture perfect (think Monette not Monet) couple actually QUARREL. Not just once, but intermittently. There are hints of jealousy, problems with communication--they almost seem human.

For another thing, the action never stops, the pace never flags. True, the gun battle with Mexican drug lords is a bit much, but it's entertaining. Imagination is not Zubro's weak point. He shows plenty of invention in the fifth excursion of his very own Hardy Boys.

But familiar problems weigh down this novel. Tom and Scott still do not have strong, distinct personalities (Adam Niklewicz's cover says it all), and their relationship continues to seem shallow and unreal. Although they frequently have sex they rarely exchange meaningful dialogue or simple gestures of tenderness. In his effort to stress the manly-man aspects of Tom and Scott, Zubro robs them of personality. They have no interesting flaws or weaknesses. They have no distinguishing marks or characteristics. But to be fair, in ECHO OF DEATH Tom and Scott are their most real. They cry, they bleed, they argue--and I don't remember them working out once. I could get to like these guys

I'd love to say this is is a great book.But it isn't. Go into a large public library, and if they have a section on canoeing the chances are you'll find a copy of Path of the Paddle by Bill Mason

I can't be the only person who learned to paddle an open Canoe by reading this book. With a library copy stuck in a plastic bag and resting on the hull, I bruised my knees and my ego trying to make 16ft of uncooperative fibre glass do the things in the diagrams. If it hadn't been for the photographs that equated canoeing with stunning wilderness scenery and beautiful campsites in remote places, I would probably have thrown the book away and retreated to my Kayak.

Bill mason did more to popularise the Open canoe than anyone else. His position is unique, since there is no one with a comparative influence on the art of kayaking. When he died, the British canoe union dedicated a chapter of its hand book to him, a film festival and scholarship were set up in his memory in Canada, and even now, when modern writers of books on the sport of open canoe paddling, like Slim Ray, disagree with what he said, they do so with a with a genial reverence that is rarely found in paddling circles.

Since Mason was such an important figure in my private mythology, I approached Bill Ruffan's biography with mixed feelings. To deal with myths is a difficult task, and Mason was many things to many people: the Author of Path of the Paddle, the maker of other films that were successful, a husband , father and friend.

The dust jacket and subtitle seemed to suggest that Raffan had taken the logical course and chosen to use Mason the paddler and his relationship with the tradition he came to embody as the unifying theme.

Instead the book is a rather logical and thorough attempt to cover everything. Ruffan, as Biographer, has used Mason's career as a film maker to hold his narrative together, and the result is a book that reads like an extended portfolio of a film maker's life. While those films were highly praised, and at least six of them are "about" canoeing, there is precious little about Mason the paddler. And outside of Canada, Bill Mason will be remembered most as the man who paddled rivers in an open canoe and indirectly taught thousands to follow him.

At the end of the book I did not know what it was like to go down a river with him. There are almost no stories about Mason as river traveler from someone else's perspective. There is nothing from the students he worked with on camp. There is little from Paul Mason on what it was like to be the very competent son of a paddling legend. I was not expecting to finish the book relatively ignorant of where Mason got his style and terminology from: it's mentioned briefly, but this subject, Bill Mason's position in terms of the tradition he came to represent, which the book's subtitle claims the book is about, is brushed over quickly.

All in all a disappointment. And an education. Watters couldn't find a publisher for his life of Blackadar: Never turn back. Yet "Never turn back" is a far better biography than Fire in the Bones

To canoeists, nature artists and film makers, Bill Mason stands out as an icon "The man in the red canoe". The book reveals what drove the man to live his art and the demons that haunted him. Necessary reading for any canoeist and nature film maker

This is an accessible introduction to George Mason, a Revolutionary Virginian of lesser fame. The book is very short and the print rather large, making this an easy read. Robert Rutland dwells mostly on Mason's public life, only hinting at his private life. Like Jefferson, Mason was a slaveholder who abhorred slavery (he wished the Constitutional Convention had abolished it), but Rutland leaves this paradox unexplored. For those of a scholarly bent, the book lacks footnotes. Mason was the moving force behind Virginia's Declaration of Rights, and, for that reason alone, is quite significant. Any person wishing to learn more about him will find this book a good place to start.

In an era when Americans seem to be quickly losing touch with their own history, one of the greatest crimes of all is that the name of George Mason has faded into almost complete obscurity (if there weren't a university named after him in Virginia, how much worse would it be?).

In his foreword to this brief book, Dumas Malone, the biographer of Jefferson, notes what a shame this is: 'More than any other single American, except possibly Thomas Jefferson, whom in some sense he anticipated, George Mason may be regarded as the herald of this new era [of declarations of rights]; and in our own age, when the rights of individual human beings are being challenged by totalitarianism around the world, men can still find inspiration in his noble words.'

Biographies of Mason, the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (which inspired, among other things, the US Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen) are woefully few. Rutland's short book is a fine and easily digestible introduction to the man, his times, and his impact upon history. The value of that is hard to overstate.

There's a bombing downtown and Tom is one of the victims. His lover Scott is frantic and begins his own investigation into the catastrophe. Was it random, or aimed at the clinic where Tom was volunteering, or was it aimed at Tom himself? After Tom wakes from a coma, the duo find even more clues pointing in many directions. And when a drag queen friend of Tom's is killed, they know they're targets themselves. The plot is action-packed and hardly gives the reader time to breathe, and yet I never felt involved in the story. Of course, this is the first Zubro I've read, so that's part of it, but each book in a series ought to bring the reader into the series and entice. The solving of the bombings and murder was well crafted and believable, and Zubro certainly is a great writer. This just may not be his best overall, so.

I liked the idea that Zubro shifted the focus of this novel from Tom, ex-marine superman, to Scott, the "sidekick". Unfortunately the plot in which Zubro involves Scott on his first outing (no pun intended) is rather weak when compared to previous novels ("Why Isn't Becky Twitchell Dead?" is one of my favorites). A good read for fans of the series, but it needed more meat. I am not sure if the subject (the bombing) was thought to be too sensitive for a real murder mystery; if that was the advice given to Zubro, he shouldn't have heeded it, because it provides a sub-par novel.

They have been a happily married, faithful couple for years. Scott Carpenter is a well-known professional baseball pitcher while his spouse Tom Mason is an English teacher. They hid their sexual preference and their relationship out of fear for their careers, especially the athletic Scott. However, unable to hide any longer, they reveal their relationship to the world and to their sock and joy, most everyone supports them.

Tom and Scott begin to openly support gay rights, but soon become symbols and targets of the opponents. Things begin to turn ugly forcing Scott to hire bodyguards. Scott assumed that he, being the more public figure, would be the target if tragedy struck. Instead, while Tom is at the Human Services Clinic, a series of bombs go off destroying a whole block, killing many people. Tom is lucky to survive, but is badly injured. Scott wonders if Tom ultimately was the target. He begins his own investigation that will lead to a dangerous person with a deadly goal who will do anything to attain it.

ONE DEAD DRAG QUEEN is as much a relationship drama as it is an amateur sleuth mystery. The tale stars two heroic, realistic males trying to make the world a better place. Mark Richard Zubro has written a mystery inside the mystery. The technique can slow down a story line, but works extremely well in this plot because the author never loses sight of the main theme and ties the subplot back to it. By providing color and insight, the secondary characters are vital to the beat of the tale and lead to a special treat for readers.

Harriet Klausner

I'm sorry to say that this book was a major disappointment. Volume 1 of this series, while somewhat fantastical, was ultimately engaging and left me hanging for this volume. Unfortunately, the character's actions seemed without motivation and destroyed the skillful set-up of the first book. By the end, you are left simply not caring any longer.

I waited a long time for this book to finally hit the shelves. The first book in the series left you staving for more. I can not stress the grandeur of that book. I truly thought that this was the beginning of a stellar series. As soon as I began reading the book I noticed something different in the writing style of the writer. It was much less elegant than the first book. I felt as if it were rushed somehow, as if the writer was grasping in the air for ideas. I am truly baffled at the noticeable differences of both books. The thing that bothered me most was that there was no build to the climax. I feel Mason misused one of her key characters by having her die in childbirth after creating her great sense of purpose. The plot should have been one of intrigue keeping you on your toes and having you turn the page as fast as your fingers could manage. When all is "revealed" is simply fizzles. I am saddened at giving Mason a less than perfect review, but I can only compare her to her previous work and this book falls short of what I have seen her to write.

This book moves! And the writing is poetic as ever. Amazing revelations, great characterization, and I get the feeling there is more to come. Also, I don't believe Tahliq is really dead, though the fact that she seems to be broke my heart. A terrific read.