Scott Books

Poignant story of a brother and sister who find love and courage amidst a recent trauma they can't escape. Touching, heartfelt, sure to sting an eye or two.

I came across a new memeber of a msn group and thought I'd take a look at her work... after reading the synopsis, I ordered the book. Fantastic! It isn't overly literary, it isn't pretentious, it's a wonderful story, plain and simple. Ms. Scott captures the emotions and personalities of her characters with such insight, you feel as though you can hear them speaking. Catagorized as a romance, it holds enough mystery to tempt a much larger audience. This is an author definitely worth keeping an eye on. Best POD book I've ever read!

Missouri in a Suitcase is a great story with appeal for everyone. When Lizabeth and Tommy's father suddenly dies, they pack up and move to Colorado, leaving bad memories - and secrets - behind. But, as often happens, bad memories - and circumstances - tend to creep up on you, particularly when you least expect it. Of course, so does romance. Enter Gabe, the ruggedly handsome neighbor with a secret of his own. Mystery piles upon mystery, as Lizabeth attempts to unravel the story behind the death of her father, her little brother's emotional problems and a budding romance. This book will keep your interest well past the first few chapters! A crackling good read!

Lizabeth Porter thinks her life has come together until the day her father dies. When her brother refuses to speak and her fiance becomes unbearable, she moves to her grandparents house in Colorado with her brother and his battered yellow suitcase in tote, looking for a new beginning. She finds more than the new beginning she hoped for when she meets Gabe, her good looking neighbor who possesses the power to help her put her life together, or tear it apart. Gabe is exactly what her brother needs to overcome the hurdles of his life, but how much does she need him? A real page-turner sure to bring out your emotional side!

I bought this book for my husband. He likes it very much that he is trying several recipes. This book is pretty much well done. Congratulatios to everyone who colaborated in this awesome mexican culinary book. Thanks to the chef and author of this book Scott Linquist who traveled to my country to learn and taste the real mexican food.

A very user friendly cookbook ideally suited for cooking good things at home. A perfect gift for your friends who love to cook. Scott's restaurant is a "must do" when you travel to New York City.

I bought this after seeing Scott on the "Today Show", where he cooked his Mexican twist on French Toast. The cookbook does NOT disappoint! The recipes are interesting variations on classics. There are detailed instructions will lots of photographs. I am in LOVE with this cookbook!

I had the pleasure of attending a Scott Linquist cooking demo and one of the things made was guacamole. Now guacamole is how I judge a Mexican restaurant. The quality of the guacamole, usually reflects the quality of the rest of the menu. Needless to say I have tasted a lot of guacamole and was prepared to be unimpressed but I have to tell you it was the best guacamole I have ever tasted. On the strength of this alone I bought a copy of his cookbook Mod Mex half expecting the recipes to be intricate and complicated. I was pleasantly surprised to find not only clear easy to follow recipes but also loads of step by step pictures showing the techniques key to making each dish such as how to wrap a tamale properly.

If you love Mexican food this is a great addition to your collection both for it's fresh modern take on classic recipes but also it's detailed pictures of the proper way to prepare them.

Mod Mex: Cooking Vibrant Fiesta Flavors at Home

This is a great cookbook for Mexican food lovers. It is simple to follow and has great illustrations. Of course, I am a little predjudiced! Be careful with the chiles, though. I'm a little wimpy so I had to cut down the amount on some recipes!

An immensely beautiful book. Awing in its sensitivity, delicacy, and completeness of language - "sculptured in the heavens," one thinks as one looks up. On every page, in every paragraph, there is caring for - more than caring, a love affair with - its subject.

But I can add little beyond admiration to Eileen Berton's fine little sketch of it below.

This book is remarkable for its breadth and depth, and for its fluid and totally enjoyable narrative. Montgomery brings a scholarly, well-organized, imaginatively catholic mind to his study of the moon, as mapped, observed, and imagined by Western minds. His enthusiasm for his subject is contagious. He discusses the early cartography so important to popular conceptions of the moon, the moon's complex and changing relationship to Christianity and Judaism, philosophy, mathematics, literature, and art. Importantly, he provides an orderly and very interesting history of Western conceptions of "the first modern planet." The Arab contribution to astronomy is detailed. The relationship of mathematics to astronomy is also explored, fluidly and appropriately for the lay person. Galileo, Copernicus, and scores of lesser-known astronomers and scientists come to life in this book. "The British Contribution," a chapter on sixteenth century lunar pioneers Dr. Wm. Gilbert and Thomas Harriot, is excellent. Montgomery also analyzes cartographic evidence - and provides commentary. This book combines scholarship with a fine and elegant narrative, the bibliography is terrific, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in this subject, which becomes downright thrilling in this book.

This book is remarkable for its breadth and depth, and for its fluid and totally enjoyable narrative. Montgomery brings a scholarly, well-organized, imaginatively catholic mind to his study of the moon. His enthusiasm for his subject is contagious. He discusses the early cartography so important to popular conceptions of the moon, the moon's complex and changing relationship to Christianity and Judaism, philosophy, mathematics,literature, and art. Importantly, he provides an orderly and very interesting history of Western conceptions of "the first modern planet." The Arab contribution to astronomy is detailed. The relationship of mathematics to astronomy is also explored, fluidly and appropriately for the lay person. Galileo, Copernicus, and scores of lesser-known astronomers and scientists come to life in this book. "The Britsh Contribution," a chapter on sixteenth century lunar pioneers Dr. Wm. Gilbert Thomas Harriot, is particularly well-told. Montgomery also analyzes cartographic evidence - and provides commentary. This book combines scholarship with a fine and elegant narrative, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in this subject, which becomes downright thrilling in this book.

What is it about the Moon that captures the fancy of humankind? A silvery disk hanging in the night sky, it conjures up images of romance and magic. It has been counted upon to foreshadow important events, both of good and ill, and its phases for eons served humanity as its most accurate measure of time. With the invention of the telescope at the turn of the seventeenth century-coinciding with the rise of the scientific revolution-the Moon took on new meaning as a tangible place with mountains and valleys and craters that could be named and geological features and events that could be studied.

Geologist Scott L. Montgomery has produced a richly detailed analysis of how the Moon has been visualized in Western culture through the ages, revealing the faces it has presented to philosophers, writers, artists, and scientists for nearly three millennia. To do this, he has drawn on a wide array of sources that illustrate the changing concept of nature and the significance of heavenly bodies from classical antiquity to the dawn of modern science.

Montgomery especially focuses on the seventeenth century, when the Moon was first mapped and its features named. He explores in depth the literary works of Francis Godwin's "Man in the Moone" and Cyrano de Bergerac's "L'autre monde." But he also carries the story to the present, showing how humanity has over time elevated the Moon to a sublime level.

As Montgomery concluded, humans have always assigned a close approximation of the Earth to lunar ideas. When we ultimately colonize the Moon the irony is that we will be setting up shop on a world steeped in a deep human tradition of imagination and history. This is a superb work that explains far more effectively than other works on the subject, the lure of the Moon for humanity.

I have been buying Morningstar books for mutual funds since 2006. There are a lot of books about how/what mutual funds are, but this is the only kind available for evaluating PAST mutual funds performance. (The other one is from Lipper, which is only available from the web).

Morningstar has a long history to keep track of mutual funds and ETFs data. This gives them an advantage to publish their views on various mutual funds. However, readers must be aware that the ratings are based on historical performance. Nobody can predict the market, but if a fund manager performs well over a long time, it is very likely he/she will perform well in the future.

This book also provide some insight info such as the manager has his/her own money in, and risk data. A plus of the book is that it provides 50 free mutual fund reports downloadable from Moringstar website.

A must have for mutual fund selectors.

I really enjoyed the analysis provided, it seemed to cover most of the bases I wanted to learn about, expenses, tax efficiency, volatility, returns.
Obviously it gets dated. It appears to be published early in the year. Be sure to get the latest.

While many people buy mutual funds because they find them easier than building their own portfolio of individual stocks, in fact buying into these funds is in some ways more complex than buying individual company stocks. How do you know what the fund in invested in (companies and sectors), fees, turnover, who the manager is, what their performance has been, how the fund has performed relative to its peers, and much more? It is not an easy task. This handy book provides you with loads of great information for 500 funds picked by Morningstar.

This isn't to say that you should necessarily buy the funds listed here. Morningstar also includes funds you should probably avoid (you have to make your own choices as to what is right for you). One of the interesting things I notices is that simply because something has a four or five star rating doesn't mean that you should buy the fund. This is due to the past performance versus future return probability. It might well be that a well performing fund is now trading at a high price and that the likely future return cannot justify the price. So, the analyst rating also has to be balanced.

The editors have packed a huge amount of information onto each of these pages. You get a snapshot of governance and management (with a stewardship score), a chart of performance, a graph with an historical profile, a star rating including risk for several periods, a portfolio analysis, and a few paragraphs providing Morningstar's take on the fund, and contact information. In the back of the book are several lists that slice and dice the various funds different ways according to specific criteria.

Since funds do not remain static for the entire year, another nice feature of the book is that you can download up to 50 fresh charts during the calendar year. One word of caution that I learned by hard experience is that if you block pop-ups, you need to make an exception for Morningstar. You will try to download the new chart, your count will decrement, but you won't get the chart because you browser will have blocked the pop-up containing the new chart! That was a tad frustrating.

Terrific and interesting information.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

Great book very informative,a must have if looking to invest in mutual funds

I am a screenwriter. And I find that Vladimir Propp's structure works great for my stories. Have a look at it and try to apply it to any modern movie:

1.. A member of a family leaves home (the hero is introduced);
2.. An interdiction is addressed to the hero ('don't go there', 'go to this place');
3.. The interdiction is violated (villain enters the tale);
4.. The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance (either villain tries to find the children/jewels etc; or intended victim questions the villain);
5.. The villain gains information about the victim;
6.. The villain attempts to deceive the victim to take possession of victim or victim's belongings (trickery; villain disguised, tries to win confidence of victim);
7.. Victim taken in by deception, unwittingly helping the enemy;
8.. Villain causes harm/injury to family member (by abduction, theft of magical agent, spoiling crops, plunders in other forms, causes a disappearance, expels someone, casts spell on someone, substitutes child etc, comits murder, imprisons/detains someone, threatens forced marriage, provides nightly torments); Alternatively, a member of family lacks something or desires something (magical potion etc);
9.. Misfortune or lack is made known, (hero is dispatched, hears call for help etc/ alternative is that victimised hero is sent away, freed from imprisonment);
10.. Seeker agrees to, or decides upon counter-action;
11.. Hero leaves home;
12.. Hero is tested, interrogated, attacked etc, preparing the way for his/her receiving magical agent or helper (donor);
13.. Hero reacts to actions of future donor (withstands/fails the test, frees captive, reconciles disputants, performs service, uses adversary's powers against them);
14.. Hero acquires use of a magical agent (directly transferred, located, purchased, prepared, spontaneously appears, eaten/drunk, help offered by other characters);
15.. Hero is transferred, delivered or led to whereabouts of an object of the search;
16.. Hero and villain join in direct combat;
17.. Hero is branded (wounded/marked, receives ring or scarf);
18.. Villain is defeated (killed in combat, defeated in contest, killed while asleep, banished);
19.. Initial misfortune or lack is resolved (object of search distributed, spell broken, slain person revivied, captive freed);
20.. Hero returns;
21.. Hero is pursued (pursuer tries to kill, eat, undermine the hero);
22.. Hero is rescued from pursuit (obstacles delay pursuer, hero hides or is hidden, hero transforms unrecognisably, hero saved from attempt on his/her life);
23.. Hero unrecognised, arrives home or in another country;
24.. False hero presents unfounded claims;
25.. Difficult task proposed to the hero (trial by ordeal, riddles, test of strength/endurance, other tasks);
26.. Task is resolved;
27.. Hero is recognised (by mark, brand, or thing given to him/her);
28.. False hero or villain is exposed;
29.. Hero is given a new appearance (is made whole, handsome, new garments etc);
30.. Villain is punished;
31.. Hero marries and ascends the throne (is rewarded/promoted).

This structure works for many stories and films. I do recommed the book for any writer and screenwriter especially for those who write modern fairy tales. It's a must!

This is the first work to systematically characterize and describe a corpus of folktales. It includes a list of possible plot twists, in their correct chronological order for any story, and numerous examples from actual Russian fairy tales. This translation in particular reads well and makes a point of not departing from the text's literal meaning in any significant way. I would highly recommend this work for anyone interested in folktales or oral literature in general.

This seminal work is essential for an understanding of structuralist theory and the theory of folklore. It differs from the psychological view of the folktale in its descriptive ability. This theory is based on objective description and sytagmatic conjunction and complementation. Because of that, it is more applicable and flexible than any psychological dissection. Also, two people will reach roughly the same conclusions with this method- something impossible with a psychological approach. This is excellent for anyone interested in attacking the down and dirty working parts of a narrative.

This is an attempt to work out the underlying structural patterns (types of characters, what they do, how they are ordered) of Russian folktales, based on classic collections made in the nineteenth-century. If you are fortunate enough to have read a large collection of such stories -- preferably in translation, not "retold by ..." -- you will soon see the point of Propp's argument. Other European, and some non-European, traditions provide an almost equally good starting point, although the examples often are not so close as to be immediately convincing. Ideally, "Morphology of the Folktale" would be bound with at least a selection of the Russian folktales Propp analyzes, but this does not seem likely to happen.

Taken by itself, however, Propp's exploration is going to seem both dry and confusing. Try to imagine a book about the five-act structure of Shakespeare's tragedies being read by someone who had never seen or read a play before, and you may understand the problem.

Although Propp's exposition sometimes seems labored, he presents a convincing case that at least some oral prose narratives are built up of a stock of situations and events which can be slightly reordered, multiplied, and otherwise complicated, but amount to a "language" (a vocabulary, grammar, and syntax) of story-telling. This puts a new light on the problem of the distribution of folktales, and how they develop variants, two of the great issues of folklore studies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Despite its origins in a single body of oral literature, Propp's methods have been applied to other literature with known or suspected oral roots, sometimes with slightly contradictory results. I know of at least two different Proppian analyses of "Beowulf," for example. This is due at least in part to Propp's attempt to introduce fine divisions between similar plot elements, which, again, seem to work better with his source material than with other groups of stories. (And "Beowulf" has long been recognized to include elements later found in European fairy tales, so the possibility of applying Propp's structures was more intriguing than revolutionary.)

In "Feud in the Icelandic Saga" (1983), Jesse Byock reviewed efforts to apply Propp's methods to the Sagas of the Icelanders, another body of prose literature supposed to be grounded in oral techniques. He argued that a different approach is needed to their formally realistic stories about personalities, and the functioning of society; which does not diminish the validity of Propp's approach to the wonder-tale.

This is not a review

I have sent previous e-mails and I think your responses have been blocked.

The package arrived last week but the sleeve was torn and the cover damaged. What can I do?

Please respond to

nlbeddington@webmail.co.za

If you need to know what happened in GP Bike racing each year and from only one source this is it. The photos alone are worth the price of the book. My only wish is that I had found out about this series sooner so I could read the earier one too!!

Yet another excellent annual by Motocourse. Primarily covers the MotoGP tour but also includes SBK and some national racing.

This edition is particular important as Americans topped the 500cc Championship and the Superbike Championship which probably hasn't happend since the late 80s.

Excellent recap and photographs

I've read these books for years. Each and every year I get the whole picture of what has happened on the World Gran Prix Motorcycle scene. The pictures are beyond words, and give a clear shot of what it's like to ride one of these bikes at speed. The technical information is very good, considering that all the major manufacturers take secrecy to the extreme making it hard for outsiders whom are interested in the technical aspects kind of shut outs. Overall, though....I can't wait to get my hands on the next edition.

..that it wasn't 500 pages longer! What a fun read about often tragic stories. I haven't lived in Fresno all that long, so ALL of these stories were new to me. I am a history and a crime buff, so this well written book was right up my alley. Now I need to take a Saturday and go on a self guided "ghoul tour" using this book as a sort of road map.

Just one glimps at the cover, and a quick skim of the first few pages was enough to draw my family into this book. My wife and I read the book out loud, taking turns every few pages. This book has a little of everthing suspence, history, etc. I reguad this book as esential reading for anyone who lives in the central valley, and a must for lawenforcement.
jason

This book is of interest to me because I live in the Corcoran, CA area and am impressed with the attention to detail given to these historical crimes. The pictures were superb for being as old as they are and the author worked very hard collecting all this data. I am a fan of mystery/crime novels and was enthralled all the more since it is a true account of actual happenings. Hats off to all who made this publication possible!!!

I cannot begin to describe how much I enjoyed Scott Morrison's new book, "Murder in the Garden." Who would have guessed, when walking to school as a child near the corner of Cedar and Dakota Avenues, that a grizzly murder had occurred there. Or, riding down Gettysburg Avenue on a family outing passed the site of another murder. Living far away now so many years later, what fun it is to read of events that once shocked Fresno County citizens. Great reading! I hope more stories will follow.

Lots of the best bits from the magazine, plus plenty of stuff I'd never seen. A great gift.

I came to buy a second book for a friend (I've had my copy for a month), and saw the review by Publisher's Weekly. Just because the Onion claims to be the new National Lampoon doesn't make it so. They are great at paroding the news but the lampoon has done sooooo much more. As far as un-PC goes it doesn't get any better than this. Very funny!

Super funny!!! Love all the great stuff, old and new! But whose idea was that cover??? Jheesh!

200+ pages of the very best of National Lampoon, the magazine teenage boys had to use to see naked chicks before the internet was invented.
Quality stuff by P.J. O'Rourke, John Hughes, Doug Kenney, and the other NL alumni. Holds up well, and there's a smattering of new material that ranks right up there. The biggest surprise is a piece by William S. Burroughs (!)
Can't wait for the next "Big Book"

This was the most complete and knowledgeable training guide that I have ever read. I lost my copy and am currently trying to find a new one.

One of the best research facilities is the human mind. Many valid answers regarding exercise can be derived with the use of sound premises and logic.
The h.i.t. principles are based on accepted facts. Most of these facts are not new. They have been known to the scientific community for more than 100 years. Arthur Jones and Ellington Darden did not discover or claim to discover any of them. He merely assembled them into a logical framework to provide valid conclusions about high intensity exercise. No one had done that before. Or really has done
The h.i.t, philosophy is the only exercise philosophy that can be derived logically from the facts and principles of the classical sciences. Does that necessarily make h.i.t. correct? No. And it does not necessarily make illogically conceived approaches to exercise wrong.
But logic does confer on h.i.t. a high probability of being correct for building great size and strength but most people cant tolerate the pain and intensity of this kind of trading yes it is the hard most properly the hardest and most result producing there is but most people back away
first class better that all the other miss leading books aound 90% dont work and do have the science backing
this is excellent first class

......This book was written in the early 70's based off of scientific research of what works and what doesn't in training. It is by far the most forward thinking and logical book on the subject...I treasure my copy for giving me new found focus in my training with results due to high intensity with minimum time..............Needs to be put back into circulation to set all the misinformation aside that exists amoung the uninformed and market manipulated public............

Arthur Jones, more likely owing to his personality and the toughness of this fitness regimen, never got the ink that Weider or Kennedy or the other fitness writers have. That's really too bad. The information in this book is sound and extremely practical. Arthur was one of the first to bring up the "to failure" principle. This has gotten some bad ink lately, but the truth cannot be denied. All of the meso-cycles,macro-cycles, and periodization "protocols" in the world will not accomplish what elbow grease will. This book provides a nuts and bolts primer and will produce miracles if you actually have the guts to apply it. The only thing that I have bad to say about the book is that the examples are based off of the old Nautilus machines. This is a minor point though, as the examples can readily be adapted to whatever equipment that you have at your disposal. Ignore the hype of modern commercial contributions in this genre, and opt instead for a copy of this book. I have yet to see anything in print, despite all the sticky hype and commercial push, that has improved or disputed anything stated in this book, and due to it's age, you can get a used copy shipped to you for next to nothing.

Few are the fantasies so peculiar and satisfying as this, a deliciously weird mix of alien races, Native American culture and government intrigue.
Ishpiming picks up where the first in Baker's NeitherWorld series (Akiiwan, 2007) left off. This time around is the story of archaeologist Samantha Horner, an Ojibwe expert called in to excavate a singularly unique site in Minnesota. The site--which not incidentally piques the interest of crooked U.S. government agents--houses the body of 17th-century shaman Voice-in-the-Sky, a Native American leader who made contact with an alien race. Ten-year-old Orenda--herself a descendent of Voice-in-the-Sky--has mysteriously transported Horner and members of her dig team to a far-off world. Only here does Horner come to realize that the conflicts surrounding her excavation have taken on interstellar import. Dangers multiply, and Horner and her team learn that the nefarious designs of corrupt Washington bureaucrats are the least of their problems, for humanity is endangered by the Lupok, an alien race hell-bent on conquering Earth and enslaving all who live there. This volume is an even stranger and more ambitious work than its predecessor. Filled with strange creatures, extraterrestrial landscapes and a startling array of alien races vying for galactic ascendancy, Ishpiming taxes the imagination. But much to the author's credit, readers will remain entranced by this strange new world. Like the best fantasy authors, Baker has a knack for fleshing out his marvelous creations, making the oddest of creatures--e.g., the eerie pink caterpillars that inhabit the NeitherWorld--as real and believable as his human characters. He has a strong faith in the power of his fiction, and that faith is strangely infectious.
An audacious but thoroughly enthralling fantasy.

Few are the fantasies so peculiar and satisfying as this, a deliciously weird mix of alien races, Native American culture and government intrigue.
Ishpiming picks up where the first in Baker's NeitherWorld series (Akiiwan, 2007) left off. This time around is the story of archaeologist Samantha Horner, an Ojibwe expert called in to excavate a singularly unique site in Minnesota. The site--which not incidentally piques the interest of crooked U.S. government agents--houses the body of 17th-century shaman Voice-in-the-Sky, a Native American leader who made contact with an alien race. Ten-year-old Orenda--herself a descendent of Voice-in-the-Sky--has mysteriously transported Horner and members of her dig team to a far-off world. Only here does Horner come to realize that the conflicts surrounding her excavation have taken on interstellar
import. Dangers multiply, and Horner and her team learn that the nefarious designs of corrupt Washington bureaucrats are the least of their problems, for humanity is endangered by the Lupok, an alien race hell-bent on conquering Earth and enslaving all who live there. This volume is an even stranger and more ambitious work than its predecessor. Filled with strange creatures, extraterrestrial landscapes and a startling array of alien races vying for galactic ascendancy, Ishpiming taxes the imagination. But much to the author's credit, readers will remain entranced by this strange new world. Like the best fantasy authors, Baker has a knack for fleshing out his marvelous creations, making the oddest of creatures--e.g., the eerie pink caterpillars that inhabit the NeitherWorld--as real and believable as his human characters. He has a strong faith in the power of his fiction, and that faith is strangely infectious.
An audacious but thoroughly enthralling fantasy.

The second volume of Scott Baker's debut novel, NeitherWorld Book Two Ishpiming, continues the mystery uncovered by the archeological dig team, headed by Dr. Samantha Horner, in northern Minnesota. The team has now been transported to an alien world by Orenda, the ten-year-old Ojibwe child who finds herself with strange powers beyond her maturity to manage.

It is in this second novel that Baker reveals the angst of the aliens who have lost their original homes and now seek to survive through hosts of other species. This includes the animal world as well as the human race and the displaced aliens are both evil and good spirits. In Ishpiming, the bad spirited-aliens, known as the Lupok, take center stage in their quest to find hosts that will enable them to conquer all species and become the most powerful over all others.

With much of the action occurring on the surface of another place in the universe, the reader is treated to imaginative creatures and unique landscapes as the dig team works through its options to return to earth and complete their mission, which has now taken on far more significance than determining the historical value of an ancient shaman, Voice-In-The-Sky.

Baker uses the full range of dreams-to-visions to help the reader understand the strange beings while keeping the action going. This passage provides a good example: "Sam drifted into a dream, imaging herself high in the trees. She was moving as a yoboa yoboa, effortlessly gliding through the trees, as naturally as she had previously walked on the ground." Later in this passage: "She began to feel like she was intruding, intruding into the body she now occupied, like its true owner was waiting, somewhere in a corner of its own mind." Through this dream-vision, Sam pickups up the clue to follow for the next step of the dangerous journey. Her visions are more frequent in Ishpiming. They become the roadmap for the dig team to follow in resolving the conflicts stretching across the universes Baker has described as well as for understanding her own relationship to her ancestry.

The author brings this story train safely into the station without any serious derailments but it is also beleaguered by the editing and proofreading misses evident in the first book, Akiiwan. Even with fewer pages to read than the first volume, it still requires a strong interest in fantasy/science fiction to see it through to the conclusion. A parsimonious editing pen would serve this novel well.

Overall, the novel is entertaining and engages the reader's imagination effectively. Fans of the fantasy/science fiction genres will likely find it worthy of shelf space in their collections.

Paula Buermele is a reviewer for BookPleasures and is the author of "The Dream Catcher Tour."

Take a vast knowledge of Indian lore and archeology, mix it with an exciting contemporary adventure complete with government agents, a dollop of love, and top it with a sci-fi mystery--and then you might begin to imagine the challenge that faced Author Scott Baker when he undertook the complex task of writing these fascinating debut volumes.

Neitherworld Book Two Ishpiming (Neitherworld) is a sequel to Neitherworld Book One Akiiwan (CreateSpace Version), a book I read and reviewed earlier, giving it five stars and high praise. I considered the first book a gem and this sequel is equally as brilliantly faceted.

Blending archeology with Native American myth and alien wonder, Baker weaves a story so complex it will stun you ... and he ties it all together with grace and dexterity, like the best of wordsmiths. This story starts with a revered shaman of the 1600s, continuing on into contemporary times.

I was hooked with the first novel and couldn't wait to read this one ... to find out what happens to Samantha Horner, the archeologist called in by a real estate developer to examine and excavate a site found on Blue Heron Island in Minnesota where he was building a luxury housing community.

But is the developer what he claims to be? Why are government agents so interested in the project? Will Samantha be able to save the island the Native Americans hold sacred without a rebellion? And now that Orenda--a mysterious ten-year-old girl, descendant of a famous shaman--has spirited her and others through space to an alien world, will the earth people ever see their homes again? Can Orenda help them return? Does Samantha--who has a small amount of Native blood--have the supernatural "gift" that the child does? And what does the "black hole" have to do with the mystery?

To unravel the mystery, you will have to RFY (read for yourself); to say more would be to spoil the plot.

Although the first book tied up prominent loose ends, ending at a satisfactory place, Orenda appears to be threatening Samantha or about to reveal her true nature, so it was with great anticipation I awaited the second book. Since I discovered Neitherworld Book One Akiiwan (CreateSpace Version) late, I didn't have to wait long for the release of Neitherworld Book Two Ishpiming (Neitherworld).

In addition to exciting twists and turns and complexity of plot, there is also romantic intrigue between Samantha and Dr. Ron Griffith, a co-worker on the excavation.

The characters in these books ring true, the dialog is impeccable, and the intricate plot is carefully, professionally woven to form a block-buster book. Intriguing storyline! Likable characters with just enough villains to make for hours of good reading.

Scott Baker is a new talent, a force to be reckoned with in the literary field.

I highly recommend these volumes--in fact, I "dig" them--as in archeology, y'know.

Reviewed by: Betty Dravis, 2008
Millennium Babe: The Prophecy