Brandon Books

This is a great book for Christy's lyrics, the music tends to be a little confusing, but will get you by. I believe this is the only book of Christy's music on the market.

Author Jay Brandon sends state prosecutor Kelsey Thatch into the murky enclave of Galilee, deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas, to pinch hit for local DA Morgan Fletcher, who's got a major conflict of interest--his brother Billy's been indicted for a double murder. This is a whodunit and armchair sleuths too easily focus on Morgan instead of Billy. And that's without the aid of the Texas Ranger assigned to help Kelsey with the investigation. He only shows up long enough to say he can't stay. (A Texas Ranger derelict in his duty? Unbelievable!) Apparently, Brandon forgets about the Ranger to bring on a local deputy as his surrogate and Kelsey's romantic interest. To find the facts, Kelsey struggles with the social labyrinth of the inbred East Texas town. The plot twists become fairly predictable and the story never catches fire. In the end the reader really doesn't care what happens to any of them.

I got this book as a gift for graduation. The reipies in it are easy to make, and most of the ingredients are not hard to find, but it's confusing to use since most of the ingredients are measured in ounces.

I don't have a scale, and I don't want one. If it's one small chicken breast, I can unerstand, but 3 to 4 oz of chicken is not a very straight forward way to either buy or use in my non-existent kitchen.

If you want to learn how to cook using your common sense, this is not the book for you. But, if you have the time, patience and energy to pull out your scale and weigh to the dime, go right ahead and buy it!

If you're looking for a light and frothy quote (or one with a bit more bite), this is a great choice. If you're seeking one with weight, choose something else. The book includes a good range of contributors, with mostly familiar names (Rock Hudson, Truman Capote). Interestingly enough, it also includes quotes from 'zines and chat rooms. However, it focuses mainly on gay men and lesbians, and is fairly stereotypical in that content. If you want to enjoy some cute quips, and don't expect too much, this book should have you set!

From the back cover:

On a stormy ocean crossing...

Two windswept passengers survive a harrowing journey--with some divine assistance from Tabitha, a guardian angel who mixes in earthly affairs. But once the unlikely couple reach shore, it seems even angels need a helping hand in weathering the storms of love...

On the wings of desire...

Elizabeth Lee was outspoken about the evils of hard drinking, and spread her message of temperance to everyone she met. But her straightlaced heart was shaken by a frontier-bound Scot, roguish troublemaker Kincade MacKay. Tabitha takes on an angel-in-training, MacKay's long-lost ancestor, to navigate two hearts into a star-crossed passion. And with unlikely lovers like these, Tabitha needs all the help she can get!

And my review:

I bought this book because "angel" stories appeal to me, so the synopsis caught my attention. However, this book was just okay.

First off, I will state that although this book is a sequel (the guardian angel Tabitha already appeared in Touch of Heaven), this book also works as a stand-alone. I hadn't read the first book, but was never lost.

I have to say that the "angel" part of this book didn't live up to my expectations. Tabitha, and her trainee, Ian, added a bit of comic relief, but they never really felt essential to the story. A lot of times, I felt as if their scenes just broke up the flow to the main plot, rather than adding to it. And Ian's brogue was so thick that it was often hard to understand what he was saying (everything was written out phonetically).

I also never really felt a sense of destiny to the romance. It kind of felt more like they were together because they happened to be shipwrecked together. They bickered all the time, which got annoying rather quickly. The characters were only roughly sketched, so I never really felt like I knew them. I didn't know why they should be together, to the exclusion of all others. It often seemed as if they were together only because there was no one else available, not because they were a good match. It felt as if they were good together in bed, but nowhere else. I just don't find a relationship built on sex alone satisfying, because I don't believe that's enough to last for a lifetime. While good sex is important, it's not everything. Don't get me wrong, I didn't feel like this was a lust-soaked book, just that there wasn't a lot of substance to the relationship between hero and heroine.

All in all, this was an okay way to spend a few hours, but not a book I'd recommend highly, as it's not one I'd bother to reread.

This delightful little book, set in the 18th century, follows a boy along on his journey to safety during one of the many "troubled" times of Irish history. The characters feel Dickinsonian in their actions as would be appropriate for the period. It has enough dialect for authenticity, but not so much that it's difficult to read. The plot line is interesting as a hero's journey primarily because the protagonist is more reactive than proactive in his encounters. As an adult, I found this to be accurate. As a young reader, I would imagine it harder to identify with a hero who has so little to do with his fate. It also seemed unrealistic to have the same villains just happen to be wherever the boy arrived. Regardless, I would recommend this book for young people to give them a sense of the Irish culture and a peek at their historically difficult lives.

This slim novel set in the 1960s concerns a quiet, studious Italian-American teenager, Dante, and his courtship and growing relationship with Helen, a fellow high school senior. The reserved Dante has silently admired Helen from across the classroom for several months when an unexpected rainstorm gives him the chance walk her home with his umbrella and get to know her.

Knightley makes it clear that this is not your typical boy-meets-girl story. Dante is attracted as much by Helen's calm, assured demeanor and her sense of connection with her family as by her looks. Her small, tight-knit family is contrasted with Dante's relationship with his emotionally distant parents. As Dante and Helen grow closer, he questions his habit of keeping people at a distance to maintain his independence, and begins a quest to achieve the interconnectedness and peace he sees in Helen.

The dialogue can be stilted, and some events stretch reality. (I can certainly envision classmates making jokes at the expense of their fellow students, but I doubt most teachers would sanction and take part in such juvenile displays.) Knightley also annoyingly references real people and ideas without identifying them, leaving the reader frustrated and bemused and disrupting the narrative flow.

Most supporting characters are not fleshed out, with the engaging exception of Maristella, Helen's eleven-year-old sister. At first deeply suspicious of the boyfriend intruding upon her family, she gradually warms to Dante, and her scenes provide welcome comic relief in a sometimes too plaintive book. While the straightforward style does not immediately grab the reader, a wish to find out how Dante and Helen's relationship culminates keeps the reader going.

I found this book to be quite informative and knowledgeable the extra material that comes with the book was also well set out and to the point. There is enough information to pass the exam with and the tests that come with the kit make you think. Once you have done a couple you can see what sections you need to brush up on.

The thing that I found wrong with the book was that the author was rather prescriptive in his view of what I should and would want to study and the book was outdated so what he was prescriptive about was not necessarily relevant now.

This book although well written and a good read for anyone familiar with the "kerry Babies" saga ,is without doubt a little onesided and tries too much to explain away too many awkward questions which surfaced from the subsequent tribunal.

Art is so so. Not much as far as writing. The idea is ok, but the characters are flat.