Cameron Books

A java nut is defined as someone who worships the community developed JSRs. This book brings the ultra-boring standard to life with quite a bit of humor thrown in. For a veteran servlet/JSP developer, this is indeed a perfect starting point for portlets. However, you do need to know about servlets to understand phrases such as "...like a servlet, a portlet lives peacefully in a war file..." on page 2. It gets better as you read and I simply could not put this book down (a rarity among all programming books). It comrehensively answers the question "I know all there is to know about jsp, now how do I code portlets?".

I do have some suggestions for improvememts though (although I suspect the author will hate this). Basically, I think there is much more to portal development than the JSR-168 (soon to be obsolete or augmented by a new JSR). The standard is silent on practical aspects of portal development like themes, layouts and the all important content management systems (CMS) needed for large sites (in fact, anything to do with a database persistence or system state and, well, data is missing in the JSR-168). Portal vendors, even the "reference implementation" Pluto, therefore need much more than the JSR-168 to deliver the required developer functionality...this virtually guarantees that any "pure" JSR-168 portlet you write will need to be tweaked somewhat depending on which portal framework you will deploy into. Conversely, if you are using a commercial vendor CMS to create a portal, you need to know zilch about JSR-168. You will need to figure out the database level housekeeping details by yourself (or pay the vendor to teach you...no free lunch even with the open source guys). So, beyond the simplest toy portlets, albeit a solid exposition of the JSR, you will need more than this book to get really going (mostly understanding your framework and container etc...especially to master themes, layouts and CMS).

Finally, thanks to Amazon, I was able to order this book directly from the author (pulpjava). In addition sending me the latest edition of this book for no charge, he even sent me a free book on java exams...THANKS!

A friend of mine attended his class. He said this author is great, he explains things clearly and seems really understand students' need. He knows where students may get confused and he spends more time explain on them. He said he felt the teacher know what questions students may ask. Before student asks, the auther explains.

So I guess a good teacher can write good books because he knows how to explain. I think I am right. I have read another porlet book and very disappointed. After I read this one, I really understand how to work on portlet development.

Like in college, professors good at doing research may not be good at teaching, because they never figure out why students do not understand this kind of simple things (These professors are too smart). Teaching is a skill. This author is really good at teaching, so he is good at writing a book to teach reader.

This book gives you exactly what you need if you're new to the Portlet API. It goes over all of the classes of the JSR168 API, with lots of explaination of how portlets work, and simple, but relevant examples, that make it very easy to understand how, why, and what is going on inside of a portlet.

The book starts off with the basics of PortletRequest and PortletResponse programming, and moves quickly at a good pace into deeper and deeper subjects, such as PortletPreferences, PortletSession and Validators.

The book covers everything in the Portlet API, is easy to read, and makes many of the advanced topics very easy to understand. The author makes learning portlet development simple easy, which is perfect, because so many other books make it so convoluted and hard.

If you're doing portlet development, you've got to have this book on your bookshelf, if not right next to your keyboard.

The author has done a beautiful job in writing a clear and concise text on portlet programming for the JSR-168 spec. I've taken plenty of training on portal/portlet development and applied it minimally. Reading through this text summarized and CLARIFIED all of what went on in class, and made it much easier to comprehend. The quizzes at the end of the chapters are great checkpoints to boot. I've been very happy with the series of books Mr McKenzie has put out. They are engaging and invaluable to me as a java/web programmer.

I knew nothing about portals and portlets until I picked up this book. It really is an easy and enjoyable read and easy to follow and understand. I recommend this book to any one who would like to battle the IT world of Java and portlets. Another great thing is, if you really don't understand something you can go to the web sites and watch the free tutorials the author has online, and no offence, but if you don't understand it after reading the book and watching the tutorials then maybe portal is not best for you. :)

Who'd of thought a lost stuffed dog could turn a man's existence into a living nightmare and end with his healing and a new start. But that's exactly what happens when Peter McKrall, a man on a path of self-destruction, goes looking for his niece's stuff toy and winds up discovering a corpse and becoming the prime murder suspect.

Lost Dog is full of deeply drawn and sympathetic characters. There's not a cardboard one in the bunch. And as other reviewers have said here, even the killer, as demented as he is, is seen as tragic and sympathetic.

Bravo to Bill Cameron for creating such a readable and compelling book.

This is the first book I have read of Bill Cameron's (only because it's his debut book). But I can assure you, it won't be my last. I LOVED this book.

I'm a real sucker for anti-heroes, especially when they are written with such loving care as this author has done. Cameron's kleptomaniac protagonist happens upon a dead body in a park near his home and reports it to the police, trying to do the right thing. Big mistake, pal--but unavoidable. His grisly discovery happened while he was searching for his niece's stuffed pooch. A perfectly innocent endeavor that springboards this troubled man into a spiraling nightmare. And a surprising subplot of a romantic interest for this hapless hero was a real gem.

Cameron also paints a vivid picture of a frighteningly disorganized killer that sticks with the reader long after they've put down the book. Real people caught in a really bad day. Sign me up for Cameron's next book. This LOST DOG has found a home.

There's so much to admire about Bill Cameron's debut thriller. My favorite thing is that murder and being a witness to it evoke real emotion in the characters. These people are deeply real. The protagonist, Peter, is hardly a hero as the book opens, stifled underneath emotional scar tissue, battling the yuppie angst of losing his banking job and being henpecked by his maternal sister. He does find both the will and the strength to solve the murders, but doing so both costs him heavily and ultimately allows him to grow. And no one -- not the villain or his victim -- is bad to the core. They're all damaged people acting out the hurt they have suffered on others -- and often the appropriate people.

Cameron gets us to buy a string of coincidences that seem just implausible enough to really have happened. And there's a romance subplot in which neither character, even wearing makeup and heavily airbrushed, would make it into a Harlequin.

I'm being vague so as not to spoil it for you, but Cameron renders the climactic scene in an unconventional, unexpected, deeply felt and subtle way.

There are authors on the bestseller racks -- including one Robert Parker mentioned within the text of the book -- who should retire and make way for fresh, new voices of a more emotionally in-touch generation. Writers like Bill Cameron.

Bill Cameron knows his way around the mean streets of Portland. In the tradition of no good deed should go unpunished, Lost Dog gives you the perfect fall guy, a flawed protagonist who makes you hold your breath. Careening between what will he do next and what will happen to him next, this tasty piece of character-driven noir keeps you guessing from beginning to end. If you like them real with no pulled punches, the beautifully written Lost Dog is for you.

Robert Fate, author of Baby Shark

Lost Dog introduces one of its main characters, Jake, on its first page. A very troubled young man, Jake has just killed a woman and is in the process of concealing her body on the site of a neighborhood playground. After dragging her body over to a concrete tube, he lingers over it for a few moments, trembling. Then he turns to leave.

The book then changes its focus to Peter McKrall, the man who discovers the body while searching for his niece's lost doll. At first tempted to let someone else do it, Peter eventually calls the police. Later, as he's interviewed on TV, he expresses his contempt for the killer, stating his wish that the madman be discovered and "nailed to the wall." It's this phrase that captures Jake's unwelcome attention, ensuring that Peter's life, already complicated by the fact that the police consider him a prime suspect in the murder Jake committed, is about to become a living hell for the next few days.

Lost Dog is an interesting little passion play, focusing intensely on the lives of two men whom life has treated very badly. The victim of child abuse, Jake has descended into madness; the victim of some extremely bad luck, Peter still struggles to get by, despite flare-ups of depression and the occasional impulse to pocket things that are not his. Cameron's ability to make readers feel for both speaks volumes; his ability to keep readers in suspense as they come closer to a final meeting makes him someone to watch in the future.

I liked this volume, although maybe not as much as some of the other volumes. In this volume, Mara the demon is here to cause trouble, Urd is called back by the Almighty, a ghost girl tries to hold Keiichi to a promise his grandfather made, and Hasegawa wants to learn how to make the perfect lunchbox for a special someone. The back of this volume has a quote describing this series as "genuinely hear-warming" and I would have to agree. Although the author/artist often deals with themes that are a bit adult (mainly sex), somehow, this series has never gotten raunchy. It's a wonderfully sweet series, something that you can discover in practically any volume you might pick up. This volume seemed a little weaker to me than some of the others, probably because the short story format of some of the stories didn't let the characters shine as much as they could have, but it's still an excellent read.

After all that Mara has been through with the goddesses--charm allergies, amnesia, the Lord of Terror, other demons--you'd think she'd eventually give up on attacking them. Well, no one ever accused Mara of having a brain, or common sense. She's come back with a genie-like demon named Senbei, who shows up again in the "Devil In Miss Urd" arc. Needless to say, this doesn't do anything to stop the goddesses, and Mara and her accomplice are once again defeated.

Banpei enters, and causes problems for everyone in the household except for Belldandy, with whom he has fallen madly in love. This is a cute story, but it makes you feel kinda sorry for Keiichi and the oldest and youngest goddesses.

Every fan of OMG should have this book in their collection. So buy it!

This graphic novel covers the original Japanese manga Vol. 7 Ch. 45-47 & Vol. 8 Ch. 48-49. Chapter 45-46 is the Mara arc and chapters 48 & 49 are solo tales.

The first part of the Mara arc has her return to Earth where she possesses Megumi. She unleashes Senbei, who is a genie-demon of poverty and disaster, upon Keiichi and company. The second part of the Mara arc has Skuld create the anti-Mara robot Banpei which works a little too well. The third part has Urd being recalled to the heavens and Mara intends to make sure she leaves for good.

The next story has the Nekomi Tech Motor Club on a retreat to a lodge where a shinnentai (manifestation of will) lives. She seems to know Keiichi and is determined to make him fulfill a promise made in 1930! The final story has Belldandy teaching Sora on the art of making boxed lunches while Urd attempts to play matchmaker.

Bottom line: As one might expect from this series, the artwork is great. The stories are light for the most part with the latter two being more humorous. Great for a quick read before going to bed.

Another wonderful book in the Oh My Goddess series. Mara returns yet again to wreck havoc on the goddesses. This time she takes over Keiichi's little sister's body, and tries to bring misfortune to Belldandy with teh help of Senbei the demon of poverty. He is a prettyy neat guy who talks in the third person. He also lives in a bottle. Also in this book Skuld builds a robot named Banpei to protect the Morisato household from Mara. The problem is that the robot decides that Belldandy needs protection from everyone, including Keiichi and Skuld. Good stuff. Please read it!

The romance between mortal Keiichi and goddess Belldandy is the most innocent you'll find: rarely do they kiss and never more than that. Surrounding them are Belldandy's sisters: Urd (who wields misfiring love potions in an effort to speed things up) and Skuld (who builds bizarre contraptions which inadvertantly get in the way).

Though this book is named Mara Strikes Back, don't be misled into thinking an overarching plot exists. Characters do recur and remember and act based on what went before, but the stories are largely episodic. Lack of an overarching plot is not a detriment here: it allows Fujishima to be more playful with his characters, and the whole cast is a lot of fun (though Urd often steals the page, as it were). Fujishima's art seems richer here, especially in the backgrounds. His mastery over his art style clearly developed as the series progressed; the differences between the very earliest art and this art are quite striking.

I liked this book and it really had alot of cute hair styles. But it only had pictures, no written instructions. You can't see every picture clearly. Therefore you may miss a step or two.

my wife is very happy with this book. a lot of high quality pictures, the procedures are clearly explained using text and images.i highly recommend this product.

Wonderful photo's and detailed directions on how-to duplicate styles within this book!

Gave me great inspiration in designing my own variations by seeing the techniques used within this book.

The pictures for each step are very detailed and each hairstyle is very unique. My only problem was that there was very limited written instruction to go with each picture step. Other then that, a great book.

What an awesome book! There are large pictures and very easy to use. It gives a lot of ideas to improvise. Definite treasure to have. Will highly recommend. Every beauty shop should have one! Even though I'm giving 5 stars, wish there was more then 15 styles and less priced.

I came across this book through a recommendation. I'm so pleased I did.
As an admirer of Duke Ellington's work, I knew of Adelaide Hall, mainly through her connection and early recordings with Ellington, but knew little about the lady herself or her significant achievements in the world of entertainment.
In the books preface, the author, Iain Cameron Williams, claims Adelaide Hall appears in many jazz anthologies as a mere footnote, whilst others abandon her career altogether. With "Underneath a Harlem Moon" Williams attempts to set the record straight by documenting comprehensively her exact relevance and role in the History of Jazz and, in my opinion, succeeds admirably.
Williams's familiarity with his subject clearly demonstrates the amount and depth of research he made in order to unearth the facts. One gets the distinct impression that during the process he left no stone unturned, so detailed is his descriptive. Although Williams's 20-year friendship with Hall must clearly have helped him in appraising his subject's temperament, it must also have allowed him the privilege to see an intriguing side to her character that her fans would not normally have seen. This becomes apparent the deeper one delves into the text.
The book charts in rich detail the life and career of Miss Hall during the frenetic Harlem Renaissance and documents all the colourful characters to emerge from this movement, most of whom worked with Miss Hall at some point in her career. It also gives a fascinating insight into the social history of the Twenties and Thirties when Prohibition, real-life gangsters and sophisticated nightclub culture ruled the sidewalks.
Overall, a hugely enjoyable read made easy by Williams's approachable style of writing and keen interest towards the characters he portrays within the text. A must for all jazz and popular music buffs. The book also contains a sizeable gallery of superb photographs (including one, which must be of great interest to all Ellington fans, a rare previously unpublished photograph of Adelaide and Ellington together, circa 1930.)

With a glittering International career that brought her into contact with such icons as Rudolph Valentino, George Gershwin, Maurice Chevalier and Al Capone, not to mention all her renowned fellow black musicians and colleagues from the Harlem Renaissance, one wonders why the name Adelaide Hall is still relatively unknown or charted in our history books.
Her talent was pure ... untarnished by the ravages of [chemicals] and alcohol. She claimed that she was born to sing and entertain, and with an astonishing career that spanned eight decades how prophetic were those words.
To say I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book would be an understatement. The book has been written in such an appealing way that at times I actually felt as if I were part of the story as a member of the audience, so realistic were some of the events and dramas that occur within its pages.
I wholly recommend this book and can truthfully say that it's the best biography I have read this year.
5 stars for the writer.

I can only applaud the writer for the depth of research he obviously engaged upon in order to put forward Adelaide Hall's story and subsequently, I think this book is an important one.
During the 20s and 30s Hall stood alongside giants in the entertainment world yet today, for some unfathomable reason, she is almost forgotten.
Whilst reading Underneath a Harlem Moon I had an uncanny feeling of discovering hidden treasure that has lain buried for centuries. Thankfully, the writerýs intent to inform rather than lecture makes for an engaging and rewarding read. I certainly had no knowledge of the fact that it was Adelaide Hall who helped create the whole genre of jazz singing and, remarkably, that Ella, Billie and all the other jazz divaýs that are nailed inside our history books, only followed in Hallýs steps.
Williams accounts vivid stories of the glory, persecution, pain and happiness Hall encountered in order to achieve her goals and in the process brings the subject's forceful personality, talent and human nature to light. Hall's focused ambition, drive and tenacity, along with the extraordinary eventful circumstances of her life will drive anyone's interest. Her painful contact with racism, the wrath of her impresario and mentor Lew Leslie, the continual envy she experienced from her colleagues and many of her so called friends, along with the tiresome neglect she endured from her philandering and money grabbing husband all led to an isolation Hall appears to have suffered from continuously throughout her life. Her only escape was to tread the boards, for it was here she felt at home and could bask in the real warmth, love and affection she received from her audience. The stage became her drug and, from the volume of work Hall performed, one feels it was an addiction she had no intention of ever giving up.
Energetic reading with thought provoking facts and the most fascinating account of the Harlem Renaissance that I have ever come across. Williams has done a great job of packing this book with valid information without making it overly wordy which makes for an easy read that fairly flies by.
I hope I'm correct in saying that Adelaide Hallýs prospects could very easy change with the publication of this book.

By documenting Adelaide Hall's early career, which ran parallel with one of the most fascinating and culturally rich era's in American black musical history, the writer not only paints a vivid and well written account of the real first lady of Jazz, he also cleverly portrays the whole spirit and ethos of the Harlem Renaissance and all the wonderful characters that helped create this movement. "Underneath a Harlem Moon" is one of the finest books that I have read about the 20s and 30s Jazz Age and one that I thoroughly recommend.

When we are asked of jazz vocal pioneers, the names Ethel, Billie, Ella, and Dinah roll off our tongues without contemplation. However, Iain Cameron Williams, in his book Underneath a Harlem Moon, introduced me to a diva who had been omitted from the history books. This diva is Adelaide Hall.

Born on "the rough side of Brooklyn" and raised in Harlem, Adelaide Hall became one of the most famous black Broadway and cabaret stars, rivaling the legacies of Florence Mills, Ethel Waters, and the like. Williams traces her journey from an ordinary gal from New York to a famed singer, dancer, and actress, the world over.

Williams, a friend of the late Hall, has definitely done his homework. I could tell that he had sat with Adelaide many a time while she related her stories to him in great detail. While I understand that Williams was trying to set a backdrop for Adelaide's story, I felt as though too much time was spent on the histories of her surroundings and her contemporaries, such as Al Capone, Josephine Baker, and even the Duke himself.

I feel like the proverbial wool has been lifted from my eyes about where female jazz vocalists really began. I took the time to research Adelaide further, and even got a chance to listen to some of her recordings. I can now see clearly, after having read Underneath a Harlem Moon, getting to know Adelaide, and hearing her crooning voice, the profound effect she had on divas past and present.

Reviewed by CandaceK
The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

This book is indeed a "Cookbook"; nice examples on how to do lots of stuff. It is nicely categorized and the explanations/discussions are easy to follow. The authors seem to have lots of experience, and are honest enough to even explain when NOT to use bash; when for example perl would do better.

Highly recommended if you want to get stuff done using bash.

Currently this is the only book that specifically covers bash 3.2, the version that contain new and interesting features like =~ operator for "normal" regular expression matching.

The main advantage of the book that it really covers a lot of ground and provides system administrators and users with a lot of good and difficult to find tips about customizing of the environment and making yourself more productive.

Chapters 5-6 which provide good overview of new features introduced in version 3.x including "normal" regular expressions pattern matching ( operator =~) and C-style for loop. One problem with shells traditionally use two completely obsolete notations for regular expressions (basic regular expression often known as DOS-style regular expressions plus quite perverse prefix notation ). Bash 3.2 did not fixes this problem as this is a problem of Unix in general (Unix can be called an Os that uses a dozen of different definitions of regular expressions :-) that but at least added a normal regular expression notion to the list.

After chapters 5 and 6 I recommend reading chapters 9, 17 and 19 and then the rest. While chapters are of very uneven quality, usually you can find at least one useful tip in each.

The spectrum of bash related tips and useful mini-scripts is quote substantial. The authors cover classic things like customizing prompt quite well. The book is not only about bash it covers a lot of ground including use of classic Unix utilities in scripting (most notably grep, find, sort, and date) along with related topics such as use of pipes and I/O redirection.

Of course for such a complex topic there are some shortcomings. It's a pretty difficult task to write a good cookbook but authors did an excellent job and provided many very valuable tips that can help to improve both system administrators and power users productivity.

One of the problems for a cookbook is a good organization and specifically a good starting chapter and here authors failed. Some chapters are half-baked. The Chapter about version control is badly written and very superficial. The authors just mention a couple of system without any details. And in this topic the devil is in details.

Some bash features are explained superficially. For example bash has horrible implementation of pushd/popd/dirs troika and it not that easy to use them productively. One notable deficiency is that there is no way to suppress duplicates which in essence make this feature almost unusable. The authors treatment looks like a baseless advertizing of a poorly implemented feature.

But I hope that the authors will improve the book in the next edition and I am reluctant to downgrade the book based on those flaws. After all, this is a cookbook and it should be judged by the best recipes not the worst.

Linux system admin is something I do as part of my job. I've been able to acquire the basics and get the job done, but I knew that there were better ways to get the job done. Nothing like having an expert to help learn the ins and outs.

This book allowed me to take it to the next level. There are many excellent examples on how to get it done, as well as advice on things that should not be done.

There is a good mix of newbie info as well as useful tips for the seasoned veteran. There's usually more than one way to get the job done, and this book showed me some new, better ways to accomplish the task at hand.

If you're working with bash, you'll find something useful in this book.

This book covers the GNU Bourne Again Shell, which is a member of the Bourne family of shells that includes the original Bourne shell sh, the Korn shell ksh, and the Public Domain Korn Shell pdksh. This book is for anyone who uses a Unix or Linux system, as well as system administrators who may use several systems on any given day. Thus, there are solutions and useful sections for all levels of users including newcomers. This book is full of recipes for creating scripts and interacting with the shell that will allow you to greatly increase your productivity.

Chapter 1, "Beginning bash" covers what a shell is, why you should care about it, and then the basics of bash including how you get it on your system. The next five chapters are on the basics that you would need when working with any shell - standard I/O, command execution, shell variables, and shell logic and arithmetic. Next there are two chapters on "Intermediate Shell Tools". These chapters' recipes use some utilities that are not part of the shell, but which are so useful that it is hard to imagine using the shell without them, such as "sort" and "grep", for example. Chapter nine features recipes that allow you to find files by case, date, type, size, etc. Chapter 10, "Additional Features for Scripting" has much to do with code reuse, which is something you find even in scripting. Chapter 11, "Working with Dates and Times", seems like it would be very simple, but it's not. This chapter helps you get through the complexities of dealing with different formats for displaying the time and date and converting between various date formats.

Chapter 12, "End-User Tasks As Shell Scripts", shows you a few larger though not large examples of scripts. They are meant to give you useful, real world examples of actual uses of shell scripts beyond just system administration tasks. Chapter 13, "Parsing and Similar Tasks", is about tasks that will be familiar to programmers. It's not necessarily full of more advanced scripts than the other recipes in the book, but if you are not a programmer, these tasks might seem obscure or irrelevant to your use of bash. Topics covered include parsing HTML, setting up a database with MySQL, and both trimming and compressing whitespace. Chapter 14 is on dealing with the security of your shell scripts. Chapters 15 through 19 finish up the book starting with a chapter on advanced scripting that focuses on script portability. Chapter 16 is related to the previous chapter on portability and is concerned with configuring and customizing your bash environment. Chapter 17 is about miscellaneous items that didn't fit well into any other chapter. The subjects include capturing file metadata for recovery, sharing and logging sessions, and unzipping many ZIP files at once. Chapter 18 deals with shortcuts aimed at the limiting factor of many uses of bash - the typing speed of the user and shortcuts that cut down on the amount of typing necessary. The final chapter in the book, "Tips and Traps", deals with the common mistakes that bash users make.

All in all this is a very handy reference for a vast number of the tasks that you'll come across when scripting with the bash shell along with well-commented code. Highly recommended.

These O'Reilly Cookbooks should be on every sysadmin's shelf. The Bash Cookbook is no different. Incredibly useful book. I didn't read it cover to cover but have gone back to it at least 15-20 times to pull out nuggets of info. The real-world, practical examples and solutions offered in this book provide the sysadmin with a virtual swiss army knife when working with bash.

Book was so useful, I bought two extra copies and sent them to coworkers.

Awsome story with just enough horse to make it good. I am usually very critical of any equine errors but found none in this book. Really enjoyed.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Not only were the plot and characters well-written and entertaining, the factual information regarding the horse show industry was pretty accurate. This is fairly rare in a novel.

I enjoyed the main characters, Sandy and Tom, and felt that both were fleshed out well. Their relationship faced ordinary obstacles -- jealousy, mistrust, uncertainty -- amongst unusual circumstances.

The support characters were consistent, which is often difficult for authors to achieve.

Additionally, there were enough hazy references to the first book in the series (which I have not yet read) to pique my interest. I look forward to picking it up soon.

This is a well paced story with unexpected twists and turns that had me guessing up until the surprising conclusion. Sandra and Tom are shown to be more than just detectives, they are individuals that are complex and compelling. Like Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn of the Tony Hillerman novels, I want to see them at work, because I want to know the characters better.

Wonderful book! I am rarely surprised at who the murderer is. But in both Blood Reins and an animated murder in Burbank I was pleasantly surprised. Mr. Joens is an excellent author and I highly recommend all of his books.

"Blood Reins" is the follow-up in the Detective Sandra Cameron series from the starting novel, "An Animated Death in Burbank," and once again, it reflects one of the authors' passions and something he knows a great deal about. The first story featured a murder mystery within the animation industry (Michael Joens has past week in the animation field.) and in this novel, the plot revolves around people involved in horse-racing and breeding.

Our heroine, Sandra Cameron is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from the events of the past story. She's having nightmares as well as breakdowns and although her relationship with Tom Rigby, as well the kitten Sylvie he gave to her, have helped, she's still pretty messed up. Things only seem to go from bad to worse when the murder case in this novel, of horse trainer Chet Gundry, ends up involving both her and her father as potential suspects.

As the story unfolds, there are more deaths and more potential suspects as well. The web grows quite complicated and the strain takes its toll on both Sandra and Tom. It'll keep you guessing right up to the end.


I didn't enjoy "Blood Reins" quite as much as "An Animated Death in Burbank," but overall it was still a great story. It's probably just because I have an interest in animation, but don't really care much about horses. Still, if you enjoyed the first book in the series, you'll probably like this one. And I'm definitely looking forward to the next installment in the series.

This book is excellent. It is one of the few "layman's" books out there that actually present referenced scientific research for the public to truly understand. And the research involves an extremely important health aspect---why millions of people around the world are dying from cancer every year, and why most of them do not have to die if they take several grams of Vitamin C daily. Personally I recommend calcium ascorbate, because it's buffered, and it won't upset a person's stomach. I have taken the liberty of referencing a few sentences of Pauling and Cameron's work in the Cancer chapter of my book "The Failures of American Medicine"...

this is the book that explain not only the conection and the actions of vitamin c on cancer, but also explain the use of the chemotherapy and radiotherapy in the kinds of cancers that it is necessary, and in what kinds it is not.in all over the book there are many case histories that are covered and the explanations on how vitamin c is realy woking on all types of cancers, and why.the expirience of both,( the grate late two times nobel price winner:linus pauling), and the scotish-oncologist: ewan cameron,that in 10 years of therapy of thousands of patients make that book possible to be published.this is linus pauling's last book before he died in 8.19.1994 .in short and in general, it is realy a great book of a combination of a chemist, and an oncologist.i am recommended very much to every one.

Cameron and Pauling prove with clinical studies that large doses of Vitamin C taken over long periods of time are effective in controlling many cancers. Linus Pauling earned two Nobel Prizes. He deserved a third Nobel for this book.

As a medical professional I have used this book to preform vitamin c therapy on cancer patients. Even A friend of mine was diagnosed with brain tumor and experienced a complete remission after following the guidelines in this book. Funny how the doctor who saved his life was severely reprimanded for performing vitamin c infusions.

I still don't believe it and neither did the neuro surgeons.

This book explains why the A.M.A. and how the A.M.A. discredits vitamin c trials and their results by pointing out the discrepancies in testing, misleading language, and a total lack of objectivity which should always be prevalent in any scientific discussion. Really, if a therapy is safe, cheap, and provides hope, what's the big objection?

A real eye opener! Extremely informative! A must for all cancer patients!

Cameron and Pauling treated a large series of terminally ill cancer patients with massive doses of vitamin C. They saw significant increases in the life expectancy of these patients, including some complete remissions.

They gave a later group of terminally ill patients a broad spectrum of other vitamins and minerals with their vitamin C. These patients had even larger increases in life expectancy. Results were best with cancers of the reproductive system.

A Japanese study agrees with Cameron and Pauling but a Mayo Clinic study does not.

Seen in retroperspective I should have dedicated my book "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence" to Leslie-Cameron, given that reading her book helped me to write a reply to Goleman's book. Out of respect for her work, I keep refering people to this book.

The biggest "mistake" of this book is that it appeared 10 years too early, long before Goleman made the term "emotional intelligence" popular. Yet it does a far better job than Goleman when it comes to helping people to increase their EQ.

Leslie Cameron is one of the co-founders of NLP, even if she now has moved on and seems to be "lost" to the NLP community. I keep wondering where the field of emotional intelligence would have stood if Leslie would have kept up her work in this area.

Conclusion: even now this remains one of the best books on the topic of emotional intelligence. I hope that readers of my book will feel that it's complementary.

Patrick E.C. Merlevede, MSc -- co-author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"

This book by Leslie Cameron-Bandler (now Leslie Lebeau) and Michael Lebeau is in my opinion the best book so far on emotional management. I read this book over 16 years ago and my copy is well-worn (I even bought another copy for when my original will finally have to be retired).

The book is easy to understand and the principles and techniques are easy to understand and apply: with praactice you will learn how to get your emotions to work for you rather than against you.

In this book you will learn:

The Strucutre of emotions: this section will give you a model of the eight components that comprise an emotion (Criteria, chunk size, comparison, involvement,intensity,modality,time frame and tempo) and how understanding and changing those components will allow you to transform emotional states or create the ones you deisre.

The Functional Attributes of emotions: here you will learn how to respond to emotions (especially unpleasant ones) as signals to take better more useful actions. The book provides a list of possible meanings of different emotions and how you can use those meanings to serve you. Example: Anxiety: the signal or functional attribute of anxiety is to let you know thatthat there is something in your future for which you need to better prepare (page 36).

You will also be given insight and strategies for dealing with difficult emotions before you experience them, while you are experiencing them, and after you are experiencing them.

You will also learn various ways to gain access to the emotions you want, when you want them.

At the end of the book you are given a summary of all the major principles and strategies offered in the book for quick reference.

I refer to this book often and have used it as the basis for seminars and trainings I have conducted on emotional mastery.

You will benefit tremendously from the book. By applying what you read you will quickly gain practical tools and skills that will give you greater emotional choice and freedom.

Buy and read it!

I actually tried this method for several months, keeping an emotional journal. I had little success, nothing like what the book promised, but I didn't have a thorough understanding of the basics of the book's methods.

My emotions are responses to conditions that are important to me, and when they are not, then I decide that there's something wrong with the way my emotions are working. But whether my emotions work or not, I have to discover what they are a response to, and the book "The Emotional Hostage" tells a person how to do that. I didn't really consider that part of it when I starting using the models, I just assumed that I could decide what my emotions were made up of, and then control them. When that didn't work, I gave up on the book.

If you do what I mistakenly did the first time I read through the book and tried out it's methods, you'll find that it's easier to say to yourself "I'm not changing my emotional tempo correctly" than it is to say "I'm not really appreciating what my emotion is signaling" or "I don't know what my emotion is signaling". The book describes a "generative" method of responding to one's own emotions. If there's one thing worth taking away from the book, that method is it.

You need to learn how to respond to your emotions before you consider the details of your emotional elements, because you'll find that emotional elements are conceptually slippery. What the authors mean by them are actually obvious behaviors you notice are a part of your emotions. For me they were conceptual ??? whenever I thought of them, but I still told myself that I felt an emotional element ("I'm feeling an emotional element!") when I didn't even know how to identify them.

So read the book thoroughly, and then decide for yourself what evidence of your emotions are ones you associate with a particular emotional element. Learning to change that element may then have an effect that you need to change your emotions, just like the book promises. Or you can fritter your time away like I did, wondering if what you're feeling is an "emotional element".

About 18 years ago I had the pleasure of working one on one with Leslie as she was researching her model of Imperative Self Therapy. In just over 2 hours, I experienced first person Leslie in action employing all the processes from this book, Emotional Hostage, along with Emprinting and Futurepacing.

You may not know these terms but I assure you, everything in Emotional Hostage is in lay terms. All that is required is that you accept Leslie's invitation to try on some of the ideas and methods offered in the book. Keep what works, return what does not.

I have given away over 100 copies of this book to my co-workers, fellow seekers, students, teachers, even strangers. I would have this book required teaching in all health and education related fields.

I strongly suggest you read all works of Leslie Cameron Bandler Lebeau if you are a student of NLP, a therapist, a personal coach or an educator. For everyone else, it's an open invitation. Please take the chance, show up for life. This book will show you how.

The best book I've ever read on emotions. I refer back to it often. Worth studying and incorporating into your own life.

From Planeta Journal - The Handbook looks better than ever. This new edition of the Mexico and Central America guide provides reliable information about general tourism as well profiles of national parks and reserves. Explore the ruins of Copan in Honduras, Oaxaca's beaches or Belize's cayes. This is a terrific guide. The format is easy to follow. Colorful pictures and maps compliment the text. Highly recommended.

I used the handbook for a 6 month motorcycle trip along the transamerican highway (from Canada to Peru) and it has proven to be very accurate and reliable. Its like a bible for tourists.

Our company, AmeriSpan, sends thousands of people to Latin America every year. This is the book that we use AND recommend to our clients. It is updated annually and is simply the best. -John Slocum, President of AmeriSpan

i traveled through mexico to costa rica with this book over a period of three years (1992 edition). stayed in every type of living arrangement, travelled by nearly every type of transport, and it had the info that i needed to make it. one book for 7 countries you can't beat it. just got the updated edition for my next trip.

I'm a big fan of the Handbook series; I began using the Latin America Handbook in 1972, have used it over many years, and have used any of the rest of the series that I could find, whenever and wherever I have found them. I used the 1996 edition for Mexico and Cuba, and it confirmed my opinion that there is no better guidebook available for Latin America. I'm headed for Central America in a few days, and unfortunately haven't been able to get a copy in time, so I've had to get another - O.K., but I will miss the thorough coverage of the Mexico and Central American Handbook. It's good for places to stay at all levels, for services, for transportation, and gives good general information such as history, current situations, and most importantly, is updated every year.