Maryland Books

Now in a fully updated fifth edition, Allison Blake's The Chesapeake Bay Book is a comprehensive and thoroughly user friendly: guide to all the great getaway adventures to be found in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland. Maps, indexes to the best places for lodging and dining, recreation opportunities by locale, and much more, enhance this superbly presented travel guide which is ideal for anyone planning a local day trip or an extended vacation in the Chesapeake Bay environs.

Now in a fully updated fifth edition, Allison Blake's The Chesapeake Bay Book is a comprehensive and thoroughly "user friendly: guide to all the great getaway adventures to be found in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland. Maps, indexes to the best places for lodging and dining, recreation opportunities by locale, and much more, enhance this superbly presented travel guide which is ideal for anyone planning a local day trip or an extended vacation in the Chesapeake Bay environs.

This book, now very-dog-eared, is indespenible for our weekend and holiday sojourns to the Bay area. It is well thought out and organized in a manner that allows us to plan our getaway, and all the details - from finding the best crabcakes and quaint inns to the selection of our tranpsort of choice - the sailboat charter or kayak - with a minimum of fuss. The author is thorough in researching the details and finding the Bay's may hidden treasures, so all that we have to do is enjoy this gem!

a college friend invited me to spend a few weeks with her in annapolis, but, when she got a job she couldn't refuse just before i arrived, i had to fend for myself entertainment-wise. thank heavens i wandered into a local bookstore and picked up this book. i didn't know a thing about the area. nor did my friend really. (i'm from texas, and she just moved there from connecticut.) but, with the help of this guidebook and a rental car, i wandered happily throughout the back roads of the chesapeake region. i found great little towns to stop in with its help, deliciously fattening restaurants to eat in and cool things to see. if you're a newbie there, i highly recommend that you pick it up!

You know the author has actually been to a place when she offers details like that. And Blake does, on page after page - and topic after topic. The book's history sections are comprehensive, then - voila! - great info on recreation and right-on reviews of restaurants. It seems obvious that not only does she live in the region, but plays in it, studies it, embraces it. As a complete novice to the area, I used the book when exploring my Chesapeake roots, and found it was about all I needed.

I thought this book as with his last book started off slow and VERY detailed. Toward the middle of the book it picked up and started to become a good read as with his other book Sympathy for the devil. I thought the book could have been cut down by some chapters and less some of the details. One of the Chapters I had to go back and re-read to make sure I didn't miss something. Overall I will read another Angela Bivens novel by this author because I like mysteries.

I loved this novel. I liked the way the author went 180 degrees from the crime-suspense-sleuthing theme in Sympathy for the Devil, to this thriller. Formulas get tired, and I'm glad Chambers is switching up on us--with the same characters! Great for summer read by the pool.

I got about two chapters into this book before quitting in disgust. The writing is obvious and is a mix of cliches and 'product placements.' Too much detail for no purpose. Everyone is the best of everything or the worst. The characters are caricatures. This is blaxploitation writing.

After reading the first Angela Bivens book I had high hopes for this one. For the most part the book works but there is just too much in it. The story goes off in so many directions it's like looking at a pot of spaghetti thrown against the wall. The heroine is essentially Cleopatra Jones with serious emotional issues and some of the stuff she does makes not a lick of sense but if you give this book time you'll find a pretty good read for a rainy afternoon.

In A Prayer for Deliverance, Christopher Chambers resumes where the debut novel, Sympathy For the Devil, ended. FBI agent, Angela Bivens, is back in action as an inspector called in to investigate the murders of prominent African American leaders. While her superiors think the murders are the work of a well-known hate group, we find Angela dallying in the supernatural to solve the murders and bring the true assassins to justice. Specifically, she is pulled into a dark underworld of Zulu "magick" to substantiate her theories and enlists the help of a rookie sidekick (and Wicca witch) to assist in the investigation. As in the first novel, she is both supported and hindered by the FBI staff and must deal with the political powers of the agency and the bureaucracy of the Washington elite. To complicate things further, she stumbles through a newfound romance while struggling to overcome the emotional scars from her last boyfriend, a psychotic sociopath who was the evil perpetrator of her last case.

As one can imagine, this book is multi-dimensional and filled with numerous plot twists and turns. There are so many characters with ulterior motives that this reviewer literally had to keep notes on who was who, their relationships to one another, and their relationships within the FBI hierarchy.

This novel is extremely well written and very well researched as evidenced in the passages about South African culture and politics. However, this reviewer felt that at times the plot tangents obscured the essence of the mystery. In an attempt to make this a well-rounded novel, the author repeatedly lost this reviewer in the minutia and the surreal, dreamlike episodes that were scattered throughout the book. Angela Bivens, earmarked as an FBI super sleuth, seemed bewildered and clueless at times which elongated the story and damaged her characterization as an ingenious, diehard super agent. There were some segments in which she appeared to be as much of a victim as the targets. Perhaps this was intentional, to show her vulnerabilities, however it came off as Angela being the luckiest detective alive instead of one of the sharpest. Nonetheless, this reviewer persevered to see how the novel would conclude and was not disappointed. Overall, this was a compelling mystery and proved to be entertaining.

Phyllis
APOOO BookClub, Nubian Circle Book Club

STINGER is a solid, satisfying read. It kept me pleasantly diverted during a long morning waiting for my car to be fixed.

Like many good thrillers, the plot and the characters are somewhat familiar but with a few unique elements of their own. The two key characters are Cavanaugh, an FBI agent who is a bit of a rogue and a closet idealist, and Melanie, a black female doctor. STINGER follows their search for the source of an epidemic of strokes among black people. They make an unlikely but ultimately effective pair of buddies.

STINGER is not great literature, nor even the best thriller I have ever read, but it is very good. If you want solid thrills and a plot that keeps you wondering until the very end, this is a good pick.

Maryland, USA. Are we dealing with an attempt to wipe out the black population by a biological weapon? Dr. Melanie Anderson of CDC thinks so. Malaria reading, named after Malcolm Peter Reading, a black Senator from Pennsylvania and a presidential hopeful, who died after suffering a stroke in the middle of his speech, continues to spread rapidly. What made Dr. Anderson so sure about the genocide attempt is that the disease seems to attack only t hose with sickle-cell trait, a predominantly black population.

Let me start by saying that I'm not a fan of medical thrillers; to me, they tend to fall into two categories--overly technical labyrinths that have Tom Clancy Excruciating Detail Syndrome, or they get carried away into panicky melodrama.

"Stinger," however, is a great read. It's well-plotted, with authentic characterizations, and a basic premise that is both plausible and engaging.

Ms. Kress is to be commended for maintaining a balance among three very different worlds: government bureaucracy, police procedure, and epidemiology. Her descriptions of each of these worlds has enough detail to lend authenticity, but she still manages to keep the story moving briskly along.

The story unfolds in a way that both entices and rewards; we quickly come to care about the lead characters, and can identify with their internal conflicts that arise from a situation that is at first alarming, then horrifying, then paranoia-inducing.

The resolution of the story is clever and satisfying; at no point did I find myself gagging on contrivances or oversimplifications. In fact, I found myself admiring her ability to resolve a tricky setup.

Most importantly, this book makes me want to read more works by Nancy Kress.

Nancy Kress has taken a bold step. She's an award-winning science fiction writer who is universally recognized as one of the best in the genre. With `Oaths and Miracles' and now with `Stinger,' she has proven that she can stand toe-to-toe with the best of the thriller/suspense writers as well.

`Stinger' begins with Senator Malcolm Peter Reading, a presidential hopeful, collapsing during a speech. Reading, an African-American, dies in a matter of minutes. It is discovered that he had contracted malaria. Others quickly begin dying of malaria. Nearly all of them are African-American. Then the epidemic begins.

FBI agent Robert Cavanaugh and Dr. Melanie Anderson of the Centers for Disease Control quickly discover that the deaths are not accidents. Someone...or some country...has reintroduced malaria into America. The cards appear to be stacked against them: they have few clues and little time. To complicate matters, both Cavanaugh and Anderson are faced with personal and professional crises just as an answer is beginning to develop.

I have always appreciated two things about the writing of Nancy Kress: fascinating characters and scientific ideas a clod like me can understand. Cavanaugh acts exactly the way we think an FBI agent should - logical, methodical thinking, going through the proper steps at the proper time, etc, but Kress shows us that while the agent has everything together on the job, that doesn't necessarily mean every aspect of his life is in order. Melanie Anderson is an African-American woman who is mad as hell at what is happening. She's not perfect, yet we identify with her, hurt for her, and cheer for her. Two great characters.

`Stinger' is a great thrill-ride all the way to the very last page, but it is also chilling in another aspect. Although this book was published in 1998, it has some frightening parallels to the events surrounding Sept. 11. A real page-turner...and a real eye opener.

303 fast-moving pages

Ms. Kress turns out a competent work of mystery here. The story is good, and we don't find out "whodunit" until the very end. My only complaint is that the characters were a bit cliche. Dr. Melanie Anderson was just about the angriest character I have ever seen. In my own humble opinion, I don't see how she could possibly have risen to a position of responsibility within the CDC with some of the know-nothing convictions she holds. Agent Cavanaugh is the quintessential "man afraid of commitment"

Read this book and be entertained for a few hours.

I am a hugh fan of Mariah Stewart and she continues to amaze with her twisted plots and real life characters.

Twisted story of suspense. A serial killer is killing women in an exceptionally gruesome way. He tortures and plays with them first. He then leaves them wrapped in plastic for the law to find. The FBI is brought in and the killer steps it up by taunting the cops by leaving bodies close to their homes and lives. I knew by about the end of the second chapter who the bad guy was. It was frustrating to see the characters play so dumb to the clues I obviously figured out. Good book but very dark with lots of death. Not for those with a weak stomach. One of the better books I've read this month.

This is the first book I've read by this author. I wouldn't have known the author was a romance writer unless I read her bio. The book is more of a whodunit, and it's pretty easy to figure out. When I was first exposed to the character who did it, I though "surely it's not this obvious", but in the end it was. This book is a good quick read, but doesn't provide much else.

Mariah Stewart is one of the best writers out there, and I love the ideas of her trilogies, which tie together but also work as stand-alones, so you don't feel as if you've missed something by not reading the previous books.

This one wasn't as good as the first in this trilogy, mainly because I thought the culprit's identity was obvious right from the beginning. But regardless, the book is still a page-turner that you won't be able to put down until it's finished.

Mariah Stewart gives us the second of the tales of the Shields family. Mia is the sister of Brenden who murdered Dylan in one of her previous novels. She has been unable to conquor the feeling that she should have known what was going on and stopped the murders. Her family has been FBI for many yrs and her father and his brother have several children in the FBI.

Mia Shields is the only daughter in a family of five, her other four brothers are FBI also. Now she is living in Conner's house in the country. Conner is her cousin and the brother of Dylan who was murdered by her own brother. Her inability to deal with the stresses caused by the murder have pushed her to the brink of burn-out. Now she is coming off two horrible cases, and she thinks nothing could be as bad as those, however, the murderer killing young women in St. Dennis, Maryland comes very close.

Gabrial Beck, the chief of police, of St. Dennis, has asked the bureau for help and Mia is not quite what he expected. Beck's father was the previous chief and helps part-time now. The first murder is not in his town but the next girl he finds himself, the killer has placed her body encased in plastic in the back seat of his car.

Both he and Mia realize this is no beginner and that there has to be a trail of bodies somewhere. As the bodies mount the evidence of a local killer emerges.

Although there is a romance in the book it does not take away from the horror of the way the victims are killed. I very much enjoyed this book and so far each of her novels has been a keeper.

After spending 35 years in the Midwest and never relocated, I needed this book to help get me up to speed on a new city. I can't tell you how much this book helped me on my move, including rental truck services, apartment searches, car registration, neighborhood specs including population size, crime and safety. I've been here in Washington, DC for 4 months now, and I still use the book as a reference guide for learning and discovering new areas. Another great supplement to this book is the NFT Washington black book. These two together saved me lots of time, money and stress!

I recently moved to the Washington DC area so wanted to have a little bit of knowledge before diving right in. This book provides some great basic information about sights, sounds, and things to do. It won't bore you with a lot of details.

I recommend this book if you're wanting to breeze over some info and hit the ground running.

For all you hear about the benefit of living near a metro, I expected the metro locations to be shown on street maps. They weren't, and the other maps were of little use as well. For guidance on finding a safe area, they suggest asking local police.

If you don't care about either of those, most of the other info was okay.

I moved to the DC area two years ago and found this book immensely helpful. It not only had information about fun things to do in the area but it also had answers to the most practical situations. I read one of the other reviews that said that it didn't tell him where to have his car inspected. It doesn't go into the minute detail but it will tell you what the requirements are and how to find out where you need to go. I now work in an HR office and we are giving this to new hires that we relocate to this area. All of them have really appreciated it and remarked on how helpful it has been. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone relocating here.

THE NEWCOMER'S HANDBOOK FOR MOVING TO AND LIVING IN WASHINGTON DC is a great book for people relocating to the area, but even people who are not moving there can enjoy it. It talks about where the best neighborhoods and schools are in the District itself, as well as in Maryland and Virginia, mentions where the shopping malls and other stores are, and it even goes into detail about the town of Columbia, Maryland, which other books about the Baltimore-Washington DC area fail to do. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is proud to say "I'm an American."

First of all: the author is a fine writer and has located and quotes scores of sources. This book, and its companion volume two, are the best modern studies of a Revolutionary War campaign. No doubt about it. BUT, both volumes suffer from a lack of good, overall campaign maps. There are numerous modern renditions of contemporary maps, all of them valuable, but no maps of general nature to enhance the text's details. For example, the book begins with a chapter on the New Jersey skirmishes of June-July 1777, but there is no map anywhere of New Jersey. Worse yet, there is a contemporary British map of part of the Brandywine battlefield, but it cannot be used to trace the British march to contact, the two crossings of streams on the American right flank, and the subsequent American withdrawal. The second volume does include a good map of the Battle of Germantown by John Andre, but this really deals with British troop positions, not Washington's attack. I am so frustrated with the lack of useful maps (that would seem to be simply made and were simply overlooked)that I have given the set three stars, when the author's research and writing deserve five.

Thus far I have only read volume 1 of the set. The most impressive aspect is the author's use of a vast number of primary sources - really fine work amassing all of them. They are usually used effectively too, except that in the narrative of the battle of Brandywine the quotes are often used in ways that don't really support the story being told. The real problem with this book is the virtual absence of any useful maps. That's a major issue really; you get this detailed and lengthy look at the aforementioned battle, for example, but only one really inadequate map to assist you. It is the same with campaign maps; they just are not there. I think there are maybe four maps in the entire book, something like that. No matter how good the text, good military history books must have decent and numerous maps. Where are they? Not here. This may have been the decision by the editors, I don't know. But it detracts badly from an otherwise excellent piece of scholarship. If it sees a second printing I hope this will be corrected.

If you have only limited space for Revolutionary War Campaigns this shOULD be in your library along with volume one on the PHILADELPHIA Campaign. its one of the best That is available and is marked by solid research and good writing. Many new manuscript sources were used. The author knows his subject matter intimately.

My wife bought me both volume one and two as a graduation present. This book was a real gem. (I will review volume two when I finish it) It has its quirks and caveats but I really enjoyed it.

The book is a compilation of primary sources so like Rebels and Redcoats it is the participants who speak rather then just the historians.

This of course can confuse the heck out of someone who lacks a general knowledge of the events. The reader must understand that each participant has a tunnel vision of their experience. This comes across quite clearly when you are reading battle accounts in this book. You will read sometimes five or six accounts of a small engagement and be baffled at the different points of view, so baffled that you may wonder if it is even the same engagement.

The historian steps in and guides you along though. The book also uses some maps drawn up by participants and this is most interesting, because the maps reflect what was known at the time.

The other bit of oddity is that the author has not changed the language, spelling, or punctuation in the snippets. Reading 18th century spelling, language, and punctuation may totally turn many readers off. I found it sometimes humorous and occasionally found it creeping into my own writing.

The book contains a glossary of 18th century military terminology in the back. Many readers will find this helpful as meanings of some words have changed since the 18th century. It also provided some interesting factoids that I was unaware of.

The book did suffer in the introduction. Though it did a very good job of covering the "Forage War" in New Jersey in the winter and spring of 1777, it provided no background to the choices and strategies taken in this "Year of the Hangman". It therefore is a great help if you already know why the choices were made and what the overall plan and intent of the various forces, especially the British, was. I must admit that I have been to virtually all of the sites associated with the Philadelphia Campaign of 1777 so I have an interest and an advantage of being able to visualize the terrain.

There are two things though which this book brings out very well. The first is all of the small engagements which occurred in the larger campaigns. Many of these fights had 100 or 200 participants and have been mostly forgotten. Here they are told, and we are better for this.

The second aspect regards the British forces. General Howe and General Cornwallis actually seem better at their jobs then history tends to give them credit for. Their use of light infantry tactics and forces went along way to making this war almost winnable for the crown forces. Had they not used light infantry tactics, even with their guards and grenadiers or large amounts of light forces, British losses may have been much higher and the war over much sooner. The notion that the British always fought European style in straight up posture, compact formations etc simply does not hold up. They fought almost as much with a bulk of their forces in the same way as the Americans did.

The British proved adaptable and capable to a larger degree then they often get credit for. An incident from The Brandywine Battle; Americans had reported seeing really large British losses when in fact the losses though heavy were not as heavy as the Americans thought. A key answer is that the British forces in the van were using light infantry tactics. They were advancing in rushes, and by crawling. To the American observer then ... he sees a large British force advancing, guns fire and the British all fall down, he assumes of course that they were felled by musketry etc. He then sees some get up an rush forward, but only a small group here and there. Understanding this makes reading period documents even more intersting.

This book is the second in a two part history of the Philadelphia Campaign of 1777. Like the first book the author allows the participants to do most of the speaking in their own voices. He also has chosen to use copies of their maps rather then updated accurate historian produced maps. This helps the reader to view the situations as the authors experienced them. Unfortunately if you are not versed in the events this coupled with the multiple approaches and views of a single event can cause the reader to get confused. This may put some readers off, but it must be remembered that combat like many other stressful situations has a way of creating a narrow tunnel vision in the participants. This book allows the reader to share that point of view which is usually sanitized by historians trying to create a single authoritative narrative.

This book is an excellent addition to a very pivotal year in the American Revolution. I was surprised at how very close the Americans actually came to defeating the bulk of the British forces in America in 1777. Most of us are quite familiar with the result of the Battles at Saratoga, NY, but how many are familiar with the siege of Ft. Mifflin? I had heard of this battle and overviewed the site but what I did not fully understand was how important it was for the British to eliminate this American strongpoint. This strongpoint was essentially preventing re-supply of the entire British Army which was occupying Philadelphia and which was starving. They had won at Brandywine and won again at Germantown but they were essentially cut off in Philadelphia with Washington constricting the bag around them. If Ft. Mifflin had held out it is probable that Howe would have had to conduct a fighting retreat with a starving army back to his fleet.

I was also struck by the descriptions of the Battle of Germantown and how some things in the military never change through time and culture. Yet the reader is also given glimpses into how very different war and armies were back then, especially because of the social constructs of the time. Soldiering though is an eternal sameness going back to the ancients and forward to the present. These soldiers on both sides were very hard men and their stamina in the field and in marching would humble any modern army today. That they endured the lack of logistics and still managed to march and fight as they did with the pluck and spirit they had continues to be the untold story of the American Revolution. It is no wonder that Civil War soldiers held the Continentals up as the standard they were trying to match.

I was also continually struck by how they did fight these battles. Not so much on the operational or strategic level but at the tactical level. There was not as much standing shoulder to shoulder in straight lines and shooting it out as is too often portrayed. The dominance of a light infantry ethos especially among British troops will surprise many readers. They other great factor is the predominance of the bayonet as a weapon of decision. This was not the same British Army which would march against Napoleon though it is often portrayed as such.

The bibliography is excellent and will serve to foist many other titles onto my reading stack, in particular I have become interested in the writings of the Hessian Light Infantryman Johann Ewald. His observations seem quite adept given what he was experiencing.

I live in Rockville and have always been both fascinated and confused by the location of the Fitzgeralds' graves. It's so utterly bizarre and incongruous, something that I shouldn't be stumbling upon on my way to pick up the laundry. What an interesting plot thread.

The Talking Heads' song ONCE IN A LIFETIME comes to mind while reading ROCKVILLE PIKE. Janie is not quite sure how she came to be living in a huge house, working at her husband's family store, and trying to connect with her increasingly distant husband. In addition to the humor and pathos in this tale, there's an odd sense of menace. Who is Delia underneath her makeup and flirty clothes? What is Tracy, the lawyer/scrapbooking consultant, really up to? Where did those old bones found under the store come from? Characters and conflicts come and go, many not really explored or resolved, which is a bit frustrating; there are actually about three potential novels that could come out of ROCKVILLE PIKE. Overall,however, Janie is quite likeable and you want to keep reading in the hope that everything will turn out for her.

This is a very nice book -- Except, WAIT -- I think it is about MY LIFE! Ha.

I guess I could really relate to the dismal, suburban setting and the odd suburban characters. I loved the Goth son and his rich friend. The husband was, well, in many ways, pretty typical! Janie manages to rally, but you can see why it wasn't easy for her.

If you are wondering how you ended up in suburbia you'll be able to relate to Janie too.

Rockville Pike is told from the perspective of a middle age suburban wife and mother who finds herself living a less than satisfactory life. She works at her husband's family's furniture store in Rockville, Maryland and is the mother of a teenage son recently turned Goth and vegan. This book chronicles her realization that her marriage is floundering, the furniture store is hemmoraging money, and none of this is even similar to the life she once planned to lead. This novel follows her comical and introspective search for answers and the decisions she is faced with regarding how to improve her lot in life.

Susan Coll does an excellent job of capturing the feelings of the disgruntled suburban soccer mom caught in a life that doesn't seem her own. The characters are very well developed and easy to relate to. It is not at all difficult to believe Jane Kramer, the narrator, and how she feels about her husband, job, and child. The downside is that this book drags at times and is occasionally boring. This disappointment is tempered with other sections of the book that are extremely entertaining and funny. Another reason this book is fun for some readers is the references to Rockville, MD and other localities related to this DC suburb.

Overall, this book is mediocre, but portions of the book save it and result in a novel worth reading.

Angst-ridden and unhappily married Jane Kramer helps her husband Leon run his family's discount furniture store on Rockville Pike in Rockville, Maryland. Coping is difficult for Jane as she tries at the same time to keep an eye on Delia (a store employee to whom she suspects her husband is attracted), supervise her 16-year-old Goth son who was just suspended from school, and assist fellow soccer-mom Tiffany in running a scrapbooking business.

At the same time, a mystery ensues. Money is disappearing from the store's funds. Who could possibly be taking it? It's not as simple as it sounds.

How Jane deals with all of these problems makes for one hilarious read. The author's hard-hitting, sarcastic humor is timed just right to provide a truly laugh-out loud reading experience.

I absolutely loved the Rockville setting since this city is my hometown. The author did a fantastic job of bringing some true-to-life local color into this story. She used not only the quirky character of the city but also references to F. Scott Fitzgerald who is buried here in Rockville.

Rockville Pike is a fun story with very interesting characters, many of whom you'll be sure not to forget. This is an excellent novel for everyone. No, you do not need to live near Rockville Pike to really enjoy it. I highly recommend it for everyone who likes to laugh.

I thought this book was very interesting I first saw this story on A haunting on the discovery channel.
Nancy tells us about living in this house for ten years. and how her and her family got through it until they could move spooky stuff!
a good read if you like ghost stories.

This bizarre and well-documented book covers the scary phenomena which plagued a Maryland family for ten years. The Stallings moved into the impressive old home on Evergreen Avenue thinking it would be the perfect place to raise their large family. Before long annoying knockings in the walls and unexplainable electrical disturbances escalate to sightings of apparitions, ghostly voices, and much more. The Stallings try without success to oust the demons with help from the religious community and famed ghost hunter Dr. Hans Holzer. They finally succeed in selling the house, apparently with the help of the entities, and you don't want to miss the new family's comments. There are some intriguing photos including two of eerie ghostly hands flipping light switches and reaching for an investigator's clipboard. A few of the incidents seem incredible, but overall this book's pretty good.

I was totally disappointed in this book. I'm a hometown fan. I love most everything about Baltimore. And this book makes us look stupid. Not the content. It's a ghost story. And some of the images are really funny - my favorite was the wiccans cleansing the house. But the presentation of the material is so poor that it makes it hard to attach any seriousness to the tale. Noble House has spellcheck and grammar check on it's computers, don't they? English is not a second language to Nancy Stallings, is it? The family priest set up an "alter" rather than an "altar". Nancy "shuttered" rather than "shuddered". The evil ghost viewed the family as "pray" rather than "prey". And the medium helping these poor folks out admitted to having visited the "Marilyn" Institute once rather than the "Maryland" Institute. The new ghostbusters have presented talks to "Mensia" groups rather than "Mensa" groups. "So mote it be" became "so move it be" as the parapsychologist tried to remove the ghost. I especially liked the term "ancient witchcraft" being applied to Wicca. Wicca was created in the 1950's by it's founder Gerald Gardner. I was also created in the 1950's and am hardly "ancient". I'd have had no trouble with this presented as fiction, but if you want to call it fact, go to the trouble of checking facts and proofreading.

A friend recommended this book to me. I love books about "true" hauntings, but I was really disappointed with this one. The narrative is truly confusing, with much skipping around,seques that have nothing to do with the story, and misuse of words, which at times, make reading quite hilarious. (I'm not obsesssive enough to list them here).

This would be a great book if someone who could write would do so. As it stands, it is strictly an amateur effort.

This book was ok, but the author skipped around so much that you did not know if it was the present or the future that she was referring to. I would check it out at the library instead of spending the money on it.

this book has alot of potential but some of the stuff i know of personally and the book fabricated a story around it. like the west street walker.
and it didnt give exact locations to some of these sights. i want to know where the space ship houses are. and it just says delmarva which is the entire eastern shore.
but if you can get this book for under $10 its worth it

This book, at least it's title, gave great hope for an interesting exploration of the lesser known places in Maryland. Sadly, it was just hockus pockus-- what a pity!

Ordered along with Weird NJ Vol 2 (NJ is state of birth). Love it! Very comprehensive. Arrived on time and in flawless condition. Thanks, Jim

This is a great book. Everyyone in the family is fighting to read it at once.

As a lifelong resident of the Washington, DC area, I thought I knew how weird the state of Maryland was, but this volume has been a real eye opener! Maryland, my friends, turns out to be one of the weirder places in the known universe. Case in point: Our very own Count Gore De Vol launched his award winning horror host program , Creature Feature, from the hallowed halls Channel 20, a UHF television station that beamed its signal from Bethesda, Maryland to horror movie fans located in and around DC Metro for more than a decade. You'll find Count Gore's superbly crafted and cannily concise biography opposite a full-page color photo of Count Gore (with a gorgeous blonde on his lap) on Page 100! I'm very proud to say that this enthralling account of Count Gore's fabulous and flamboyant rise to horror host fame was written by none other than Creature Feature's own High Priestess of Weirdness, LadyBoneYard, also known as Donna Mucha! Kudos to LadyB for a truly magnificent article! Of course, you'll find other weird folks lurking in these pages, some more renowned than others. For instance, we all know of Count Gore De Vol, but have you ever heard of the Snallygaster? Or the Goat Man? If you haven't, you'd better watch out, because they stalk Maryland's back roads, just waiting for naïve travelers. Also included is information about the region's infamous Bunnyman, a hatchet-wielding maniac whose authenticity I can vouch for, having myself encountered that particular nut-job way back in the seventies. And then there's that demon-possessed kid who William Peter Blatty made famous in his novel, The Exorcist, which was followed by the blockbuster movie that scared the bejeezus out of all of us. Yep, Maryland's got its share of weird folks and bizarre creatures, but there are also a number of haunted houses, haunted cemeteries and my personal favorite Maryland locale, the abandoned and horrifically haunted Glenn Dale Hospital, a former mental asylum filled with miles of corridors that used to be home to patients who were rumored to have been tortured, experimented upon and murdered. I've been there, and it's a truly harrowing experience, I can tell you. On the lighter side, you'll meet strange denizens of the state who drive cars shaped like spaceships and other unusual objects, find odd, whimsical museums that cater to unusual tastes, see photos of tiny houses built for little people and a tavern with a shark's head sticking right out of the front façade. It's no wonder that Baltimore was home to Edgar Alan Poe, because even the Baltimore bar district is said to be haunted (and believe me, I've seen some strange things there after about 2AM!). And the very best thing about Maryland, I'm sure you'll agree, is that Count Gore De Vol is our own local hero--and to prove it, he's been given another full-page frontispiece photo that heads up the chapter entitled, "Local Heroes and Villains"! This book is packed with enjoyable weirdness and bizarre information, and you certainly don't have to be a Marylander to enjoy it. I know you'll want your own copy, because--listen to this!--if you click on the graphic, you will be offered the opportunity to purchase a copy of this gorgeous, oversized, hardback volume--personally inscribed to you from Count Gore De Vol himself! You can't get a Count Gore De Vol signed volume of Weird Maryland anywhere else, and when the Creature Feature bookshelves have run out of books, you won't be able to get one at all! Be sure to click on the cover and order your copy NOW!

The Melanie Travis series has been fun to follow and enlightening with regard to the details of the "show dog" world - from a "real" person's perspective (Melanie)with the bonus of fun mysteries. This book was fine for what it offered, but was not one of the more challenging mysteries in the series. It did update the reader on the lives of the main character and her family - and added a twist to info. on the dog world - creating and advertising a "new" dog food (not obviously an interesting pursuit, but essential to this plot). I think the author had a good time writing this book and offered an easy read - for dog and mystery lovers.

The true appeal here was dog-related. All the dog information was fascinating and her descriptions of her herd of Poodles (particularly Faith) were priceless.

Unfortunately I question the mode of murder. At the risk of spoiling the plot, I wonder why someone would push Larry down the stairs while he was holding the (hopefully) winning dog - and risk injuring said winning dog (particularly considering who the murderer is finally revealed to be and why she considered Yoda the winner). And if he wasn't holding the dog when pushed, then why didn't the murderer pick up Yoda after doing the pushing? I just couldn't make it work in my mind. (As an aside, I noticed the gender of the dog kept changing throughout the book - first referred to as she, then he, then she again.)

And the constant references to pregnancy were just grating on my nerves. How Melanie could put up w/ the constant intrusions into her privacy (and her uterus is about as private as it gets!!) is just unbelievable. Good grief. If someone hounded a friend or sister like that I'd hope they'd reply with, "If you're so determined to have another child in this family, why don't YOU adopt one? I'll gladly supply you with a letter of reference." Hopefully once this kid gets born, all such intrusive references will be a part of the past.

This was my first exposure to her work. I'm looking forward to further novels full of dog stories.

Each of the Melanie Travis books takes you to her delightful life in Greenwich. The author quickly gets the reader involved in the world of dog shows and sleuthing.

Unfortunately, the books are such quick reads that you are left out in the cold again, and craving the next in her series.

Hurry up and write more, Ms. Berenson.

Everybody needs to laugh and everybody needs to think and this book makes you pee your pants laughing while trying to solve a mystery.
My hats off to Ms Berenson for making me turn the pages of this book faster than the last 4 books that I've recently read.
I highly recommend any of the entertaining Melanie Travis Mysteries.
My sincere hope is that the author is working on the next installment as I type this!

Melanie Travers can't quite bear to disappoint her son when he enters her poodle in a pet food competition and she becomes a finalist, but she doesn't really want to win. Which makes her completely unlike the other finalists. Every one of them seems intent on winning at any cost. When one of the contestants (the owner, not the pet) falls to his death on the stairs of the pet food company, Melanie finds herself in the familiar position of having to investigate what might be an accident but certainly looks like--murder.

Investigating crime is far from Melanie's major job, however. Although school may be out for the summer, she's still getting adjusted to her recent marriage, putting up with relatives urging her to start producing more children, showing her standard poodle at dog shows, and jumping through the many hoops that the contest judges have set up.

Author Laurien Berenson continues her Melanie Travis series with another look into the world of dog shows, and the unusual and colorful people who make these shows their life. These characters, especially Melanie, her aunt Peg, and gay groomer Terry bring the story to life and keep the reader interested as Melanie puts herself in dangerous situations to discover exactly what happened to the unpleasant Larry--and whether she just might be the next to fall victim.