New Hampshire Books

The cover says it all. A man spiraling out of control. The book weaves together some of the major issues of our time in a story about relatively simple people: race, hate, adultery, revenge, ambition, and the ravages of lost dreams. Leonard Chang describes the characters as if there's a microscope upon them, until you can tell what they're feeling through his subtle descriptions. An altogether excellent book by an up and coming writer.

Reminded me a little of the films of Paul Schrader, with the disaffected, alienated, and angry man brooding at the world. The spin on this novel was the letters and the outside narrator. Well-written, and interesting, but kind of a downer.

This novel begins with the former biology teacher reading letters meant for a previous tenant, and soon envisions the life of the intended recipient. It's an ingenuous new angle on the epistolary novel, and this device shows us the strange possibilities of narration and storytelling. The main character, Gorden, is odious but compelling, and you watch him with a voyeuristic fascination as he slowly unravels. The narrator/writer, the other part of the story, comments and describes his own life that's an interesting counterbalance to Gorden's deteriorating life. A smart and fascinating book.

I read Leonard Chang's first novel, The Fruit 'N Food, and thought it was okay. But this one is so sophisticated and interesting. I'm really curious to see what he does next.

Finally we get an Asian American writer who doesn't just write about race or ethnicity. Am I the only one getting tired of all that "woe is me" ethnic angst? This guy is writing some good fiction. Not "ethnic fiction" but GOOD fiction.

I'm not sure why this book has garnered such fantastic press. It's a decent read, especially if you enjoy a cop thriller with a hint of the supernatural. But it's also a pretty standard read that doesn't offer anything especially new or exciting to either the genre of the thriller or the supernatural. The main character is well developed and the plot will keep you engaged; you won't find anything overtly awful about it. The writing is competent. I wouldn't warn anyone away from this book, but don't go into it expecting to have your world rocked. It's a bit too pedestrian for that.

Noel Hynde, a respected author (if his press is to be believed) has penned a promising murder mystery/ghost story, but ultimately fails to deliver the thrills and chills that the bookcover claims.

Frank O'Hara, a bright State Patrol Detective for the State of New Hampshire, is a haunted man. His primary demon is the stereotypical one of all literary Irish cops: alcohol. He invited this particular demon into his life upon the suicide of his long-time partner on the force. His partner, intelligent and one of N.H.'s best, one day, without warning, pulled out his own service revolver, put it to his head, and pulled the trigger. Word was that his partner had been slowly and quietly going insane...a fate that O'Hara fears is happening to him. See, a serial killer, whom O'Hara was instrumental in sending to the electric chair, is impossibly killing again. And to top it all off, the dead killer himself is visiting O'Hara's house, deep in the deadly grip of an east coast winter. O'Hara is "this close" to retirement...and doesn't appreciate this last big murder case...nor the fact that he's being pursued by the ghost of a killer, a ghost who is still claiming his unequivocal innocence.

One wonders in how many ways an author can show and tell a protagonists disbelief in all things spiritual...reading "A Room For The Dead" will quickly show you exactly how many, and show you how repetitive and irritating such a device can be. Perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad if the story actually delivered the goods at the end of the 300-something pages this book contains. But it doesn't, and O'Hara ultimately just ends up sounding whiny and ridiculous...grating on the nerves. While the premise of this story is promising, it goes nowhere, and takes a long, long time to get there.

I love this book. I started reading it and I couldn't put it down. It is wonderfully written. I don't read as much I used to unless I find a great book like this one. I stumbled over it at my aunts house. i saw the cover and read the back and I was hooked on it. My mom wants to read it and she is a usual Stephen King fan! I recommend it to people who like to read a good book!

I have read most of Noel Hynd's thrillers, and each one seems to get better and better. This happend to be the first one I had read, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it. This isn't the type of book I normally go for, but Hynd does an excellent job reeling the reader in until I just couldn't put it down. The intriguing storyline, with a touch of supernatural mystery, makes for quite a chilling read.

This is the best book that I have ever read. I kept putting off buying the book because it just didn't look interesting. Then one day, when a long bus ride was ahead of me, I bought the book because there didn't seem to be anything better. I could not put the book down and the ending actually made me feel like crying.... not because it was a bad ending but because the main character seemed so real to me that I actually felt his emotions. I recommend "A Room for the Dead" to anyone who mentions that they are a "reader". I have read it five times now.

Well-written and an easy read. It made me want to do 2 things: Strap on my waders and head to the nearest wetland to see what I can find and order the other books in his "wet sneaker" trilogy. Enjoy.

The book is a pleasure to read although I did get bogged down a bit toward the end. It is obvious that this guy lived with his subject. Some of the identification descriptions of flora and fauna can become overwhelming to the reader not familiar with the northeastern environs. But, on the whole a well written book destined to become a classic in nature writing.

In addition to what everyone else has said (the poetry of the language, the gorgeous drawings, etc.), this book is especially useful in that it describes the relationships between all the different kinds of wetlands, and within riparian zones in general. It should be required reading for every developer and community activist intent on preserving some hydrologic function in natural areas. This is a wonderful, wonderful book.

Mr. Carroll has captured nature as it truly is. Like a fine craftsman he was one with the subject and as an artist he has accurately recorded what he observed and has presented the information coherently. I'm left with an indelible, poignant legacy.

David M. Carroll is one of the finest nature writer/philosophers I've ever come across in my entire reading career. Swampwalker's Journal is a book to be savored, relied upon. Caroll knows the lives of the wetlands so intimately, from first-hand experience over long years, that you know you're getting a privileged glimpse into deep nature. Added to that, he is a truly masterful illustrator, and a graceful, profound writer. I'll be waiting to buy any other book he produces.....

Autobiography/memoir as novel, this is one of the very finest, mostly deeply felt bits of sustained writing that I have ever read. Janet Hobhouse traces her family from the time of her immigrant great-grandparents parents, who established the family fortune, through its' matrilineal line, to her impoverished Bohemian mother and herself, an established writer and great beauty of her time.It is absorbing, and I soon felt that I was part of her family, feeling as she felt.
This is one of a great series of books that were out of print and have now been brought back under The New York Review of Books imprint.

I took months to read The Furies. I was completely involved in the author's life from page one; I didn't want the book to end since that would have meant abandoning the author, letting her die again. Thankfully, I can take the book off the shelf and read my favorite passages over and over.

Something about the author's urgent voice, her dilemma, her triumph and ultimate loss called to me so compellingly. At many points in her archeology of the self, it seemed Hobhouse was giving me directions about my own life since many of the choices Janet-as-Helen makes are typical of women born in the second half of the 20th-century: career, intellectual pursuits, marriage, creating friendships and connections. If I have suggested that The Furies is a woman's journey, I still want to encourage men to read it. This autobiography-as-novel involves the male gender in every way: It concerns a girl child's need for a loving mother, the grudging though saving involvement of a remote father, and the rescue that a college education can provide a bright, sensitive, and miserable young woman.

Hobhouse tells The Furies so simply and yet with such microscopic exactitude that I'm trying to figure out how she "did it," how she was able to write about herself with such an uncanny combination of critical distance and compassionate psychological detail. An author has to have deep insights into herself and others as well as make all the best decisions about the writing craft: narration and point-of-view, setting and scene changes, and plot development. The tale Hobhouse has given us depends not so much on her craft as on her understanding of the illogic and irrationality of relationships and human desire in general. The striking feature of this novel is Hobhouse's ability to consistently show people during their most characteristically human moments. In the end, Janet/Helen writes about her fight with cancer, "What made me saddest about dying was that I'd never get to meet and love or be loved by anyone else again. . . . [ I would miss ] Not the books unwritten or the places not seen, but the people I was never going to love."

The introduction, by Daphne Merkin, offers important insights into Hobhouse's craft of writing. Even though I don't agree with Merkin that Hobhouse's prose is "baroque" or that her "sentences go on forever," I do agree with her that The Furies is "an exactingly detailed, almost anthropological portrait," an "extraordinary" work. The cover art, a detail from Gary Hume's Water Painting, is another very appropriate choice for this NYRB edition.

Janet Hobhouse dipped into Greek mythology for her title. The furies hounded mortals who committed certain acts of impiety. Patricide was such an act. No, such homicide is absent from this novel, at least literally. What a reader finds is an astute mind gifted in words conducting a pitiless self-examination thinly dressed as fiction. A devotee of genre fiction may not be attracted to such a novel. No body falling out of a closet or floating in a pool. No shoot-out on a dusty western town street. No menacing or benign extra terrestrial slumming our planet. No auburn beauty breathless in the arms of a regency stud. We accompany the author's persona on a journey through a life, privy to the joys and griefs, the romances, the break-ups, the successes, the set-backs, a beautiful, talented women is subject to. The furies (three in number) serve as a metaphor for the regret, guilt, and sorrow Helen is unable to escape. A large portion of the narrative is cast in the meditative style of the essayist. Scenes are not frequent, although a crucial moment, the climax actually, is presented in what for the author must have been excruciating detail. Another metaphor, again borrowed from the ancient Greeks, is appropriate to describe this work. Ms. Hobhouse explores the twists and turns of her life as Thesus explored the labyrinth, searching for truth, however devastating, at the center of her being.

Janet Hobhouse's last novel THE FURIES was published two years after her death in 1991, and its incompleteness shows. The work is a thinly fictionalized family memoir of an improvident but glamorous matrilineage living largely on their wits on the edges of Manhattan life throughout the course of the twentieth century; the doomy narrative centers upon the author's alter ego, Helen, who grows up shuttling between home and expensive private schools, watched by her unhappy mother, her artistic grandmother, her odd aunt and great-aunt, and eventually her cold father living in London. The first two-thirds of the work are fantastic--as superb a fictionalized memoir as THE BELL JAR, with each chapter acting as a beautiful short story in its own right, all permeated with the author's singular blend of lush prose and sweetly rueful melancholy. But when Helen marries a wealthy Englishman and her fortunes change drastically the tone of the novel remains exactly the same. When the narrator then uses the same complaining tone she used to describe her mother's mental illness and her father's verbal abusiveness to describe how alien ated she and her husband become for having such much nicer and more expensive houses than their friends, your sympathies for her begin to dry up completely; even when Helen's luck again turns for the worse, she's by then exhausted all the reader's patience. Had Hobhouse had time to finish the work before her early death, she likely would have surmounted these problems in revision; as it is, the work is very flawed but still more than worth reading.

What I found most interesting about this book was how many details Janet Hobhouse packed into it, something that originally tricked me into thinking that it was autobiographical. It's not a book you want to sit down and read all at once, but you'll find it hard to put down if you're into aknowledging the harsh side of life.

Breyer manages to provide the reader with a work packed with all sorts of technical and historical goodies. Loaded with tables, schematics, and other data, this single volume encyclopedia gives the reader with a wide body of data to draw from. Armor, guns, machinery, modifications, line drawings, this has it all. The book is in need of an update, but still extremely useful for the warship enthusiast or historian. Some might complain that Breyer doesn't give the right amount of hardtack in a ship's galley. Nevertheless, this extensive work is worth having on your bookshelf.

It is most unfortunate if you were too late to acquire a copy of this out-of-print classic when it was published. After more than 25 years, it is still my favorite book on the subject, and the only title in my collection for which I own 2 copies. Although it has been surpassed by later works in depth of detail, it is, in my opinion, the finest overall book in its class. The format is unique; no photographs; superb line drawings in constant scale; a uniform format for data and symbolic abbreviations; ship-by-ship histories; and much more. It is a purists delight of detail, and yet contains syntheses and conclusions drawn from the facts presented. Translated from German, the author covers all battleships and battlecruisers built or projected since HMS Dreadnought into all their offshoots -- if they were converted into carriers, the book details the carrier. The only flaw with the book is an arguable bias toward German ship designs although it is hard to dispute that the WW1 Lutzow and WW2 Bismarck classes were indeed "among the best ever built". The same thing could easily be said about the Queen Elizabeth or New Jersey classes but wasn't. However, that's a trifle; if you don't have a copy, put it down as number one on your search list.

Crammed with data, often using symbols and icons to save space. Even the humble boat crane gets a special symbol. Drawings are not quite to the standard of Raven and Burt, but compensate by having such a quantity, all in the same scale, by the same artist. This makes it an excellent wargamers resource.

However, you have to wade through a breathlessly enthusiastic analysis of all things German. German ships are "excellent", a "triumph of warship design", reach a "peak of perfection", and so on.

Breyer's utter contempt for British ships, designers and strategy is unbecoming. They are "doubtful and poor", "inadequate", "extremely poor". Yet features ridiculed on British ships (e.g. Agincourt, lots of turrets = "bound to affect adversely the strength of the ship") he exalts on German ships (e.g. Nassau class, lots of turrets = firepower on disengaged side!). Thus his bitterness spoils his commentary. Breyer even claims the all-big-gun revolution of the Dreadnought was anticipated by a German ship of 15 years earlier.

Siegfried Breyer's volume on the world's battleships and battlecruisers from 1905-1970 is dated because it does not include the last commissioning of the US Iowa class battleships from 1980 to 1992. Much of his data and technical drawings are just plain inaccurate. His drawings of the Russian Sovietskii Soyuz class battleships are extremely poor and he includes data on a Russian battlecruiser named Tretl Internationale with 8-15inch guns which never existed. I originally bought this book in German and then acquired it in English. As time has passed and more accurated information published, this book although a massive effort has become as obsolete as the ships it describes.

I wholly recommend this to anyone considering a veterinary career - or a client who takes their vet for granted! Good reading - Dr Shaw is great.

There are plenty of cute, endearing animals in Chuck Shaw's Walpole, NH, veterinary practice. Hobbs, for instance, the clinic cat, an obese fellow who gorges on junk food, perhaps in memory of his feral days, and reverts to wild ferocity whenever the whim strikes him. But these animals afford mostly comic relief in Whynott's behind-the-scenes portrait: a serious tale of human drama; of passion, ethics and personalities.

Chuck Shaw is a focused man who chose his work after serious deliberation and before going to Vietnam as a bomber pilot. He wanted a well-lived life in a profession that involved physical activity, outdoor work, and the prospect of working with people and helping others. He also wanted to be independent and own his own business. Veterinary medicine fit the bill and after two years in practices that didn't quite fit him, he bought a "mixed practice" in bucolic, beautiful Walpole.

A mixed practice is unusual these days and growing more so, involving both large animals and small. Chuck might spend the morning checking a dairy herd for pregnancies, the afternoon treating cats and dogs at the clinic and be called out at midnight for an emergency lambing or an "HBC" (dog hit by car). Over the years Chuck had gone through eight associate vets who stayed from a few months to four years.

Roger Osinchuk, the best fit, is beginning his fifth year in the practice as the book ends. Osinchuk, a Canadian from Alberta, grew up wanting to be a veterinarian. His experience with horses is extensive and he quickly builds an equine practice and embarks on a side business breeding and training horses of his own.

Roger, exhausted by the long hours and the on-call weekends, convinces Chuck to hire a third associate - not an easy task for a mixed practice in a rural community. Erika Bruner, a new graduate from a suburban, academic background, wants to work with cows. She likes getting mud and manure on her boots, enjoys the placid, wise look of the cow, and doesn't flinch at being shoulder deep in the animal's anal tract. Enthusiastic and determined, she lifts everyone's spirits. At first.

Whynott spends long days with each of these people, getting them to talk while they work. They talk about the work, and Whynott describes it in details that range from fascinating to gross, often at the same time. They save animals and lose them and Whynott shows us their jubilation and sadness - and sometimes their self-doubt. Inexperienced Erika has a lot of that, but no one is immune.

The patients can't talk, and, not owning their own bodies, have no say in their treatment or even their death. From cows who don't produce enough milk to dogs that bite, death is sometimes the only treatment the owner wants and this is a critical issue in the practice, particularly with pets. Though Chuck early on makes it a rule not to kill healthy pets, it's a rule he sometimes has to break. During Erika's first months a healthy dog is brought in to be put down. The owner refuses to have it adopted by someone else and so Chuck orders it done. Erika is shocked and furious, but Chuck explains that the owner would only have abandoned the dog or had a neighbor kill it. At least he had the power to end the animal's life humanely.

Ethical dilemmas are frequent in a practice where the doctors are surgeons, cancer specialists, emergency doctors, radiologists, dermatologists, obstetricians, etc., and the patients are property. Overwork and underpay (beginning associates with $100,000-plus in debts earn $45,000 a year) also fuel frustration.

Whynott's ("Giant Bluefin," "Following the Bloom) portrayals are moving and involving. He is a mostly invisible observer. Though it's clear people are talking to him, he makes no judgments and offers no personal comments. Traveling with the veterinarians through the beautiful Connecticut River countryside, he shows us the working farms, which each have their own owner-imposed personalities, and the hobby farms with their horses and pet pigs and sheep (which are generally cheerier places, even if the owners are sometimes clueless). He gives us the drama of daily life in the practice, and shows how the underlying dynamics change with the entry of a newcomer.

This is an absorbing inside look at a changing profession and the interplay of personalities between a veteran owner, an experienced young man with ambitions of his own, and a neophyte struggling to find her place. A book to be enjoyed by anyone who likes animals and a must for aspiring veterinarians.

If you are looking for a book like All Creatures Great and Small, this book isn't for you. James Herriot is the ultimate writer in this category, and it is hard to find any authors that compare to him. As far as this book goes, I found the writing style hard to read and somewhat disjointed, since it is being written by an outside observer. It isn't a smooth read. Also, most of the book is about the trials of being a vet and owning your own vet practice. If you are a vet student or another vet, you might find it interesting. But for the average reader there aren't a lot of animal stories in it. The only reason I found it OK was that I am a dairy farmer and was interested in the types of problems this vet encountered in the dairy herds he visited. Also, I live in Vermont, close to this vet's location, and I knew some of the dairy farmers he had as customers. However, if you are looking for more animal stories like James Herriot's, I can't recommend this book. Instead, I would recommend books by Dr. John McCormack or books by Dr. David Perrin.

Dedicated in memory of Bob Zeidler, an Amazon reviewer.

Hobbs the current clinic cat was a survivor. He had once been a feral cat and somehow found himself in the Walpole, New Hampshire Veterinary Clinic. Fat and sassy and beloved by all.

The author, Douglas Whynott followed Chuck Shaw, Vet practice owner, and Roger Osinchuk, his associate for a year learning the ins and outs of a veterinary clinic that saw a mixed practice. Mixed practice in this sense means large and small animals. That is quite an ark full, so to speak. This kind of practice can run a man into the ground, particularly when you are on call every other night and every other weekend. The stories of the owners and their animals and the struggles of daily life become real and vivid in this engaging novel.

As the practice grows, Chuck and Roger decide they need to take on a third associate. Erika Bruner, a fresh graduate from Tufts Vet School, an intelligent, articulate woman answers the call. Thus begins her first year of a grueling, grinding profession. Erika allows us into her life, her emotions, her ups and downs, her insecurities and the struggles she encounters as she starts her job. The cows, yes, always the cows, the joys of examining cows by first removing all of the feces in the anus, and then examining the cows with a long sleeve on the arm and the "feel" of the insides of the cow. This is how one goes about finding out if a cow is pregnant or ready for pregnancy. Vermont and New Hampshire are farm country and cows are a specialty. We get inside the farmer's minds and how they practice their craft- how they care for their animals. A fascinating study of farm life and the people involved.

Chuck Shaw the Vet in charge is an honest, silent man. Straight forward and truthful, he is a Vietnam vet. Ready for anything, but getting tired of the life of a vet. Roger Osinchuk, the associate has a love of horses and with his skill he develops the practice of horses and in his own life grooms the champion of horses, Shawne. Chuck is married and he and his wife try to have a normal life, sometime having dinner at 11pm after a harried night call. Roger is in love and during this year proposes and gets married to a girl he met in Alberta. He is five years into his practice with Chuck. The other staff in the Vet practice tells a tale of a dedicated staff who love animals and give much, too much at times.

"Country Practice" is a tale of the love of animals. The profession of caring for and loving those animals is a big part of this story. The lives of those involved tell the intimate stories of life in rural New Hampshire. I have much more gratitude and understanding of a veterinarian's life. The life and death of our animals, a big part of our families, is in good hands in the Walpole Vet Clinic . Highly recommended. prisrob

This book was another visit to a previous century, and I loved reading it. Very poetic and also interesting to read someone's observations of their world, and compare it to how we live today!

Well written. had to keep reminding myself this was written in the 1800's. Good overview of the islands and reflections of life in those times.

I had trouble putting this book down. I only did to make it last longer.
Celia totally loved her garden. She wrote about the flowers she planted, the birds who came to visit, and her battle with slugs. How I pulled for her to defeat those slugs!
This book had me itching to work in my own garden. I plan to read it every spring.
If you find it interesting reading about other people's exploits with their own gardens then you should enjoy this delightful book.

DuBois' second Lewis Cole mystery opens with Cole's discovery of a headless, handless corpse in the cold surf off his New Hampshire beach home. Cole, a former Department of Defense spook, pensioned off with his secrets and a generous income funnelled through his job as a magazine columnist, puts the corpse out of his mind, intent on finding the deeply hidden owner of an oil tanker that ruptured, fouling his beloved coast with its cargo.

A wizard with a computer and a telephone line, Cole tracks the protected owner but has no way to get at him. Plotting his next step, he's distracted by a friend, Felix, a former Mob affiliate, who wants his help in resolving the fate of some stolen Winslow Homer paintings, long hidden in a dead mobster's safe house.

When a powerful thug is brutally murdered in their presence, Cole's friend Felix goes into hiding, and Cole embarks on the dangerous trail of the art thieves, a trek that involves skills Cole had hoped were behind him.

With plenty of rugged action and quick spook-type thinking, DuBois has constructed an absorbing tale of greed and utter ruthlessness, occasionally slowed by his hero's tortured, sometimes bitter ruminations over repetitive ground. The New Hampshire and Maine seacoast areas are vividly realized and the tangled plot liines are effectively sorted.

This is a great mystery...even better than his first, Dead Sand...but the plot is just a little far-fetched, and DuBois/Cole are still hung up on SWEAT. Get over it!

Brendan DuBois has obviously learned much from his previous book, Dead Sand. Black Tide picks up a few months after the conclusion of Dead Sand, and pulls the reader almost instantly into the plotline. Unlike its predecessor, Black Tide does not dwell on seacoast details for pages on end. DuBois learns to get past the filler and primarily utilize events and character to fill the page, rather than physical details of the landscape. DuBois' sense of character is refreshing for the mystery novel genre; he has created a both a protagonist and secondary characters that contain just about the right amount of toughness and humanity, but don't cross that borderline into the exaggerated realm of cliche. One sin Dubois did commit in both novels, however, is that of creating a murderer that the reader couldn't care less about. In both cases, a minor character is chosen as the guilty party -- the typical "seems like a nice guy, but I think there's some sinister under the surface" character that the avid mystery reader can pick out after reading just a few pages that involve the character. This is the fly in the soup that exposes what would otherwise be a fairly unpredictable plot. On the other hand, the story is very readable. This holds true in its pace, action, and dialogue. There are some very exciting moments that take place in this seemingly quiet little seaside town, and DuBois kept me hooked through each new development. In the end, what the reader gets is a good commercial mystery novel. I would recommend this novel to a friend, so long as the friend had not read every Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, or Three Investigators novel ever written. It is a great building block for an author that is fairly new in terms of novels (DuBois has published many short stories), and I look forward to his future development and books. I will be waiting in anticipation of his next Lewis Cole mystery...

This book is an absorbing study of a little-known incident of lithobolia (stone-throwing devils) on Great Island in New Hampshire in 1682, ten years before the Salem Witch Trials. The author expertly blends historical details of comparable incidents with a comprehensive exposition of the major players and the social undercurrents of the situation. There is so much contextual material that it is difficult to know where to start in elaborating on this fascinating work.

The religious divisions present in late seventeenth century New England created massive social tensions, between rival Christian sects like the established Puritans and the Quakers (who were considered so radical they were outlawed and even killed on occasion). Religious disputes such as the Antinomian Controversy, whose followers held to the belief that God did not place preconditions on salvation, and the established socially acceptable view that a God-fearing law-abiding life was essential, also coloured the personal politics and relationships between settlers living in this very different world to ours today.

Examples of the social structure of the time beggar belief by modern standards, and give us more of a window into the fear-ridden world of this time and place - fear of social, political and religious change in a culture which was being pulled in too many directions at the same time. A place where an Indian servant was less valuable than a pig but more valuable than an indentured Irishman! A place where swearing could see you fined and placed in the stocks, and where visits to the courtroom were frequent for failing in a huge range of social constraints.

Although this book is more of a work of history than of folklore, some of its value lies in the clever stripping away of the layers of accreted opinion to present the facts in a way supported clearly by opinion. The author presents coherent arguments and gives a huge array of supporting evidence. This approach is one which many modern writers on the history of paganism and magick could benefit from. The end of the book leads the reader from the events at Great Island to those of Salem ten years later. The parallels between the circumstances and events of the two are laid out in a way that opens whole new views of these events, and will hopefully cause a lot more questioning to be done.

All in all this is an excellent, extremely well-written and absorbing work, which I recommend to anyone who enjoys a good history book!

A terrific account of the 17th century in southeastern New Hampshire, southwestern Maine, and the Piscataqua region. Tad Baker has done exhaustive research, and he knows the terrain thoroughly. It all comes together in a well presented gem of a history book.

Fabulous book by Tad Baker!!
Very indepth journey of what New England life was like
during this time period. Mr Baker takes us back into the lives and minds of these fascinating places...Real...Live...Vivid!! surely a must have for New England history and genealogy buffs. Very well
written and sourced. A "real" snapshot of our early Massachusetts and Maine pioneers.

Courtesy of CK2S Kwips and Kritiques

Christine left Santa Caribe Island after her first night as a married woman. She had witnessed some very disturbing events that put her life in danger. Believed to have been betrayed by her husband and his best friend Jonas, she runs, taking with her only three religious amulets and a lion cub, Thor, one of the Guardians of the island, who has abilities beyond human comprehension. After giving Michael, her husband, one chance to prove his innocence, and he seemingly betrays her even more, she has put that life behind her and has been on the run ever since.

Several years later, Christine is alive and well in a small Cape Cod town. She had faked her death shortly after arriving there, hoping to throw those after her off her trail. She now lives under an assumed name, with the daughter of she and her husband, and Thor. Michael had just found out about her death, heading to the town of Farewell, to say his to his wife, only to bump into her in the flesh, with the daughter he never knew he had.

Now the real adventure begins. Michael does not understand why Christine left him all those years ago, nor why she seems to hate him upon finding each other again. Slowly the story comes out, and Michael realizes he had been used in a game he can't believe, one conducted by his best friend. When he unknowingly puts Christine and their daughter Kayla in danger, they have to work together to solve the mystery of why those amulets are so important to Jonas, and why he will stop at nothing to retrieve them. Through it all they learn their love has never died, but only grown stronger. But can they get beyond the hurts of their past to build the life together they have always dreamed of?

This is a suspenseful story that crosses land and water from Cape Cod to the Caribbean Islands. Christine is a remarkable woman to have overcome so much in her young life. She was not the strongest heroine in flashback scenes, but her ordeal shaped her into a force to be reckoned with. It sure doesn't hurt either that she has a huge wild cat as her constant companion. Michael is a confused man who just wanted his friend and wife to get along, the reason behind some of his less then stellar choices made, and can't understand why they don't just love each other. He is torn between his love of the woman he made wife before she vanished, and his loyalty to the friend he thought he could count on for anything. Though Michael is a powerful member of this story, the focus does seem to be on Christine and how she handled the curves fate had thrown her way.

From the very first paragraph, the reader learns they are in for a treat. Ms. Anderson paints a vivid picture that one can't help but envision in the mind. Her descriptive passages are delightful and the action never stops throughout the entire book. There is plenty of mystery as Christine and Michael try to find the answers to what the amulets really can do, and what they mean to those after them. And who can forget Thor, the loveable telepathic lion? He is a wild cat of extraordinary abilities, like all of his kind, who was bred for one reason... protect Santa Caribe and her native inhabitants, and never let the amulets of power fall into the wrong hands.

Ms. Anderson has found a winning formula with this book, combining adventure, passion, mystery, and the paranormal into a story that will enthrall the readers, not releasing them from its spell until the final page is turned. This reviewer hopes this story is a sign of things to come from the talented author, and hopes just maybe to get to visit with some of these beloved characters again. This one is not to be missed!

© Kelley A. Hartsell, April 2003. All rights reserved.

For eight years Michael Finch has searched for his spouse Christine. All this time he had felt she must still be alive or he would know otherwise in his gut, though the private detectives hired by his best friend Jonas Harding fail to find her. He wonders why she ran away so soon after their marriage, but now at least he knows where she died. He is in Farewell on Cape Cod to say his good byes. He enters DewDrop's Candle Shop because Michael remembers Chrissy loved candles, but is shocked when he sees the proprietor, his wife.

Michael leaves two phone messages for Jonas, inadvertently enabling his friend's thugs to find Chrissy. They kidnap her daughter Kayla and demand Chrissy return the three amulets she "stole" from these felons who actually robbed the gems from the natives of St. Caribe. Meanwhile Michael realizes he sired Kayla and begins to understand what his ignorance cost his beloved then and now. Both head to St. Caribe to retrieve their child, but though he still loves her and feels she does likewise, Michael desperately needs to regain her trust.

There are some paranormal elements that mostly surface towards the climax of the novel though a guardian Santa Caribbean Lion who telepathically communicates with the humans throughout the book. Thus, the tale is more of a crime thriller. The story line is action-packed and the support cast provides insight into the likable lead couple and pushes the plot forward. Fans of romantic crime thrillers with some paranormal elements mostly at the end will relish the stimulating THE GUARDIAN OF THE AMULETS.

Harriet Klausner

Christine Finch aka Dewdrop, has left a world of pain and betrayal behind for eight years. She is now focused on raising her eight year old daughter, Kayla, and making a living at her candle shop in the small town of Farewell, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. But Dewdrop has a secret, and it involves three mysterious amulets and a telepathic lion.

When Michael Finch comes to the end of his eight year quest to find his bride, Christine, he is stunned to find out that she's dead. He's even more stunned to walk into a small candle shop and find her alive. What Michael discovers about the past eight years and what really happened after Christine disappeared on their wedding night, will test his strength, intellect and trust.

Can these two return the amulets to their rightful owner and heal the pain from the past, learning to again trust each other?

Superb characterization, a unique and fast-paced storyline, and flawless writing combine to make THE GUARDIANS OF THE AMULET one heck of a read. I look forward to reading more from this amazing author!