Maryland Books

This is a book the legal profession never expected to be published. A fully documented book that shows how the legal profession can initiate, advance, perpetrate and defend its corruption. A book that exposes professional and judicial process corruption patterns into which even the US Supreme Court fits. A book that shows why the legal profession cannot regulate itself into a good reputation -- because it is not accountable to the public.

Although there have been some changes in the town since this book was written, it still serves as a good guide to this village, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The town is well worth a detour if traveling between Baltimore and Gettysburg.

This is a fine resource for visitors and local residents who are curious about the buildings in Washington, D.C. -- not only the much-visited downtown monuments and museums, but also the often-overlooked federal government complexes and residential structures. In addition to being an excellent reference from an architectural viewpoint, the book reveals much about the history behind the development of the city and its neighborhoods dating back to the colonial era.

The book offers 23 walking tours, each covering a specific area of the city. Most of the walks are located downtown or in the Northwest quadrant. Also included are tours of the Southwest waterfront; the Anacostia neighborhood in Southeast; nearby Alexandria, Virginia; and Takoma Park, Maryland. With a few exceptions, tours are designed to cover about two miles and last one to two hours. Each tour chapter, written by one of various local authors, contains a thumbnail overview of the tour area, a map keyed to a list of important buildings and sites, detailed descriptions of each site, and attractive line drawings of selected notable buildings.

The site descriptions are typically one paragraph long and contain facts and observations related to the site's architecture and design, along with a brief history of the site's development and past ownership. The text is terse, if somewhat aridly written. Throughout the book, great care is paid to basic architectural information: for nearly every major site, the book lists the primary architect(s), date of construction, and distinguishing design features. Such information is probably of interest to the book's co-editors, who have backgrounds in urban development and planning, but for me (and I suspect for most people) the amount of building detail provided can be excessive at times; I would rather have seen more information of a social or cultural nature.

Other shortcomings: I wish the maps were larger and labeled more sites by name instead of merely by number. And a few more drawings would be nice.

Be aware that this is not the best guidebook for a casual tourist wishing to hit the capital's major attractions. Nor is it an ideal survey of the city's neighborhoods and history. It is, however, potentially quite useful for those who wish to increase their knowledge of Washington's diverse buildings and neighborhoods -- taking in the sights and scenes not from a passing tour bus, but from the unhurried vantage point of a pedestrian.

A fascinating case study of a suburban American place undergoing striking demographic change. In a sense I think the title, subtitle and coverflap words may do Kohn a disservice. The potential reader may view this as somewhat of an academic/theoretical review of race relations rather than what it really is, a collection of intriguing stories about the loosely overlapping lives of a number of white and black residents of Prince Georges County, MD. I was pulled along simply to find out what happened to these people, as well as to what would happen to this place, as it swung from majority white and rural to majority black and urban in a few years. The most complicated story, that of Elvira White, bogged down some. But there is intrigue and pleasant surprise throughout. I would love to have learned even more detail about the racial, social and economic change in the key community, Hillcrest Heights, as well as in the whole county. It's a place literally in my backyard - I do wonder if a reader from another part of the country will find it as fascinating as I did. I still recommend it heartily to anyone eager for highly readable, anecdotal clues to the evolving co-existence of people of different races, as well as to those who just want good stories about real people.

Having flipped through this book I now have plans for several excursions once the weather improves. The book lays out a wide variety of hikes with descriptions, pictures, and maps. Based on these details and the estimated times, I expect this book will lead me through at least half a dozen different day trips. It offers just what I was hoping it would; I'm going to enjoy using this book.

I bought this book out of my love for railroad history and West Virginia history and when I can combine the two I am usually very happy.

I like this book in that it contains the facts to a very fine degree. I have two complaints though. The first is that it is like reading a time line. Rarely are two consecutive paragraphs related. The facts and events are relayed very well this way but it makes for very dry reading at times.

My second complaint is that the maps and photographs are extremely small all through the book. It is very difficult to study and enjoy a map of an entire rail line when the map is only about 2" x 2" in the text.

All in all, I did enjoy the book. I would recommend buying it, just keep a magnifying glass at your side for the photos and maps.

I read this book to learn what records might exist for a divorce and dower in connection with genealogy research. It is extremely thorough and detailed for the several states Salmon researched. It was very enlightening about the legal status of women, especially how their situations varied state to state. Some readers may find the book a rough go--the law can be a very dry subject. As an attorney myself, I appreciated the hair splitting differences she presented. I found even the notes and extensive bibliography useful for locating other materials to read.

its ok, the very few restaurents in baltimore area should have been more cretiqued in my opinion, not all of them are ok. just a local opinion.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It put all of my favorites into one book: suspsense, mystery, romance, strong willed/strong minded heroine. I also had the joy of growing up in a close knit Italian family, so I could relate to that as well. This is one of those Nora Roberts books that after you get through the first chapter or 2 and are hooked, you have no personal life until you are finished.

Nora Roberts continues to amaze. I have read all of her novels written by Roberts and J.D. Robb. Nora is my favorite author.

I enjoyed this story very much and the convenience of listening as I went to and from work.

While I haven't read every one of Ms. Roberts works I must state that I have read quite a few. I absolutely adore her way with words and the way she moves a story along without being obvious. Since many other reviewers have given a synopsis of this book I will limit myself to comments on the whole.

Fully rounded characters were what first grabbed my attention. It is through the central character's interaction with those around her that we learn of the events that have brought her to the present day and why she is so fiercely independent.

Ms. Roberts attention to details is one of the many things I love about her writing. Not too wordy, not too sparse, just enough to give you a perfect picture of the who or where she is describing. In Blue Smoke she is absolutely eloquent in her descriptions of fire, especially how it is perceived by some as a living thing. Her heroine, Reena, and the nemesis, Joey, are actually cut from a bit of the same cloth but the fine line between madness and sanity is what sets them apart. Both are drawn to fire because of its power but one is drawn to its capacity to harm while the other is searching for a way to quench the powerful beast.

The Hale family is down to earth as they rally to protect their own. The Pastorelli family is as dysfunctional as they come. Thrown into the mix is a wonderful leading man named Bo Goodnight (with a name like that you know he rides the white horse).

Suspense piled up as this reader tried to figure out where the arsonist would set his next, premeditated fire. I literally held my breath when Reena and Joey finally confronted each other.

I truly enjoyed this book. The final couple of chapters are definitely not for the squeamish but I didn't think they were too gruesome. I've seen plenty worse on the TV set.

I give Blue Smoke five stars for keeping me up way past my bedtime on way too many nights.

Reena Hale learned at an early age what fire could do. She was a small child when she had to watch her family's' restaurant burn to the ground thus beginning her love/hate relationship with fire. As she grew up she devoured everything possible to expand her knowledge because she continued to be tortured to fire. In college, her boyfriend was burned to death, and this is just another event that directs her to her career as an arson investigator.

Renna feels content with her life when she becomes a member of the police department, and buys her first home. She is surprised when she meets neighbor Bo Goodnight to find out he has been trying to find her since college. He saw her at a party across the room and has been trying to find her since. As they grow closer and fall in love, Renna is horrified when Bo's life is threatened again with fire. As they investigate further, it is revealed that two of her other boyfriends were touched by fire, and it is all perpetrated by the same person.

I loved this story. It is definitely one of my favorite NR tales. The characters were phenomenal. Reena and Bo are a good match, but all the supporting characters were an important part - from her loud obnoxious loving family to the creepy villain.

To The Power of Three is an excellent novel by Baltimore native Laura Lippman. I read this after enjoying another of her novels, What the Dead Know. I found To The Power of Three to be the more enjoyable of the two.

The novel opens with a shooting in an affluent high school's restroom. Two girls are wounded, one dead. The motive behind the shooting is unclear as all three girls are intelligent, popular, and best friends. Lippman takes us inside the girls' friendship and the hierarchy of the school and town, starting in the third grade and interspersing years until she reveals what happened and why. She incorporates viewpoints of teachers, fellow students, the police detectives, parents, and others in order to move her narrative along. In someone else's hands, this enormous cast of characters might have turned out unwieldy, but Lippman pulls it off with panache. As in What The Dead Know, her dialog is first rate and authentic and her sense of place and description are quite remarkable. I finished this book in a single day simply because I couldn't stop reading it until I got to the end. This is a first rate novel with well-developed characters and an intriguing plot. A must read.

The story starts with three teenage girls, Perri, Josie, and Kat, locked in a school bathroom with a gun--Kat's dead; Perri has been shot in the face and is not expected to live; Josie's been shot in the foot. It appears that Perri killed Kat, then Perri and Josie struggled over the gun and Josie was shot, then Perri turned the gun on herself.

But the evidence doesn't add up: why are there bloody footprints leading away from the locked door? Where are Josie's shoes? Where are all three girls' cell phones?

The book bounces all over place and time, between different POVs, delving deep into each one, showing the development of the girls' friendship until a year earlier when there's an abrupt break between Perri and Kat. And despite the nonlinear progression of the story, it works, for the most part, because the psychological suspense is high and the characters are realistic and familiar (at least to anyone who is, has, or has been a teenage girl).

My only problems were first, that there were a few too many characters, too many POVs. I didn't see a lot of point to teacher Alexa Cunningham's POV, for example--her scenes were very in-depth, but she seemed to be only peripherally involved, if at all, in the events leading up to the shooting.

And then there was the ending. I don't want to spoil it, but it felt flat and anticlimactic. And maybe that was the point--that life doesn't always have a dramatic point. I can accept that--it just doesn't make me love the book.

Overall, I loved the feel of the book: that somewhat dream-hazed, suspenseful, close-up portraits of how 3 teenage girls ended up dead or wounded. If it had been a movie, it would be an artsy one, with lots of out-of-focus close-ups. It's different from my usual reading, which is always a good thing, and I was really immersed in it up until nearly the very end.

I've previously read a few brilliant short stories by this author so decided to check out how well she writes a novel. Now granted her fans may point out this is a standalone story and isn't one from her most popular series but standalones are what people like me who want to sample an author check out before getting invested in a series. I have to say I won't be rushing out to buy Lippman's other work after this as it was enjoyable in parts but there's nothing memorable within these pages. The Power of Three could also have maybe been edited a bit more as it unnecessarily went into details on aspects and characters which played no central role to the storyline. Still if you've come across this book in the library or some other way where you haven't had to pay money for it then it will more than adequately pass the time.

In Power of Three Kat is dead, Perri is missing half her face and probably won't live and Jessie has a bullet in her foot more than likely putting an end to an athletic uni scholarship. There three girls were best friends so what happened is the journey the reader will be taken on to find out. Jessie says Perri shot Kat then in a struggle for the gun shot her in the foot before turning the weapon on herself. Police know this story is very unlikely, and there's other things to explain which Jessie doesn't seem to be able to, such as why are all the stall doors along with the main door locked? Why is their blood where Jessie said she never went? If this wasn't planned why is Jessie not wearing shoes and surely three teenage girls would have mobile phones but where are they? Lippman takes the reader on a journey through all the school years of the three constantly flashing between the past and current time with the investigation. She finally tells us what happened in the final pages but she could probably have gotten there a lot quicker.

I thought this book was suspenseful and thrilling. It is about a school shooting involving three best friends who began to grow apart in high school. Laura Lippman's writing style is so intriguing. I will read this again and again. Most definately one of the best mysteries I have read in years. I wish the ending would have turned out a little differently, but it is very shocking and you will never guess what happens. An awesome book especially for teen girls. It is quite long, but I never wanted to put the book down!!

I tried getting into Laura Lippman's books because they take place in or around Baltimore (I live close so I know some of the areas she is talking about). I tried reading this book and half of the "Tess" series. I just couldn't get into it. With the drugs (I don't care to read about this) and her style doesn't keep me intrested. I kept trying to get intrested but I ended up giving up.