Elliott Books

Carter Elliott brings to life the dialect and the folkways of one West Virginia community in this debut crime novel that snakes up snow-covered Sad Mother Mountain and skids down Dumb John's Mountain with page-turning prose skating by faster than a car hitting ice on a hairpin curve.

"Riding a Blue Horse" is the story of 14-year-old (and over the hill) Molly Small -- who's making her way to a West Virginia remote mountain county that headquarters a ring of kiddie-porn operators -- and Molly's unlikely protector, a lumbering, simpleminded 18-year-old the locals have nicknamed "Stupe."

Molly's unexpected appearance in Shawnee turns out to be but the first in a series of unusual events facing God-fearing state trooper Roscoe Bragg and young postal inspector Rens Vandermeer. The day after she arrives, a small private plane crashes into Dumb John's Mountain, leaving the pilot dead, and -- huddled in the snowy wreckage, a terrified, helpless, illegally adopted six-year-old boy. There's more surprises in store when, much to his astonishment, Stupe discovers the heavy leaf bag doesn't contain the dead fawn his daddy said he'd hit and wanted Stupe to bury.

The author knows his stuff: Elliott used to work for the CIA and had a second career in federal law enforcement. The former special agent also holds a Masters degree in clinical psychology, and he puts it all to good use in a poignant, richly layered story that resonates both in the heart and mind.

In the backwoods of West Virginia lies the heart of a kiddie porn operation. Into the lazy town of Shawnee drifts fourteen year old Molly Small, a prostitute- spunky, brash and old way beyond her years. She is looking for Turk, the man she wants to live with the rest of her life. She finds instead Stupe, a mentally impaired young man with strong religious convictions at odds with his belief to honor his mother and father. He learns that his father, Shug, runs a kiddie porn network that has harmed and occasionally killed young children. Stupe knows he must eventually stop his father- the question is how to do it and still remain true not only to the Ten Commandments but his new friend Molly. The result leads to an explosive confrontation that rings both tragic and true.
Very very impressive characterizations make this debut effort stand out. No less impressive is the great sense of locale. The remote Appalachian backwoods literally comes alive. There are slight problems with the flow and pacing of the story which appears to run out of steam about thirty pages too early. However, this is a remarkable achievement and well worth the reader's time.

It's been two weeks since completing the book and I still find myself thinking about each character. Chapter after chapter left me feeling outraged or heartbroken, and brought more than a few chuckles as little Molly's ,less than polished, personality unfolded. The author writes with a vivid and decriptive quailty that brought the good, bad, and ugly events in the mountains of a small town in West Virginia to my nightstand. Molly and Stupe have a long future, and I look forward to a sequel.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Very different and well-developed characters, especially Stupe and Molly. I felt like I knew them personally by the end of the book and kind of wanted to know what might become of them.
I loved the descriptions of the locales; they left very vivid pictures in my mind of what this rural area of West Virginia might be like.
I read lots of mystery novels and rank this one pretty high up there, in part because it was a different kind of story line, with unusual main characters. The fact that I can remember characters and the plot several months after reading it is something I can't say for many of the mysteries I read!

The place: Halsted Street, Chicago. The people: Anthony, 34, a stripper. Lance, 27, also a stripper. And Brooke, Lance's 17-year-old girlfriend, a call girl. Both men appear on brightly lit stages at night, battling their fleeting youth while struggling to survive. Lance has been in prison (and he's a little bit mad). Lance has killed (see the blue teardrops tattooed under his eye). Anthony is also violent, but in a more subtle, internal way. As for Brooke ... she's a runaway but she still looks like the little girl she is (perhaps that's why she tries returning home). Although for a time the characters remain strangely detached from everything -- including, it often seems, each other -- as the story progresses they become more and more tangled, their relationship resulting in an ending as gritty as it is horrible.

Lance is at one point said to be "jagged and angry," and WHAT IT MEANS TO LOVE YOU could easily be described the same way. Stephen Elliott, a former male stripper writing about being a male stripper, is devastatingly accurate without stooping to sensationalism, creating (as in his earlier novel, A LIFE WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES) a story all too close to so many autobiographies of former foster children and street kids. This book is relentlessly dark, written in short, choppy sentences -- harsh, yet undeniably insightful. Perhaps the best paragraph comes when Brooke has finally succeeded in seducing her father: "The flowers watch the stuffed animals and the dresser watches the walls." While the style does grow monotonous (it could in no way be called "flowing"), it is also heavily loaded and very easy to read. I had some trouble deciding between four and five stars, but finally had to opt for four because, brilliant as this story is, the ending is still predictable.

Hard, bitter, angry, heartbreaking -- WHAT IT MEANS TO LOVE YOU is a solidly realistic account of inner city violence and despair from one of my favorite emerging authors.

This is a story of two handsome male strippers in love with the same beautiful teen prostitute, and how they rise above their gritty lives to find something new, better, and more meaningful, eventually turning their backs on the hustling life. <

Stephen Elliott is a winner of the $54,000 Stegner Prize and a writer-in-residence at Stanford University. He is Dosteovski, Victor Hugo, Francois Villon, James T. Farrell, and Maxim Gorky all rolled up together. WHAT IT MEANS TO LOVE YOU is his fourth book and his best. With each book the escalation of his talent is exponential and impossible to explain in the normal terms of literary progression. In times to come people will marvel that such a writer--and such a man-- existed in our age. He is only 30 years old.

Steve is an old buddy of mine, and I write this having known the origins of some of his stories, a bit jaded. The plot has been described above, and that's good enough to go with. I'll add that his take and insider's view on Chicago's seedy underbelly is absolutely riveting, a Bukowski life told Mike Royko-esque (see "Boss").

Steve manages to get more out of his stories than most other authors I've read. WIMTLY is a book about action, things that happen, and it lets you draw your own conclusions. There are moments where you'd wish for more, but as you proceed through the book you see you're getting more, just not in the way you thought you'd see it. This book was--for me--easy to read, and difficult to put down. I bought it `cause I knew some of the stories ahead of time, and because I knew the author. I left the book feeling like I would have picked this up anyway, had I but known.

Steve gets into things you'd heard about somewhere but never had the guts or wherewithal to try yourself, takes you to the edge of that thing, and most often creeps right up into it, showing you the insider's view of it. Guts laid bare. Ups and downs and not time enough to digest it all. His characters fight for freedom from ennui, freedom from ugliness, and freedom from reality. And they don't shame themselves away from these pursuits.

A good piece of work. A fascinating story.

Out of the gates, I did not want to like this book. I'd paused reading another book to walk through the concrete gardens of WHAT IT MEANS TO LOVE YOU and I was unhappy. It's not like Elliott writes happy books or anything, don't get me wrong, I knew what I was getting myself into. It's just I drifted off the cheeky first person affection of the previous novel and landed in a scratchy, third-person, wool sweater: tight, hot, and digging into my skin. Then on page 9, it happens: "And sometimes just missing is worse than never having a chance at all." And that's how it is with Elliott. You're standing there cursing the wool sweater when the grey skies start dumping snow and everyone else shivers while you find wool is sometimes the only thing.

WIMTLY is the tale of three people whose lives intersect on the underside of Chicago's belly. While it stretches wide to cover all three characters, the true focus is Anthony, a stripper and cross section for the other two characters. To say anything more about the plot is just silly.

Elliott writes characters who never achieve redemption or garner sympathy but somehow emerge pristine and developed, saved by their trueness to form. If you've ever read a book and found somewhere mid-press a character doing or saying something stilted, you know what I'm talking about. This just never happens in WIMTLY. At those pivotal moments where melodrama could wash the color out of rainbow, Elliott's characters do and say only what people in such situations would, no matter how unpopular.

I liked Elliott's other books but neither of them have the maturity and poise of this novel. And if you don't want to read it for any other reason read it for this one, Elliott does this thing. There's no word for it. You won't find it chipping off shorts in a Lit class. He pares things down to a wicked core and it feels like everything could end right there and it would be complete. It's just good writing and there is a lot less of that than you might think given all the yahoos that make the shelves these days. He does this:

"You're not getting old, Anthony thinks. You're a crack whore. Crack whores are only two ages, alive and dead."

And he does this:

"Once you've given something for nothing you can never ask for as much again."

Every time you turn around it's just that solid. And that's what it means to love this novel anyway.

I already owned 2 other wine dog books prior to getting this one. This book follows along with the others in the quality of the photographs and the humor of the captions. The book itself is expertly bound and is quite exquisite. It would make a great gift. I loved it and look forward to when the next wine dog book is published.

Lot's of pictures, but not many stories. Thought there would be at least something about the dogs. Just a little data on each picture, makes for a really boring thumb through.

This book is a real charmer! Cheeky Rodney, who graces the cover with a mouthful of grapes, never fails to bring a smile to my face. Originally bought as a gift for a friend, I found that I just couldn't part with those gorgeous canine characters. Wine Dogs is filled with great photos, funny, doggy descriptions interspersed with enjoyable essays. This heart-warming book has become a well-thumbed part of my library, with all the family having their particular favourites: Tink, on page 32, Cass on page 94, Sam on page 109 and Nellie on page 217. And who could not love Sid Vicious on page 102?
Oh, and my friend didn't miss out, I just bought them another copy.

Winedogs, you cannot be serious. You can *not* be serious! I had only made it to page 119 and there he is again - Groundskeeper Willie. Wasn't he in Winedogs USA? Admittedly, the odds of this happening could possibly be increased because Mocha the groodle is from Voyager Estate who have the largest population of winery dogs on Earth. Groodle. Sorry? I have heard of a labradoodle but my knowledge of the world's dog breeds is obviously sadly lacking.

Here we have "more dogs of Australian wineries" as this volume is alternate-titled. It is clear that from the foreword by Max Allen to the action montage of Mufasa the Rhodesian ridgeback on the last plate in the book, we have another magnificent hit from the publishers of Winedogs. I am a lover of pointy dogs. I don't know what it is but you can't beat a good pointy dog. Look at Kathleen Quealy's Rocky (p. 289) Jim Barry Wines' Jacq (p. 169), Tim O'Callaghan's Suki (p.149), Matt Harrop's Sally (p. 145) or Ben Thompson's Sasha from Best's at the wonderful wine 'mecca' of Great Western in Victoria. These are just a few of the sensational dogs in the new edition of Australian Winedogs.

As is usual, Winedogs intersperses the beautiful pictures with an appropriate collection of winery dog-related stories. This time we have pieces by winemaker/writer and former highly-regarded sommelier, Nick Stock, Cecilia Schubert, Peter Forrestal, wine journo Greg Duncan-Powell (fair dinkum, Greg?) Vanya Cullen, a lovely tribute to Henschke's Cassiopeia by Judy Saris; also an oldie but a goodie by Craig McGill and a short-and-sweet cracker of a Scottish tale by Rick Burge. Those readers who have been taking notice will be interested to know that we now have a follow-up to Dogstrology: Wine Dog Personals. This is a rib tickler from Sally Ashton and Zar Brooks.

Finally, I have to mention my favourite photos in the book. In second place on p. 90 we have The Burge Family's Dudley and Jessie. How gorgeous are they! But the award goes to the second-last plate in the book on p. 296, Alan and Helen Polglase's Baxter and Lily. This is a superb book. Have a look - you will love it.

While the comments of the other reviewers are well taken, and probably right, we are in Elliott's debt for placing his massive learning in the social sciences at our disposal in this brilliant commentary. Elliott has long been known as one of the premier interpreters of 1 Peter and his erudition shows here. This is a massive commentary and well worth the time and effort spent reflecting on, working through, and thinking about what Elliott has written.

I don't know any more overdone commentary than this 1000 page book for only 5 chapters, do you?
Elliott has a hugely detailed knowledge of social and cultural customs and Greco Roman civil issues underlying 1 Peter's ideas and expressions. Yet he is not too complicated to read, although you will not like to use Elliott if you have two hours to study one chapter. Elliott conceives of 1 Peter as pseudepigraphic. I would recommend therefore Jobes 2005, who takes over the good things of Elliott but thinks 350 pages for 5 chapters will do.

The new edition of the Anchor Bible Commentary on 1 Peter IS NOT the same as the previous edition. This is far more comprehensive, far more in depth. It is over 3 times the size of the last edition, but that does not necesarily make it an improvement. However the quality of the content is extraordinary. Elliot provides the best looks at 1 Peter that you will find anywhere. None of the other modern commentaries approaches its breadth of view. Nevertheless, depth of insight has not been sacrificed. Elliot provides fresh, new outlooks into this books of the New Testament. The only downside of the present edition is its daunting size, which may turn off some lesser-educated laity; but the content is no less accessible than any of the other books in the Anchor Bible series. This will be useful for pastors and laymen alike.

What better book to give you insight on what the commanders of the Market Garden operation were thinking when everything hit the fan. Read this in conjunction with "A Bridge Too Far" to get a very good outline of the battle.

This is a good companion volume to Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far. A valuable perspective from the point of view of the British 1st Airborne Division's commanding officer, essential to anyone who wants a complete understanding of this battle and its tragic outcome.

This is a good companion volume to Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far. A valuable perspective from the point of view of the British 1st Airborne Division's commanding officer, essential to anyone who wants a complete understanding of this battle and its tragic outcome.

It's the perfect book for 7-somethings, all about popularity and what is really valuable. And it's based upon a real-life story that happened to the author's daughter. One of my favorite childhood books...and now my little girl wants to do a Best Loved Doll Birthday Party!

This was my mother's favorite childhood book, as well as my own. Recommended to anyone with daughters.

It was my favorite book when I was a kid and now my girls love to read it too. Its a must for any little girl who thinks her dolls are people too!

Gannon needed Erika's editorial skills so that he could help his father win the CEO position of the EPH. Erika thought this was her chance to get what she always dreamed of - a baby! So, they made a contract - she come work for him, and he give her his sperm. But what they didn't take into consideration was the sizzling attraction between them...and boom! you have a fast pace, amazing story.

What I liked about this book is that it didn't minced words. The author got the scenes and dialogues right that will have you hooked, lined and sinkered. I would truly recommend this book to everyone, and it is an amazing way to start a new dynasty - THE ELLIOTTS.

Can't wait for Taking Care of Business by Brenda Jackson to come out. Would like to know how the romance between a white billionaire and a black social worker turns out. (no social discrimination intended)

Front back cover:
Gannon Elliott never expected to become a father just to hire an editor for his magazine. But the billionaire had been bred to compete and win, like all in the Elliott dynasty, and now to win a challenge, he needed the best - his ex-lover Erika Layven.

More than anything, Erika wanted a baby, and the way she saw it, Gannon, who'd ruined her for any other man, owed her. It didn't matter that his green eyes drew her like a bee to honey, that his killer bod put sinful thoughts in her head. She'd simply draw up a contract and treat him like any other business deal. But Erika made one fatal mistake. She underestimated Gannon's charms....

I like Leanne Bank's writting style. This book was a great and a fast read, the begining of a new dynasty. I like the book because didn't have a big family dilemma. I was able to enjoy the romance. My favorite part the end, but you will have to read it. I won't tell you. Enjoy

Billionaire's Proposition by Leanne Banks starts another sensational Dynasty series...The Elliotts.

Gannon Elliott is determined to have his magazine come out on top. This means he needs to get Erika Layven back on his team as his editor in chief. But this is going to take all of his charm since he ended their affair abruptly over a year ago.

Erika Layven enjoys her work at HomeStyle Magazine but she does miss the fast-paced environment of Pulse Magazine. She is shocked that Gannon Elliott offers her, her old job back at Pulse. Erika agrees but with a stipulation of her own, she wants a child.

Erika and Gannon enter into a no strings affair. They both think their hearts aren't on the line but this time so much more is at stake. Erika and Gannon are both strong willed characters that live, work and play to its fullest.

Billionaire's Proposition is quick witted, funny, hot and sexy. Leanne Banks packs a lot of story into this book. Looking forward to the next book in this series and more from Ms. Banks.

This is one of the most concise books I have ever seen on these subjects. Given the ambitious idea of introducing both these subjects in one text book, the authors have done an outstanding job. It is a no nonsense, clearcut book. Most of the necessary concepts are introduced to a decent depth required for appreciation of the subject. Perfect for beginners who don't want fat volumes. Great for preparing for competitive exams like the Subject GRE, especially for engineering or other non-bio students. One of my friends with no background in biology at all wanted to apply for graduate studies in a bio-related field, studied for the Subject test from this book, and cracked it.

Authors has produced very clear introduction into the subject. It has somewhat conversational feeling to it as thgough you are in the class room. Authores indicate emphasis on areas that are critical to know and understand well. applications to Molecular biology is given in every opportunity. Book requires certain knowledge of Chemistry. Although most used concepts are repeated for clarification, still certain knowledge is assumed.Without good understanding of Organic Chemistry this book becames buch of diagrams with no meaning. Certainly a must read book paralel to Cell biology to understand the biochemistry going on in the cell.

This book is well written. It is easy to understand and has great illustrations. I teach at the high school level and my students get along well with this book

This is a great mid-century "pulp" novel that, like James Cain's "Postman Always Rings Twice," has been celebrated for it's skillful writing (the 1934 "Postman" was much earlier, however, than this 1953 work). In addition to the action, which is deftly conveyed, Chaze makes the surroundings come alive as well. The suburbs of Denver, the abandoned gold mines nearby, the American road just before the Eisenhower freeway system, the smells of the South, the lack of smells in the West...it's rich, but not in purple or overstuffed prose. The writing wasn't groundbreaking, it wasn't Hemingway, but it was quite good, certainly for a pulp.

The narrator is an interesting mix of hard guy, college boy who didn't make good, and amoral alcoholic depressive. His "angel" is more two-dimensional, as she's perfectly formed physically and has a perfectly icy heart ("made of dollar bills" as the cover says). There's a wonderful back and forth between them, as their trust in each other and desire for each other shifts from day to day. Here's an example (the two are swimming in a quarry pool):

"....She was wonderful in the water, almost professionally good, and the water was clear because its bottom was solid rock and there was nothing to stir up and cloud it. It must have been about nine feet deep and cold, achingly cold. It felt so fine to my head I'd take a deep breath and go limp and sink down to the bottom and squat there. From below the surface was a sheet of mercury and then I'd see it break roughly as she kicked against it coming down to me. It was like watching her through a sheet of clean green cellophane. She came and curved around me and slid along my back and shoulders. A futuristic kind of love. Love with all the heat taken out of it.... (p.39)"

When they get out of the pool, you don't know if they'll be making love or trying to run each other over with the Packard next. Probably, they'll do both.

"Black Wings" has also been one of the rarest pulps of note, and 52 years after it's last publication, it's finally back on the market.

I second everything "Baron Von Cool" wrote earlier about this particular edition. While there may have been typos in the original Gold Medal version (which any decent publisher would silently correct), there are clearly plenty of new ones introduced here. Some errors in this reprint seem the result of Optical Character Recognition (OCR), used to digitize paper texts. For example: the lower case "l" starts a sentence where the pronoun "I" is clearly intended (p.19). Or this beauty: "In the South the roses explode out of the weeds in the yards o&.pound; the poorest shanties." (p. 21). Somehow the html coding for "£" got printed instead of the British pound symbol, which was how the publisher's stupid OCR software read the letter "f" on the original page. The sentence must have originally read "...in the yards of the poorest shanties." But you'd never guess that without typing the raw text into a web brower and then publishing it on Amazon, whereupon the "£" sign magically appears and you figure out what the **** all that garbage in your novel was.

Unfortunately, there are more than a few typos. They leave you scratching your head and wondering "what letter, if I changed it, would make this sentence make sense?" Then, for instance, you'll realize that the characters "ni" are in the place of what is supposed to be an "m", and the meaning becomes clear. Meanwhile, you've been thrown out of the reality that Chaze has skillfully created for you.

And then there's the page and chapter layout that looks like a seventh grader did all the book design in Microsoft Word, with no special templates or section formatting ("amateur hour," like the Baron says). The title page is numbered at the top, the story begins on page 4, the sections and chapters are crammed together with no white space, and so on. All these little things really do distract the reader, bringing things to a grinding halt on occasion.

Of course, a crummy version of a lost classic is better than no version at all or paying an outrageous sum for an original copy. I am greatful that someone out there bothered with a book that probably isn't going to bring in much of a financial return. Buy the book while it's around--it's not beyond redemption in this form.

Edit: Turns out Blackmask publishers is/was run by David Moynihan, a Don Quixote-esque guy battling The Man for the public's right to publish works that should properly be in the public domain. He's published hundreds of public domain texts on his website, so he's certainly due his props. It doens't change the sloppy presentation of "Black Wings...", but I suppose it's a mitigating factor. Good luck, David. May your mission continue.

This was a great, Jim Thompson-esque noir novel I highly recommend. But my enjoyment of the text was marred by the poor presentation by publisher Blackmask.com. Inside, and on the back cover, there are a fair number of distracting typos. Chapters are crammed together when they should be spaced out. Despite the substandard presentation, I loved the novel itself, so I bought Seven Slayers from Blackmask.com, thinking that there was no way the publisher could screw up like that again; it had to be a fluke, right? Wrong! Seven Slayers is put together a hundred times worse. The cramming together of freaking paragraphs (where scenes and characters have abruptly changed) makes Seven Slayers virtually incomprehensible. Unlike the reasonably crisp, oversized reproduction of the original 1950s paperback cover on Black Wings Has My Angel, the cover of Seven Slayers is an embarassingly bad, tiny pixellated .jpg of the 1950s paperback cover (obviously taken off the internet).

My advice is to go ahead and buy Black Wings Has My Angel (knowing it has a fair number of typos), but to avoid buying anything else from Blackmask.com if you can obtain a reasonably-priced copy elsewhere. Unfortunately, that may be hard, considering their rarity. Note that Blackmask.com offers FREE electronic downloads of many pulp fiction stories and noir novels; check their site for free downloads before you buy hardcopies or downloads.

I really wish Blackmask, whose heart is in the right place in rereleasing these lost classics, would clean up its act and actually put some effort into their presentation/packaging so the books looked good and read easier. As it is, their releases look like no budget, amateur hour junk. These novels deserve better! I'm proud to display my old Black Lizard reprints, but the Blackmask books? Forget it!

If you like hard-as-nails pulp fiction from the forties and fifties, tough guys with evil minds who lose their reason over beautiful women, this is a great book. It ranks right up there with the best of Charles Willeford, Jim Thompson, David Goodis, WR Burnett, and James M. Cain. Our protagonist fights it hard, but falls for a dame who's up to no good. Planning a big crime takes all your attention, but when your mind's on other things....

Note: This book is available in its entirety online.

Having for the most part been a stay at home mom since her beloved Nora was born, Heidi Elliott knows that her diaper friends from the Mom's Group saved her insanity even when they compared wipe up duty (see BALANCING ACT, not reviewed by me). Life is good as far as Heidi is concerned as her precocious Nora turns four. Heidi and Jake still love one another believing they were fortunate to have found their soulmate. However, babies are expensive and Jake worries about finances while Heidi feels a need to return to the paid working class yet hopefully work mostly from their home.

Heidi meets enthusiastic affluent and flashy Kylie Zimmerman, who persuades her into joining Solomon's Closet, whose product line is lingerie ranging from sexy to practical for Christians. However, although the money is great and she seems to have the aptitude to succeed, Heidi has doubts about selling Christian lingerie.

The second Heidi Elliot supermom "failure" (in her mind only) is a delightful continuation of the saga of a stay at home mom's balancing act between the increasing demands of her still smelly offspring and her own needs to do something else besides being the mommy. Heidi is terrific as she holds the tale together while seeking means to bring in income and ranting against "perfect" Christians demanding absolute obedience to the scriptures while never changing a diaper; makes a reader wonder how the Jews kept the babies clean while wandering the desert for forty years.

Harriet Klausner

Heidi Elliot needs something to do. After taking off from work staying at home to be with her young daughter, she's starting to feel restless. Her husband, Jake, seems to be a bit on the worrisome side involving the families income plus the two have now decided it's time for another baby. So when during her Strut and Stroll class Heidi meets Kylie who tells her about a business opportunity she can do, she's all ears. All she has to do is sell lingerie to Christian women. This sound intriguing and something that Heidi would be good at. But will she give up her SAHM ways for the lure of the money making world?

I really enjoyed this book. This wasn't your typical Christian fiction mom lit book. For one, Heidi is a new Christian who is still learning the ropes about her new faith. Therefore she still would question ideas about Christianity which I found perfectly realistic. She also has issues with other Christians who try to act too perfect. I really liked the characters in the book. Heidi seems like a really cool mom and I love her interaction especially with the baby sitter. Jake is not portrayed as a husband who does nothing to help his wife by going to work and then playing hero to the kid. He seems like a really good guy. I also appreciated how Nola is not shown as a really annoying kid. Embarrassing yes, but not to the point where Heidi wants to regret being a mom. I know kids can be a challenge but it's not enjoyable to read about moms who have problems all day with their kids and then their husband comes home expecting the royal treatment. I chuckled at Heidi's description of "Laura" especially involving the bodysuit. I know that the character means well, but I can see from Heidi's perspective as a new Christian why Laura would come off as annoying. I thought the idea of Solomon's closet was unique and interesting. What Kylie said about women, sex and Christianity were all true and it was interesting to see what could be done about it. However money also becomes a huge factor and therefore ruins the idea. One small thing that really made me giddy was when Jake was looking up travel options and came across a trip to Burma. That's where my dad is from and it's really rare for me to come across that in a book so I was geeked.

I would definitely recommend this book. It's a little edgy for a Christian book (especially in the bedroom lol) but I really liked it. Great mom lit. I'm looking forward to the next Heidi Elliot book.

Most days Heidi Elliott loves being a stay-at-home mom. Her husband Jake is the love of her life, they have an adorable four-year old daughter, and life is almost perfect. But money can be a problem, so Heidi decides to find a job she can do at home. She meets Kylie Zimmerman, who talks her into bcoming a representative for Solomon's Closet, the Christian lingerie answer to Victoria's Secret. Since Kylie lives in an over the top gorgeous mansion, and has the lifestyle of a celebrity, Heidi is sure she has found the perfect job and hopes to present Jake with a healthy bank balance. But soon she is faced with some very difficult choices and she realizes God's idea of success can be very different from ours. I love Kimberly Stuart's Heidi Elliott stories. They are fresh, fast-paced, and funny. Bottom line is book two of the series. I'm looking forward to book three.