My husband and I enjoyed this book very much. It was very informative and very enlightening. I have recommended it to all of our friends who are interested in Chicago history.

Thank you.

1. A Gift of The Heart-her father's death left Lavinia Russell penniless and alone just before Christmas...unless the rakish Marquis of Davenport would come to her aid and accept her offer to be his mistress.

2. The House Party-A Christmas house party had seemed just the thing, until murder entered the scene. Now Arabella Stapleton was worried about losing her heart and her life.

3. Sounds of Christmas-Susan Elstow was determined to bring some Christmas spirit to the unhappy inhabitants of Stagsden Hall. But would her mission of cheer be enough for the man she loved?

4. Under the Kissing Bough-Snowbound with the Earl of Westover on Christmas Eve, Rebecca Ware wondered whether the devilishly handsome rake who had saved her life might instead steal her heart...

5. Christmas at the Priory-A war injury, a house full of relatives and a bachelorhood existence had not put Tony Maitland in the best of holiday spirts. But would the lively Miss Ingram soon put things to rights?

6. Winter Enchantment-Lonely and disillusioned with life, Robert Gregory dreaded the holiday season. But a baby left on his doorstep and a mysterious young beauty promised an unusually intriguing Christmas.

This collection of three Tom Sawyer stories keeps the reader laughing and entertained and eager to see what mischief Tom is going to get into next. Mark Twain is a wonderful writer and his stories reach out to the young and old alike. If you're looking for a few hours of escape from the real world, I suggest you find it in the pages of this book.

This book is one of the best I have ever read. It is very well organized. It is very useful for the preparation of lectures (I teach Information technology at a University). It is also quite colorful and that encourages one to read as well. Sarah et al do not shun details. They go in depth into the important concepts. For example, in Chapter 4, they talk about the types of memory, they give a diagram, they even give a brief History of RAM and list(and explain) the Functions of RAM. They even show where in the Computer it is found!! Keep up the excellent work, Sarah and Stacey(Authors)

This book illustrates why City Lights Books is the most important tourist stop in San Francisco - they are the publishers of this excellent book. The Andalusian poet is a contemporary of Lorca, Dali etc. In his brief autobiographic note, he states that these poems were written at night in a frenzy. I believe him. At least three-quarters of the poems have a sense of being inspired rather than crafted i.e. as if they came as whole to the poet, i.e. as if they came directly from within as an expression of state-of-being rather than being created consciously by the artistic intellect.

Within the poems there is a significant variety in structure and tone although most share a sense of disorientation. There are very inventive images which absolutely fit in the poem although standing alone, that seems impossible. Throughout the poems there was only one image that jarred, one (to my mind) misplaced "piano". Some examples: "Ah yes. A suit of clothes went by / uninhabited, hollow" or "The earth was an enemy, / because it fled. / The sky an enemy, / because it never stopped."

This volume is bilingual - something I appreciate (or demand) in translations of poetry. It is a volume that bears reading and rereading in either or both languages.

More broadly, this is a tale of two countries: France and America, and how artists are perceived in each.

American expatriates living in France, especially Paris, between the great wars, are well known - Hemingway, Pound, Wolfe, Stein, Miller, Fitzgerald, Cummings, Elliot - just to name a few. What is not as well known or realized is that the exodus continued well into the '60s with Black writers Wright, Baldwin, and Himes, with the Beats, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Corso, Burroughs, with mainstream writers, James Jones, Irwin Shaw, Terry Southern, and William Styron, and with academics such as W.H. Auden, Ashbery, Mathews, Brion Gysin, and many many others. What brought them all to France, especially Paris?

Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno's account of American expatriates in France reads like a novel. He enters the minds and hearts of the various authors - their inner thoughts and motivations - in a seemingly effortless narrative, drawing on a vast scholarship. He has read all of their works and letters as well as news and magazine articles of the times. Gertrude Stein was thought to be peculiarly anti-semitic as she sided with the Vichy government, the irascible Hemingway had a vendetta against James Jones (author of *From Here to Eternity*) and Richard Wright noted that "I've learned more about America in one month in Paris than I could in one year in New York." In addition to chronicling little-known facts and anecdotes about the first wave, the author continues the saga with later writers.

He covers all kinds of writing. A most interesting chapter deals with an obscure (in America) experimental French author, Roussel, and the American writers influenced by him - Ashbery, Mathews, Burroughs, Koch. They reinvented what the Dadaists had begun 40 years earlier, a turning of images in cinematic variation, a "systematic derangement of the senses."

Paris is "artistically electric" they agree. Racial prejudice isn't a factor in France (except for the French treatment of the Algerians) but only Baldwin seems to have been upset by this. Where but in France could Ferlinghetti wander into a cafe and find a paper tablecloth with a poem written on it, (signed by Jacques Prevert). "For Ferlinghetti, this was the France of which the legends had been made. On leaving the cafe, he took the tablecloth with him. The incident was prophetic. Fourteen years later, City Lights [in San Francisco] would issue Ferlinghetti's translation of Prevert's 'Paroles'".

Where but in France would landlords lower the rent when they discovered that their tenants were writers or artists? "In short," says this author, "Paris empowered, granted permission to be an artist in a way the United States never had. In the accounts of almost all of the writers profiled in this book, Paris was equated with artistic freedom, with the ability to experiment, to succeed, even to fail, without feeling oneself to be a social deviant [while] In America, they felt, one was more often measured by how financially successful one was, not by what one actually did. Status accrued to those who made money, and the writer, generally not so able to generate an enviable income, was rarely accorded a position of importance in the eyes of the general public."

Said Ginsberg, "You can't escape the past in Paris, and yet what's so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn't seem a burden." Indeed, Paris allowed "la grande permission" for writers "to work out their own aesthetic directions without being unduly swayed by convention, anti-convention or fashion."

This is not, in my opinion, one of those books that you can't put down. There is so much material here to digest and ponder. But if you're interested in the subject, even though it may take you weeks or even months, you will keep picking it up. The only question I have on finishing it is - the continual pilgrimage -is it still continuing? And if not, why not?

pamhan99@aol.com

This is a very enjoyable book. The pictures of all the gardens are lovely and very inspiring. I found many useful ideas to use around my own home in "outdoor" decorating. The text is informative, giving specific information relating to the pictured plants as well as items used in and around the garden. I was very pleased with my purchase of this book.

This is a superb little book for all those people who love to sail and to cruise. Lots of gentle wit and wisdom. We bought several copies and gave them to friends we have cruised with. Everyone who has a copy treasures it.

This book is not only about poetry, it is about the poetic soul which all share in our love for beauty and meaning. It's title, Dancing to the Heartbeat of Redemption, uses the dance metaphor appropriately because the prose does a dance in wonderful lyrical lines glowing with color, texture, and rhythm. Sawyer is a skilled writer, communicator and something of a practical theologian who has caught the spirit of the gospel.

This is a MUST HAVE book for all nursing student and health care professionals. The book is easy to read and provides all the essential details needed to properly care for patients. I utilize this book in all my classes. This is one of the best reference books that I have invested in.