Shaw Books

It is certainly a timely volume, and, given the balanced manner in which you approach the subject, it will do much to allay unnecessary anxiety and will lead to careful and adequate preparation for what may eventuate. Thank you for writing the book and thank you for sharing it with us.

I was so pleased to receive [this] book yesterday on return from meetings in Seattle. Already I have read much of it and profited greatly. It avoids extremes yet gives the necessary warnings with ample evidence.

Mark Kellner has given us a timely reference and guidebook on the whole spectrum of the millennium mania known as YK2. His fascinating and insightful text provides both a domestic and global perspective on what we need to know and what we need to do about it - a virtual seminar on YK2 from which we all can benefit.

If you are feeling that the book market has all it needs on the Y2K computer crisis, Mark Kellner has come up with perhaps the most concise and down-to-earth treatment of the subject. Not only is Y2K, Apocalypse or Opportunity a very practical guide through the impending glitch, but what I especially appreciate about this approach is its sound Christian testimony. Here is proof that the Gospel is still the right answer to all of life's problems.

After all the hype and techno-babble about the Year 2000, I found this title very refreshing. It not only put the change of century into perspective from a religious and spiritual viewpoint, it opened my eyes to some of the nonsense being talked about in media I don't normally listen to.

I thought it was a very good, brief, overview of the reality -- minus all the silliness. (Perfect length to read on a plane flight, by the way.)

History, a great story and an authentic historical craft! Not only that, but just the right size for girl-sized hands. A+++++++ Cannot be beat!

This boxed set is jsut as mediocre as the first, recycling more stories from American Girl magazine and re-editing them for a book format. The highlights of this set are Samantha Saves the Wedding and Molly and the Movie Star. Felicity has more quarrels with Annabelle Cole in the Felicity story, Josefina gets frustrated with the piano in the Josefina story, Kirsten gets jealous of a new girl in the Kirsten story, and Addy wishes that she were a boy because she feels that she is loosing her brother. These short stories, which for the most part I have stopped collecting (by the way I collect American Girls things as a hobby) are lacking when compared to several other items in the American Girls Collection series. These could have been better. I recommend getting them at a library--but you might hacve a time finding one that has the whole set, since several libraries have quit buying the American Girls Short Stories, at least where I am from.

My almost seven year old daughter has been enjoying AG books on tape and has had at least 20 read to her. Our favorites are the short stories though, because they can be read in one sitting and they have great project ideas geared to the age group. We bought the newest series on July 1 and have read four out of six of the short stories. These books will become favorites for sure, just as the first short story set books are still read over and over again. Thanks for the intro to history in an appropriate format for the early grades.

A bunch of little books for a bunch of little kids! a perfect christmas present for any young girl of any age! i know my little girl loves it!

If my wife and I had not been against abortion, and the clinics that provide these services, this book would have convicted us of it! Carol Everett showed the reader of the immoral and even illegal practices of falsifying pregnacy reports to con young, and sometimes not so young women, into obtaining an abortion; killing of babies that managed to be born alive in the late tri-mester and dumping them into dumpsters, and falsifying medical reports with the hospital to avoid legal consequences for their mistakes during the abortion. She tells of how she "sold" abortions to women with the added pressure of "it will cost you more the longer you wait." Carol Everett has shown the deception of a multi-million dollar industry to the general public in the hopes that women will try alternates to abortion, like adoption or even keeping their child. It is a must for anyone interested in fighting this industry.

Blood Money was written by a woman who ran an abortion clinic. It was the best one in her state and it made a fortune. The money--not the women who came into the clinic was the bottom line. I wasn't prepared for this book. It shocked me. The sloppy medical practices, the rough treatment of patients, the doctors who were just barely hanging on to their licenses. The endless strife and bickering; it was all one shock after another. Highly recommended. Bring a strong stomach and a box of tissue.

This book is definately an eye opener. I had no idea what went on in an abortion clinic prior to reading this book. Shocking!Absolute must read!

Rather than providing textbook examples of lies, deception and illegal activity across the country, this book tells the story of a woman who lived that life and turned away from it.

This book is easy to read (except for the fact that it makes you wonder why abortion is still legal). Furthermore, it is great evidence for that friend of yours that doesn't believe that the abortion industry is unethical.

This book gave me much info on 747's. I read this book at least an hour a day for 2 months at least. If you are in to 747-400s than buy this book! Its great.

The Megatop is actually a registered trademark of Singapore Airlines, which along with Cathay Pacific Airways and Japan Airlines, operate the largest fleet of Boeing 747-400s. The cover of this spectacular book shows a 747-400 owned by Cathay Pacific Airways. Since its first delivery in late 1960s, the Boeing 747 family had evolved into many variations: the 747-100, 747-200, 747-200 Freight, 747-300, 747-300 Extended Upper Deck (also known as the Bigtop), 747-SP (the shorter version), 747-400, and 747-400 Freight. In this volume, Shaw has written the indiers of this modern jetliner. The coverage features planning, development, certification, survey of operators, technical specifications, and ***PLENTY*** of pictures (both exterior and interior) of the jetliners. The pictorial also includes information of airlines operation. I personally think that the 747-400 series represents the most efficient and anesthetic piece of flying equipment. The architectual beauty of the aircraft surpasses any of its counterparts. The small flap that extend and tilt at the tip of the wings distinguish the 400 series from the rest of the family. No other models has such distinct feature and architecture. Think about how the Airbus 340, the Boeing 767, the Boeing 777-they all look alike. In this pictorial, the beauty of the Boeing 747-400 jetliner is captured in numerous pages of colored photos. I highly recommend the book for gift. Aviation enthusiasts must have.

The photograghs are spectacular! A very entertaining and informative book,But buy it for the photos.

This book by Robbie Shaw is a general history of the Boeing 747-400 current through 1999. The text is generally accurate, but is not especially detailed. Instead Shaw focuses on selecting beautiful color images of the 747-400 from around the world, with Asia being especially well represented.

The book will be appreciated by airliner fans, and especially fans of aviation photography. One notable and peculiar shortcoming is that there are no flight deck photographs anywhere in the book, though Shaw does pay modest attention to the flight deck upgrades in the text. Given that the two-man flight deck was the single most involved and distinguishing upgrade from the 747 classics, that seems a strange oversight. Despite this drawback, I gave the book four stars for photographic coverage of the Queen of the Boeing fleet.

In the tradition of Agee's A Death in the Family, or Guest's Ordinary People, this is a book about a family's whose life changes drastically after their tennis-playing teenage daughter becomes an unlikely hero one evening in Central Park. Driven by this one catalyst, the events that play out for the Strand Family become like dominoes, each one building momentum as they fall against each other.

Shaw does a masterful job with the narrative rhythm, careful not to show his hand too soon. This might infuriate some readers with a lack of patience or a preference for plot-driven narrative. The plot picks up speed about two-thirds of the way into the book, and comes to a halt (but by no means a "grinding" one) only at the very end.

This is a portrait of a family and the lives that touch it (and vice-versa). It is beautifully lifelike it its messiness, but also in its portrayal of perseverance. Tragedy does not always beget tragedy, but in Shaw's world, good deeds are not always wholly good, either.

It is a book about the complexities of life. The characters are "everyman" characters in that Shaw keeps them at a distance, so we become attached more to their predicaments than to the characters themselves. While this is more instructive for the reader, it does steal something from the fictional experience, at least for me.

Overall, a very fine novel that captures the angst of everyday life with a certain refreshing objectivity.

My first Irwin Shaw's novel. Am impressed and ready to begin his 'Rich Man, Poor Man' now....

... "Anger and compassion, insight and intimacy ... a rare novel of substance, Shaw hits the top of his mark in this novel about gratitude and the entangling relationship of giver and receivers ... a crackling story of happiness, tragedy, bathos, unkindess, failure to communicate, hope, selfishness, and minor revelations ..." Excellent book!

I really enjoyed this book. It was a great story about power and wealth and it was just great reading.

About 300 pages long with 2-3 articles per page. It is probably not useful for highly knowledgeable Egyptologists (for example, the stunning site of Abu Simbal gets about half a page - whereas a book could be written on it) but is a very compact resource for those who know a little and want to find out about particular topics. Or you can just flick through it and read about particular topics as they catch your eye - the maps, illustrations and photos are well selected and quite attractive. Also, since it is written by Englishmen it is mercifully quite free of the tedious P.C. stuff that is so prevalent in the academy today.
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About 300 pages long with 2-3 articles per page. It is probably not useful for highly knowledgeable Egyptologists (for example, the stunning site of Abu Simbal gets about half a page - whereas a book could be written on it) but is a very compact resource for those who know a little and want to find out about particular topics. Or you can just flick through it and read about particular topics as they catch your eye - the maps, illustrations and photos are well selected and quite attractive. Also, since it is written by Englishmen it is mercifully quite free of the tedious P.C. stuff that is so prevalent in the academy today.

This is a fantastic book! It helped my kids with their projects about Egypt. I reccomend this book to everyone!

A well thought out and comprehensive dictionary. Includes a wealth of information and photographs and should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Ancient Egypt

Many of my favorite science fiction writers have moved on to wherever those guys go. I could name many, but you know the group. Somehow I never got around to reading Bob Shaw and picked this up, written in 1982, and throughly enjoyed it. Unfortunatly Bob has joined his peers, but that doesn't mean I won't enjoy reading many more of his books now that I've read this one.

I chose it based on the Vincent Di Fate artwork on the cover. As a rule of thumb, whenever I see his art, I enjoy the book.

Not the best ever, but I did miss a lot of sleep because I couldn't put it down. If you like classic science fiction, buy it cheap. It's a great read! His style reminds me of Charles Sheffield---Takes you places you've never been with memorable characters.

Probably Shaw's best "hard" science fiction. While barely longer than a novella, Shaw manages to explore all of humanity's major themes- love, death, immortality, self-sacrifice, earthly suffering, everything we've wondered about for the last 50,000 years... it's a stunningly good story! The characters are amazingly well-drawn. Gretana begins as probably the most shallow heroine SF has ever seen, only likeable because her fellow Mollans are even more obscenely conceited. But her "exile" to Earth opens her eyes and her relationship with Denny Hargrove (the irascible paraplegic protagonist) deepens her perspective into true wisdom, allowing her to understand and experience real love. All too short, and not without minor flaws, still The Ceres Solution is a miraculously good read. If you enjoy SF, put this one on your short list!

I just finished this minutes ago. This is a rather short book, yet has enough character development to have one caring deeply. Almost every page past 30 is entertaining in its own right, and the exploration of mortality and the scientific framework for the story are unique and quite imaginative. I enjoyed Orbitsville, and was unimpressed by Orbitsville Departure. This is the best by far of the three, and a very pleasant surprise.

Long ago, humans evolved on another planet. They colonised other planets, then civilisation collapsed. The inhabitants of the planet of Mollan can travel from one planet to another with a thought, and live five thousand years. The gravitational influence of the moon is the reason Earthlings can't travel to other stars with a thought. A small group of radicals from Mollan plan to violate the noninterference policy by blowing up the moon.

Kirsten, a young athletic girl, lives in the West in the past. Kirsten brings a weak baby raccoon to her house after going trapping with Lars and John, her brother and friend. Will the baby raccoon cause any trouble? Kirsten brought it into the house. When it was running, it hit a burning lamp and knocked it over. Suddenly the cabin was on fire!!!!! I think this is a really good book, because it is very exciting. I recommend this book to people who will read it and not take my word for it.

This is another in the American Girls Short Stories series about Kirsten Larson, a nine-year-old girl from Sweden, whose family has moved to frontier Minnesota of 1854. In this book, Kirsten's father is spending the winter as a lumberjack, to earn extra money for the family. Kirsten helps too, by helping her brother Lars trap animals to sell their pelts. However, when Kirsten's heart overrules her head she brings home a raccoon. Disaster follows that ruins the family's fortune, but Kirsten learns that even through adversity things can turn out well.

This is another wonderful story, that captured my nine-year-old daughter's heart, and my own. With each review I heap praise on Renee Graef's illustrations, and this one is no exception; the illustrations are fantastic. If you have a young daughter, then you must consider buying the Kirsten books.

[For those adults interested in reading a scholarly book on the Swedish immigrants, please consider reading Swedish Exodus by Lars Ljungmark.]

I was six years old when I first got hooked on the American Girls, and "Changes for Kirsten" was the first book I read from the series. Maybe I'm biased by that, but now that I've read them all I think it is one of the best. In books this short it is hard to develop a character very well, but Shaw does an excellent job, and Kirsten's character comes through here more than in the first five books. Kirsten's well-meaning disobedience causes a terrible fire that destroys almost everything the Larsons own. We see the trials they endure as a result, but also the love that helps them through. Things seem to get worse when close family friends announce that they are moving away. Then Kirsten and her brother make a remarkable discovery in the woods and their luck changes. The Larson family has to start over, but a message of hope shines through, as the end of the book (and the series) brings a world of new beginnings to these brave pioneers.

Struggles with money, a wild raccoon, fire, and more! Discover what happens to Kirsten and her family in the wilderness of America!

There is much to appreciate here, such as the detail of the case studies -- the Memphis case in particular, brings us back to an earlier era in our nation's history.

But the broad themes of the book strike me as its greatest weakness. The analogy between Reconstruction in the period just after the Civil War on the one hand, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s that Kousser calls the "second" Reconstruction, is lame.

The very first sentence shows some of the problems with this book. "Institutions and institutional rules -- not customs, ideas, attitudes, culture, or private behavior -- have primarily shaped race relations in America." If he took that sentence seriously, it would lead him into a definitional swamp, analyzing the different but overlapping meaanings of all the words used there, discussing which one is "primary" and for what reason. He does not take it seriously enough to get us mired in that swamp, but it remains a weak opening.

The best book in this field is David T. Canon's, RACE, REDISTRICTING, AND REPRESENTATION.

The anonymous reviewer's comparison of Colorblind Injustice to David Canon's book is misplaced. Although both books are good and address the issue of minority voting rights, they raise very different, though, equally broad questions. Canon asks who is represented in majority-Black districts, while Kousser is concerned with the impact of the court's voting rights decisions for minorities and the country. It is like comparing apples and oranges. I strongly recommend Kousser's book. It is historically grounded and makes quite plain how institutional arrangments systematically limit the political influence of minority voters. Kousser writes extremely well and quite vividly. I especially recommend it for courses on Black politics and parts of the book (chapter one, for instance) for instructors who provide supplemental readings in their introductory American government courses. In the past I used the late Frank Parker's book Black Votes Count to follow our discussion of the civil rights movement in my courses on Black politics. Parker's book is a case study of the legal challenge to Mississippi's long efforts at suppressing the Black vote. It is especially useful because it shows how the state of Mississippi discriminated against its Black citizens not only in its past but very recently through the 1980s. Kousser's book does the same but covers more ground to include California and is current.

Shaw v. Reno is at the heart of Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction, historian J. Morgan Kousser's closely reasoned critique of the Court's recent rulings on the constitutionality of "majority-minority" congressional districts-districts created for the purpose of ensuring adequate minority representation in the House of Representatives...

Colorblind Injustice is an angry book. Kousser is convinced that in a series of recent decisions, beginning with Shaw v. Reno, the Rehnquist Court has destroyed the hard-won gains that African Americans have made in political representation. Kousser considers those decisions to be bad law, bad history, and bad public policy, and he hopes "to set voting rights policy straight by getting its history right" (p. 2). In the pursuit of that ambition, he has written an exhaustive study of the recent history of voting rights, a study so carefully researched and intelligently reasoned that it will probably become the definitive work on this subject...

Kousser begins his analysis with a celebration of the achievements of the Second Reconstruction, a period when "the Court's willingness to protect the rights of minority citizens or let Congress do so, along with the stable majority of experienced and sympathetic members of Congress from 1954 to 1994, allowed judges, Congress, bureaucrats, and interest groups to improve federal protections [for minority rights] gradually and pragmatically" (p. 53). In Kousser's eyes, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been central to this process of minority protection, especially Section 5 of that act, which requires states that had prohibited black voting in the past to submit changes in electoral laws to the Justice Department for approval...

In Kousser's eyes, progress came to an end with the Supreme Court's ruling in Shaw v. Reno that two sprawling congressional districts, which were carefully drawn to ensure that they held black majorities, were in probable violation of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the law...Like Javert in Les Misérables, Kousser is relentless in the pursuit of his quarry. He devotes 250 pages of text to careful historical analyses of white politicians' successful attempts since passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to reduce or deny minority representation in Los Angeles, Memphis, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas. Kousser then spends the remaining 150 pages of his book explicating his thorough and scathing critique of the Rehnquist Court's decisions on the constitutionality of the majority-minority congressional districts that state legislatures created in response to Justice Department pressure. In Kousser's eyes, the Rehnquist Court-usually by five-to-four votes-has (1) ignored the relevant historical contexts of the cases it decided, (2) made bad law, and (3) defined central concepts in these cases in a manner contrary to their clear meaning. Shaw v. Reno illustrates all these problems...

Often Kousser's critique of the Rehnquist Court is so extreme and his use of language so hyperbolic that they weaken his credibility. For example, a reader of Colorblind Injustice, ignorant of the Court's history, might conclude that only the Rehnquist Court-and its racist predecessors-made decisions that were "abstract, formalistic, and factually incorrect" (p. 466) and substituted its own public-policy preferences for established judicial precedent...

When Kousser ends his book by comparing the Shaw cases with the Dred Scott decision and Plessy v. Ferguson, arguing that they "all buttressed a seemingly uncertain white supremacy" (p. 465), he goes too far. Dred Scott asserted that African Americans had no "rights which the white man was bound to respect" and that "the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the constitution." Plessy v. Ferguson upheld racial segregation and contained the cynical and racist observation that "if one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane." Whatever the shortcomings of Shaw v. Reno, neither its reasoning nor its impact is comparable to those ugly, vicious, racist judgments...

Historically, African Americans and other minorities have made their greatest political gains through the formation of interracial coalitions. The abolition of slavery was a biracial effort, as were both Reconstructions. After World War II, African Americans in the industrial states of the North and West shrewdly exercised their voting rights in a manner that led to their courtship by politicians of both major political parties. Black votes often decided the outcome of state and national elections, as they did in the 1948 and 1960 presidential races. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed, civil rights leaders and congressional leaders of both parties were present in what was a truly biracial and bipartisan celebration.

COLORBLIND INJUSTICE is a magnificent book with mighty themes. Built upon historian J. Morgan Kousser's two decades of work as an expert witness in voting rights cases, enriched by his rigorous state-of-the-art political analysis, and supported by massive and precise documentation, this powerful work will fundamentally alter discussion of race and politics in modern America. Most significantly, it convincingly refutes currently-fashionable talk about the benefits of eliminating government protection of the political rights of minorities. Kousser demonstrates, for example, that several supposedly "colorblind" 1990s voting rights decisions by the United States Supreme Court have been unfairly partial to the Republican Party, unjustly biased against the interests of African-American voters, contrary to the original intention of the relevant laws and constitutional amendments, and revolutionary in overturning well-established precedent. He also demolishes the underpinnings of the advocacy of supposedly "colorblind" racial policies by Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom in AMERICA IN BLACK AND WHITE, a "benchmark" conservative study of 20th century race relations. One central subject of COLORBLIND INJUSTICE is the relentlessly-political process by which state legislatures decennially draw congressional district boundaries. In 1991 the federal Justice Department, implementing the 1982 amendments to the federal Voting Rights Act, pressed states to create districts according to criteria that allowed minority politicians and voters to play a fairer role in the process than ever before and to increase the number of black-majority districts. Minority representation in Congress grew, but in no state did white representation fall below the white portion of the population. The Thernstroms have condemned the Justice Department's 1991 effort and have urged the Supreme Court to prohibit any minority preferences and to forbid any reference to racial classifications in drawing districts. Such "colorblind" policies, they claim, will reduce racial divisions and will foster racial healing, harmony, and equity. But the Thernstroms fail to deal with crucial political realities that Kousser demonstrates conclusively, realities that render the supposedly "colorblind" Thernstrom proposals unfeasible and unjust. For example, the Thernstroms and the Supreme Court implicitly assume that state legislatures adhere typically to "traditional race-neutral districting principles," thereby creating compact non-political districts that embrace natural communities. Kousser demonstrates instead that congressional redistricting has continually been an inherently-political no-holds-barred pushing and shoving process in which contending politicians relentlessly gerrymander in political party and protecting the interests of powerful incumbents. Moreover, since blacks vote solidly Democratic, politicians pursuing such partisan and incumbent benefit will inevitably and always give painstaking attention to race, vying fiercely to arrange a politically advantageous allocation of the predictably-Democratic black voters among districts. Typically Republicans will strive to pack most black voters into a very few heavily black urban districts, thereby "wasting" many black votes and keeping them out of suburban "Republican" districts. Typically white Democrats will seek to spread the black vote around into several contested districts, keeping it below 50 percent in each district so that black candidates cannot challenge white Democratic incumbents, but also carefully placing black voters where they can be useful in helping to defeat white Republicans. Neither white Republican nor white Democratic leaders will really want to allow minority voters the opportunity to elect the candidates they most prefer. The Thernstroms' notion that "colorblind" Court decisions can cause politicians to draw districts without reference to race is unrealistic. Court prohibitions will merely drive the inevitable partisan and incumbent-serving racial calculations and manipulations underground and out of sight, rendering them more unfair and more disadvantageous to the black voters themselves. Only in the 1991 redistricting, under the supervision of the Justice Department, was the ubiquitous political manipulation of race constrained in a way that allowed black voters a fair chance to elect their preferred candidates. But, starting with Shaw v. Reno in 1993, the five-member conservative majority of the United States Supreme Court has ruled some but not all of the 1991 black-majority districts unconstitutional. The Thernstroms have applauded the Court's direction, but have urged it to be more consistent and to go further--to declare unconstitutional any attention to racial classifications in drawing districts. Instead the Court has muddled along, and Kousser meticulously demonstrates that the muddling five-member conservative Court majority, all appointed by Republican presidents, has rendered a series of inconsistent decisions that are at once partisan (pro-Republican) and anti-minority. For example, the Court majority has condemned partisan redistrictings as racial in North Carolina and Texas, where they had been designed to aid Democrats, but it has endorsed equally partisan and racial redistrictings in Ohio and California, where they had been designed to aid Republicans. Also the Court majority has unfairly applied a "compactness" requirement to black-majority districts, but not to white-majority districts. If Shaw v. Reno and similar decisions stand and govern the 2001 congressional redistricting process, Republican strategies for advantageously manipulating race will be legal, Democratic strategies illegal. The entire process will be less open, more furtive and devious, less accessible to minorities, more vulnerable to anti-minority gerrymandering, and more often thrown finally into the hands of state and federal courts, which tend to favor conservative Republican interests. The five conservative Supreme Court justices sanctimoniously claim that their 1990s decisions adhere to a principle of "colorblindness" derived from the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. But as Kousser observes, their commitment to "colorblindness" has "collapsed when the interests of the Republican Party were at stake." Moreover, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were originally designed for the express purpose of protecting blacks against a palpable prospect of anti-minority discrimination and anti-minority party maneuvers. The conservative justices misread and misuse those protective amendments when they find in them only an abstract "colorblind" principle and when they invoke that principle not to protect against, but in fact to foster a continuing palpable prospect of anti-minority discrimination and anti-minority partisan gerrymandering.

I really enjoyed the Barleybridge novels. It felt like the Mitford Series intertwined with James Herriot's wonderful books. I love a good story that's easy to read and makes you like the characters and "feels comfortable". I hope she will finish all the great stories she began in these books.........I want to know what happens to them all~!

I really enjoyed this book. The characters were fleshed out in such a way that I got to know them and was a bit sad when the book ended.

Reticent Kate Howard arrives in the rural Yorkshire hills to work as a receptionist at the Barleybridge Veterinary Hospital that has a vast menagerie of clients ranging from pets to farm animals. The workforce and most of the customers are friendly to the newcomer. Especially nice and encouraging is another outsider Australian veterinarian Scott Spencer, who pushes her to become a vet too though her one attempt at the test was disastrous.

Kate is attracted to her handsome mentor, but is wise enough to know she is out of his league. While Scott encourages her to try again, Kate's boyfriend Adam ridicules her dreams and aspirations saying she proven she can't make it. Kate has decisions personal and professional to make turning to her kindhearted boss Joy, who can commiserate as she too furtively love one of the vets.

A COUNTRY AFFAIR, the first of the Barleybridge trilogy (COUNTRY WIVES AND COUNTRY LOVERS are to be released in America later), is a terrific amusing inspirational character study. Kate and Joy are the stars as they make decisions on what they want out of life. The support cast is solid and somewhat eccentric whether they are pet owners, other vet employees or the lead duo's family. Fans will appreciate this upbeat insightful look at two women making the best of a good life in a small English village.

Harriet Klausner

Barleybridge is a small and cozy British village in the Yorkshire hills of England. It's a place where the pace is slower, the people gentler and kinder (for the most part), and where everybody knows your name.

Kate Howard is nineteen years old and has taken a job with the Barleybridge Veterinary Hospital as the receptionist and bookkeeper. Barleybridge employs a number of 'vets' who care for large and small animals.

Kate would have loved to had studied to become a 'vet' but had had some problems with her A level exams. She tries to think of her job as a new adventure that allows her to be with animals and companionable humans.

The more Kate strives for independence as a woman and yearns to become a 'vet,' the more her steady but boring boyfriend, Adam rebels at the idea. After all, why would she want a career when she could marry him? Let me count the reasons, folks.

If you're looking for an exciting and suspenseful story, or a James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small) tale, this isn't it. What it is, is a charming story about a young woman finding herself and learning to trust what is best for her. And along the way you'll meet a whole lot of interesting and unique people who make up the landscape of Kate Howard's life in A Country Affair.

Armchair Interviews says: This is a read best suited for a lazy day when you just want to read something nice and satisfying.