Bridges Books

If you are interested in the environment which generated the powerful West Coast Native art, the artist, Emily Carr, conjures it up in this original book. Her travels to their coastal villages are translated into these atmospheric essays.

this book by Emily Carr gives a very wonderful and descriptive account of the Pacific Northwest along British Columbia's shores. Emily Carr was a very unique woman who defied her times in her interactions with Native Peoples and her adventurous independance. This book details her explorations among the Queen Charlotte Islands. It is so descriptive it makes one feel that they are actually on the west coast.

Klondike Wedding
Kate Bridges
Harlequin Historical
September 2007

Fresh starts. Would you be willing to risk everything and begin a new life even if you weren't truly in love with the man you planned to marry? I believe it would take an incredibly strong woman to believe she could make a happy life in such a situation. Kate Bridges has such a woman with Genevieve Summerville.

Genevieve needed a fresh start. She was practically broke, but she had faith she could build a successful business if given half a chance. To begin this new life, she promises herself to Joshua McFadden, a gold miner. She remembered him vaguely from childhood. He wrote letters to her aunt and uncle. In one of them, he formally asked for her hand in marriage. Genevieve accepted happily. She needed him and her aunt and uncle would be close by to make the new life feel safe. After making the arduous journey to rugged Dawson City, Yukon on her own, she discovers her husband-to-be is out searching for gold but a proxy wedding has been arranged.

" `I now pronounce you man and wife.' The old judge coughed. `Sort of." "

Mountie Inspector Luke Buxton Hunter couldn't help but think Joshua was a lucky man and a fool. Why would a man want to miss his own wedding, especially when his bride was beautiful? While waiting for the judge to finish the paperwork, Luke noticed the judge was in some distress. He did not look well at all. Luke ordered some water for the old man and tried to help him. Only it was too late. The judge was past any care and died. After a quick evaluation, Luke believes the judge had measles and with dread informs the entire wedding party they were all quarantined for the next 14 days. To make matters worse, the sick judge filled the papers out incorrectly. Luke and Genevieve were legally married to each other. It would take another judge to straighten this mess out and who knows how long that would take.

Surrounded by an angry group of strangers, all friends of her aunt and uncle, Genevieve was in shock. Quarantined with a real fear from a frightful disease and married to the wrong man was almost too much to deal with. This is not what she dreamed of, but she would have to make the best of a bad situation. Genevieve hoped Joshua would understand when he returned to town. This was no way to begin her fresh start.

I was amused and hooked from the very first line of Klondike Wedding. Ms. Bridges does not stop with her twist of a proxy wedding gone wrong. She has more surprises in store for her readers, not all amusing. All I'll say is that it is a good thing Luke is a Mountie Inspector because all is not as it seems and there is a mystery to be solved. It is amazing that love has a chance to develop with all that happens within the well written pages but, Ms. Bridges creates the passion of love with her extraordinary gift for Genevieve and the unsuspecting Mountie..

Kim Swiderski
Writers Unlimited

In 1898, Genevieve Summerville arrives from Montana in Dawson City, Yukon to get married. However, since her fiancé Joshua McFadden is in the goldfields, Mountie Inspector Luke Hunter agrees to be the groom's proxy. Judge Donahue presides over the ceremony and after pronouncing them as man and wife, he drops dead. On the marriage certificate, Donahue wrote Genevieve Summerville and Luke Hunter.

The entire wedding party who came into contact with Donahue is quarantined until authorities can determine what or who killed the judge. As the Mountie and the Big Sky expatriate fall in love with a zillion chaperones, Joshua returns to town to see his woman.

With a touch of a medical mystery (what killed the judge?) to enhance a delightful late nineteenth century Canadian romance, Kate Bridges refreshes her wonderful Mountie tales. Luke is a gentle person except when it comes to criminals but though he desires his wife he feels guilty re his friend; while Genevieve is a confused soul as she desires her spouse but also wonders what to do about her fiancé; Joshua rounds out the confused triangle nicely as he thinks American woman come away with me (The Guess Who will get over it as we American Women know our worth is beyond war machines). KLONDIKE WEDDING is another vivid northern neighborly historical winner.

Harriet Klausner

Not to be confused with Natsume Soseki's novel by the same title, Lafcadio Hearn's "Kokoro" is a magnificent collection of essays, vignettes, memoirs, and meditations on Japan in the 1890's. Very much a product of the mid-Meiji period, these masterfully-written little literary pieces are nonetheless timeless. Each piece is quite different from the rest, and yet almost all of them manage to start from everyday incidents or obvious observations and gradually spiral inwards to some deeply moving and startling insight into Japanese attitudes, values, and worldviews; more than once this seemingly methodless method allows Hearn to share with the reader certain common opinions and normal spiritual orientations held by average Japanese folks--the kinds of things usually taken for granted and so unarticulated, hence least amenable to documentation and scholarship (especially of the time, but even today). And Hearn does all this with an unpretentious erudition and an understated and balanced sympathy for his subject that, along with his literary flair for wonderfully clear and flowing prose, places his writings here in a category far above the rest. With him we can find none of the unintentional strains of condescension and orientalism so typical of folklore and religious anthropology, for while he's looking with the surprised gaze of the outsider with one eye, his other eye is that of the insider feeling very much at home where he is. The resulting view is visionary--but in subdued and shadowy tones.

Appendix on an Appendix: in addition to the fifteen excellent essays forming the main body of "Kokoro", there's an extensive appendix featuring Hearn's translations of three popular folk ballads: "The Ballad of Shuntoku-Maru", "The Ballad of Oguri Hangwan" and "The Ballad of O-Shichi, the Daughter of the Yaoya". These are fascinating on a number of levels. They provide a tantalizingly fleeting glimpse of plebian drama, remarkable in its very lack of remarkableness. There's a certain sociological angle, as the versions of these oral ballads collected and translated by Hearn are those recited by mountain outcastes in the area of today's Shimane Prefecture. Religiously the first two ballads are key in understanding popular attitudes concerning pilgrimage in Japan--the first demonstrating a creepy (almost voodoo) edge in Kannon faith at Kiyomizudera Temple, the second delightfully exaggerating the rejuvenating benefits of Kumano and its sacred hot springs. Meanwhile, the third ballad is a straightforwardly melodramatic retelling of a true story better known to us today in a more refined and literary version as found in the novelist Saikaku's "Five Women Who Loved Love" of 1686.

"Kokoro" is a difficult word to translate from Japanese to English. Heart, Spirit, Way of Being...it is all of these things. Rather than attempt a direct translation, Lafcadio Hearn offers a selection of stories focusing on Japanese inner life, so that by the end you will understand kokoro.

The stories follow Hearn's particular interests of Japanese folklore and the vanishing culture of which he found himself a part in post-Meji Japan. Each story is a slice of life focusing on Japanese character, morals and feelings. This is what the Japanese people care about, what they think is important, what is inside.

The selected tales are non-judgmental and non-orientalist. This is no attempt to explain or highlight the "strange" Japanese, but merely a record and an illumination, in the best sense of the term.

The collected stories:

"At a Railway Station"
"The Genius of Japanese Civilization"
"A Street Singer"
"From a Traveling Diary"
"The Nun of the Temple of Amida"
"After the War"
"Haru"
"A Glimpse of Tendencies"
"By Force of Karma"
"A Conservative"
"In the Twilight of the Gods"
"The Idea of Pre-Exsistance"
"In Cholera Time"
"Some Thoughts about Ancestor Worship"
"Kimiko"

When I immigrated to the USA my first priority had been to learn English and do it quickly. I had to find a job in a new language environment, I could read a little but I could not speak English at all. I had tried quite a few different methods; my progress was slow and unsatisfactory until I came across the Language Bridge method. I recommended Language Bridge to my friends and relatives. All of them started to speak English fluently much faster than their friends who used traditional methods of learning English.  I think that this is a unique method that restores the talent to acquire a foreign language in every adult. If you want to know how it is achieved, read carefully the information at http://www.language-bridge.com I will recommend Language Bridge to any person who needs to learn English fast and use it in everyday life.

I used this book to learn English and I think it is terrific! It uses a very unique and effective method. Everyone I know who used this book, never wanted to learn a foreign language any other way. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn a foreign language.

I must say that I had enjoyed the novel. It did an excellent job of portarying King Albrecht as a hero worthy of renown. All the intrigues were excellently crafted. It did an excellent job of culminating all the Werewolf lose ends. My only foible with the book is that the aftermath is a bit vague.

It's amazing.

Really the only TOJ book worth buying. The men and women that created WtA put their heart and soul into this game, and it shows in this final book...

Just simply amazing...

Dr. Kita hits with this work a crucial node in Japanese Art History: the transition from the medieval and classical traditions of art, from the art of the courtiers and handscrolls to that of the merchants and woodblock prints. Matabei is both chronologically and artistically at the centre of this transition, and his opus refuses simple interpretations.

Kita is the first scholar outside Japan to ever have researched on Matabei, and while his book gives a thorough review of the vivid discussions that Japanese scholars have held since the 19th century, it also presents the author's own extremely consistent study of Matabei. While Japanese art is often collected and admired in western museums, serious scholarship seldom transcends the borders of the archipel. This book is a fortunate exception, and it strikes both against the idea that Japanese-style scholarship is not suited for western readers, and agains the commonplace conceptions of Japanese art in the West, which has been looked at for too long now with the same blurred glasses of the "Japonisme" which, over a century ago, could not have more than a superficial interest for "decadent" woodblock prints or mysterious brushstrokes.

Solid image analysis, supported by reproductions for us mortals who do not have access to these rare paintings, is the base of Kita's argumentation, enhanced with abundant reference to earlier and contemporary scholars' studies. Leading us didactically, weaving a web of evidence that eventually comes down to the conclusion yet in no instance sacrificing academic consistency, this book is an ideal acquisition for both the experienced scholar of Japanese art and the serious amateur. Appendices, a glossary, and a character guide enhance the enjoyment of this book for many successive rereadings.

Dr. Kita hits with this work a crucial node in Japanese Art History: the transition from the medieval and classical traditions of art, from the art of the courtiers and handscrolls to that of the merchants and woodblock prints. Matabei is both chronologically and artistically at the centre of this transition, and his opus refuses simple interpretations.

Kita is the first scholar outside Japan to ever have researched on Matabei, and while his book gives a thorough review of the vivid discussions that Japanese scholars have held since the 19th century, it also presents the author's own extremely consistent study of Matabei. While Japanese art is often collected and admired in western museums, serious scholarship seldom transcends the borders of the archipel. This book is a fortunate exception, and it strikes both against the idea that Japanese-style scholarship is not suited for western readers, and agains the commonplace conceptions of Japanese art in the West, which has been looked at for too long now with the same blurred glasses of the "Japonisme" which, over a century ago, could not have more than a superficial interest for "decadent" woodblock prints or mysterious brushstrokes.

Solid image analysis, supported by reproductions for us mortals who do not have access to these rare paintings, is the base of Kita's argumentation, enhanced with abundant reference to earlier and contemporary scholars' studies. Leading us didactically, weaving a web of evidence that eventually comes down to the conclusion yet in no instance sacrificing academic consistency, this book is an ideal acquisition for both the experienced scholar of Japanese art and the serious amateur. Appendices, a glossary, and a character guide enhance the enjoyment of this book for many successive rereadings.

If you enjoyed Doctored Evidence, you will love this one. It is Karen Hayes at her best uncovering mystery and murder at the local hospital. With its multiple twists and surprises, it is impossible to put down and keeps you guessing. The book provides an interesting inside view of hospital operations and large attorney corporations. Don't miss this one.

Superbly written by professional attorney Michael Biehl, Lawyered To Death is a chilling mystery novel of murder, corruption, and legal shenanigans. Hospital attorney Karen Hayes becomes drawn into a scheming web of lies as she strives to defend her client from a sexual harassment claim that becomes a murder charge when his ailing wife dies from the administration of a drug she is allergic to. Karen Hayes must ultimately fight not only for justice, but to protect her own life and that of her infant son in this gripping and suspenseful tale. Also highly recommended is the first Karen Hayes mystery by Michael Biehl: Doctored Evidence.

The opening bid is one of the most important plays in bridge - and here to narrow the focus on this play is Leading Questions in Bridge, from a top player who addresses specifics such as whether to be an active or passive player, and how to lead trumps. Chapters are directed to intermediate players and discuss issues such as shortages, tricks, and more: perfect for any collection catering to serious bridge players.

I still think Mike Lawrences Opening Leads is the authoritative book on the subject. But this covers some areas it doesnt.

For example, you are on lead against this auction
1H - p - 1NT - p

You have 4 spades so you think that declarer doesn't have 4, else they would respond 1 Spade and not 1 heart. The author asks - what if they are using Flannery, where 2D shows a 4=5 hand with 11-15 points. Responded knows opener doesnt have 4 spades and 11-15 so there is no reason for them to bid 1 Spade, and they can instead bid 1NT. Opener can later Reverse to show 4 spades, but that didnt happen.

The point of the hand was that opponents agreements can give you information and you can't always use the same set of leads / assumptions.

Chapters like - when to lead trump are especially valuable. The author says early on she was taught to be wary about leading trumps. So she sets out to give clear situations when its a good idea to do so.

Not only is the material clear and well presented, it provides a set of inferences for pard and declarer. If you study this book, and LHO makes an unusual lead, ask "why might they do that? Teh auction does not indicate a trump lead". Hmmm, I wonder if its because LHO knows the suits are not splitting well, or the honors are poorly placed, and wants to cut down on dummy ruffs.

I'm not sure I agree with the author on all her examples of when to lead unsupported aces. But its still an excellent book. For all levels.

This book is a must to all Christians, it will help you to understand what it mean to praise, as well as the benefits of praising God. I found it a wonderful read.

This book is a classic. Judson Cornwall has been acknowledged as one of the first to write on public praise. This is the first of several books he wrote on worship.

Follow along as Judson learns about intimate worship. Learn from his struggles - one of the first to write about changing a congregation's attitude and practice toward intimate worship.

I especially recommend it because of an important gem. I keep coming back to reread a section, starting on page 70, where Judson is given a wakeup call. He says, "In real sorrow, I remember a dealing of God in my life."

The Lord told Judson, "My son, I would be first in your church...You do not lead your people to worship Me until you have lead them in the worship of demons."

At every service the pastoral team sensed demonic interference. At every service Judson would lead a prayer in which heads were bowed, eyes closed and Judson commanded demonic forces to leave the building. Judson was embarrassed to discover that the demonic forces accept this as worship and they come in great numbers for such attention.

He was told what to do. "Just ignore the presence of the demonic. Praise and worship Me. Center your people in praising Me, and I will deal with the demonic."

Judson did as he was told. He majored in God. His congregation used praise to break through the oppression. "From that day we never publicly acknowledged the presence of demonic forces."

The outcome: "Once the evil spirit forces were convinced that their days of being worshiped were over, once they knew that they could no longer hold our attention, they left. And they did not return."

Judson was first. Leanne Payne and John Paul Jackson have added their voices to warn of the price to pay for getting our focus off God. "Let Us Praise" is worth having on your shelf for this one important reason - to remind us not to give attention to the demonic and keep our awe, worship, prayer and praise focused on heaven.

As something of a freelance poet, Michael Palmer is someone I've turned to for inspiration. I don't know any pseudo-intellectual words to describe it, but his manipulation of words and ability to touch people with even really abstract work astounds me. He moves me. For an example of some of the brilliant work in this collection, try looking at "The Sun" online. (...)

P.S. Who is the moron that copied and pasted rave reviews but didn't star them? It really deflated the score.

Michael Palmer's poetry is so unique, & always unsparingly brilliant. This might be the most important book of his career, since it collects so much essential poetry he wrote over such a long period of time, such a major proportion of his life. He's done a lot more different things in his poetry since this book, & in the time span this selection covers. But this book is so important to get to know Michael Palmer, & what he's done to 20th & 21st century poetry.