Nevada Books

First things first. Regardless of the cover illustration of baby sea turtles or the title, this is not a book about sea turtles. You'll learn a lot more about fire management than loggerheads (you always learn something about natural resource management in author Nevada Barr's books).

In Endangered Species, Anna Pigeon is earning some extra money with a temporary assignment to the fire suppression crew on Cumberland Island National Seashore in Georgia. When a plane crashes on the island, killing the pilot and his passenger, Anna is asked to help (as a note-taker) with the investigation and watch over the widow of one of the deceased. Her investigative ears are burning, though, and her law enforcement skills uncover deeper mysteries.

Anna continues to be an imperfect person, but her drinking is temporarily under control, her snooping helps catch a killer, the ashes of her dead husband go down the tubes, and her relationship with Frederick comes to a conclusion.

In the meantime, ranger Anna Pigeon is clobbered, infested with ticks and chiggers, shot at, and forced to inhale very large quantities of mind-altering smoke.

In other words, Anna continues her life story thick in the middle of things.

Endangered Species started slowly, and I kept getting confused with who was who and who was doing what. It seemed to plod along, and took until chapter 25 to really get going. That was about 4/5 of the way through the book! However, I appreciated "getting to know" Anna Pigeon better. I now know I have to read these books in order of publication to appreciate them best (even though each one works as a stand-alone book).

Here's the list of Anna Pigeon novels, and the order in which they've been published (I've starred the ones I've read to date, to remind me):

1. Track of the Cat (1993)*
2. A Superior Death (1994)
3. Ill Wind (1995)*
4. Firestorm (1996)
5. Endangered Species (1997)*
6. Blind Descent (1998)
7. Liberty Falling (1999)
8. Deep South (2000)
9. Blood Lure (2001)
10. Hunting Season (2002)*
11. Flashback (2003)
12. High Country (2004)
13. Hard Truth (2005)
14. Winter Study (2008)

Enjoy!

I love Nevada Barr's character Anna Pigeon, but this story was diffinetly not one of her better writtings. I found it kinda boring and wished that she had used Barbara Rosenblat as the narrator. I find that the narrator along with the story really makes the book so much better and gives Anna Pigeon life.

Storytelling at its finest, Nevada Barr's ENDANGERED SPECIES features the little known Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia, home to the Loggerhead Turtle, which many have fought for to bring back from the edge of extinction. The island is on our must visit list the next time we are on the east coast and I'm sure to read this addition to the Anna Pigeon series for its descriptions of the fauna and wildlife of the island.
The story is marred by too many characters, it becomes confusing but Barr's powerful prose keeps your eye glued to the page.
Nash Black, author of WRITING AS A SMALL BUSINESS and SINS OF THE FATHERS.

The action takes place on Cumberland Island. I've read the book, and visited the island. Now I want to share with my husband, so I got the audio book version: we will listen to it on our way back from Florida to California.

My aunt left this book at the house after visiting over thanksgiving, so I decided to give it a try. Very interesting to have a mystery plot built around a park ranger. It is very evident the author has done here reaserch and knows her subject. Plot and mystery was strong enough to hold your attention. I'll look for more books in this series.

The book is good and easy to read, but it is kind of the same as other Monty Roberts book, so unfortantely if you have read one of his books you have read them all...but I would buy it.

At the age of 65, Monty Roberts the original horse whisperer, replicates an experience he had as a boy - gentling a horse in the wild. The horse in this case is Shy Boy, brought in from the high deserts as part of a BLM program to control the numbers of mustangs that roam the public lands of the western states. Set free to join a herd on the open range of a huge ranch in northern California, he has a new life until Roberts (and a BBC film crew) single him out for Roberts' system of training horses without violence. Without a holding pen, the process is strenuous and extends over days. Just as interesting is the transformation that occurs afterwards, as Shy Boy becomes a riding and working horse and adjusts to improved diet, better health care, and the presence of humans.

Also included in the book is a description of Roberts' training of a racehorse, Blushing ET, who has an extreme fear and hatred of starting gates. Roberts' account of these man-horse encounters is made vividly dramatic by the many photographs of Christopher Dydyk that illustrate this enjoyable book. Definitely for lovers of horses and those fascinated by the mystique of the wild mustang.

Cute idea for a story. Wild horse given choice of whether to remain free or whether to go with nice man, chooses nice man. One may have, on further research, reason to question whether all details of this tale, as presented in the story, are 100% truthful. One might question whether the mustang and the horses used to pursue him were handled humanely.

One might go so far as to question whether the experiment that was the basis for this book and its companion video, *should* have been performed, on the basis of humane concern for the animals and for scientific validity.

As a teenager, author Monty Roberts once managed to gentle a mustang, using methods developed from close observation of equine interaction in the wild, a sharp contrast to the harsh practice of "breaking" a horse used by most ranchers of the time. Ultimately he was able to ride the horse back to his father's ranch. He had hoped this feat would win him some respect from his father, but instead no one could believe it. They ridiculed him, saying he must have chosen a horse that had already been handled by humans. Disheartened, Roberts pursued the matter no further, but did go on to use his experience with the mustang as the model for Join Up, his method of gently getting a horse to the point where he trusts his human handlers and allows himself to be ridden.

Roberts never really expected to duplicate that childhood experience, but got a lucky chance to do just that when the BBC contacted him in 1996, interested in doing a program about his training methods. It took some convincing to get them to agree to the idea of actually working with a wild mustang, but in the end they were won over, and the story that follows is what makes up this book. Periodically the Bureau of Land Management rounds up a number of mustangs and adopts them out to qualified individuals, as a means to keep the wild horse populations at a sustainable level. At one of these adoption events, Roberts acquired a small mustang gelding whom he named Shy Boy. In order to ensure that the horse did not become accustomed to humans, and especially to himself, he stayed away from the horse during his short period of human contact, and made arrangements to have him turned out with a wild band of horses roaming on a large private area of rangeland. Shy Boy remained with this band, untouched by people, for many months before the experiment began. He may have been briefly exposed to humans during his initial capture from the wild, but when Roberts began his work with the horse, he was certainly nowhere near trusting these strange two-legged creatures, which is exactly what Roberts needed in order to prove that his methods really work. And prove it he does, with this touching story as the outcome.

The story is not portrayed in a great amount of depth here, nor does Roberts describe his training methods in great detail. For a more thorough account of his Join Up system, and how he came to develop it, I'd recommend reading Roberts's other book, "The Man Who Listens to Horses," which is excellent. "Shy Boy" is something of a lighter version of that book, relying more on pictures to tell the story. The text is sparse and simple and the book can easily be finished in one day. I was slightly disappointed that the story of Shy Boy was not told at greater length, but it was still an enjoyable read. Roberts also punctuates the story with asides about a few other training experiences he has had. The two that stand out are his experiences with an unmanageable racehorse by the name of Blushing ET, who almost had even Roberts in despair over whether this horse's trust could ever be gained, and another tale about a tiny, sickly 12-year-old girl who contacted him after successfully using Roberts's methods herself on two of her own formerly unmanageable horses.

The photography is another great reason to get this book. While not the very best I've ever seen, most of photographer Christopher Dydyk's work is quite nice, and they really bring the book to life. There are images of Shy Boy in the wild before Roberts began his work, during the gentling and training period, and afterward, living and working successfully with his human family. The beautiful California mountain scenery in these is stunning. In addition, there are photographs of other mustangs in the wild, and of Roberts working both privately and in clinics with a number of domestic horses brought to him for that purpose. "Shy Boy" would definitely make a great coffee table book for any horse lover, and for those that want more detailed information on Roberts and his methods, I also recommend "The Man Who Listens to Horses."

I recommend that you read Monty Roberts "The Man Who Listens to Horses" whether you read it before or after "Shy Boy..." Having read Monty's earlier book first the story of Shy Boy meant so much more to me. To read that, at the age of 62 with a bad back and not-so-young anymore, Monty relived one of the best times of his life gentling a wild Mustang as he did as a kid, but for a BBC Documentary as well. The gentling and training went better than he expected and he created a friendly and willing partner out of a wild horse. Not only that, the BBC special and the book continues to change the lives of many people and horses around the world as Monty's way of working with horses becomes known and accepted. The book itself contains spectacular photography of Monty, Shy Boy, other horses, and the beautiful country filmed in the BBC special. It is a heartwarming and inspiring story to say the least.

Another great Nevada Barr mystery . . . this one not as dark as say, Hard Truth (Anna Pigeon Mysteries), but nonetheless, still full of adventure, action, mystery, emotion, and a behind-the-scenes look at one of our National Parks--this one in Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas close to El Paso and the Mexican border.

Perhaps Track of the Cat is not as dark as, for example, A Superior Death (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) (which gave me the creeps), because Track of the Cat is Barr's first mystery.

In the book, Park Ranger Anna Pigeon is her usual comic-book strong and fearless. Alone, she spends the night the treacherous Southwest desert without the safety of a zippered tent after describing that tarantulas and rattlesnakes hunt in the night. In this first book, Anna is kinder, sweeter, and finds most of the people she works with above reproach after some research.

In later books, you don't find out until the end of the book that all but one of the characters in the book were red herrings. And, they all seem like likely suspects. In Track of the Cat it's like she wasn't quite yet ready to explore the darkest depths of the human psyche.

I especially like Track of the Cat because it brings me back to a night I spent in the Southwest Desert of Arizona's Kitt Peak photographing a radio telescope, under construction, against the panoply of the stars. The construction workers had warned me to be careful of a rattlesnake that patrolled the area as part of its territory, bats that flew over the trash barrel, and a mother puma with cubs. Instead of being afraid of these natural predators, I got myself worked up about Bigfoot stalking in the bushes. It's the kind of thing that can come over you when you're all by yourself with only a camera and tripod for company and a full moon illuminating quivering shadows made by a nervous breeze that rustles the creosote bushes. Anna Pigeon is one stalwart gal!

The mountains lions in Track of the Cat have my deep affection and also Ms Barr's. A lovely book. I love the ending. Again, she's not quite yet ready to tell it like it is. But, this is the first whisper of where she'll be going with later books.

Track of the Cat, by Nevada Barr, is the first book in a series featuring Anna Pigeon, a law enforcement officer for the National Park Service. Since Barr has been a park ranger in the past (present?), including Guadalupe Mountains National Park, the location for this novel, she writes with the authority of place knowledge.

In Track of the Cat, Anna Pigeon finds a dead colleague. The medical examiner calls it a case of death by mountain lion predation. Pigeon thinks otherwise, and thus a mystery begins.

This book was written in 1993, soon after the well-publicized death of a high school jogger near Boulder, CO. In Scott Lancaster's tragic case, there was no mystery as to cause of death. As author David Baron investigated in The Beast in the Garden, the mystery was why we live in lion habitat and expect no consequences.

Back to Anna Pigeon. The lion tracks don't seem right, the claw marks seem to have occurred postmortem, and... the lion didn't feast.

Then she is almost killed. Finally, another park employee is killed in a very Indiana Jones appropriate way ("Snakes... why did it have to be snakes?").

Pigeon is one tough cookie. She has her problems, however, particularly with alcohol.

Nevada Barr hints at her own political and ethical philosophies:

"Any excuse to drag out the hunting rifles was a good excuse in Texas. Texans were the best hunters in the world. They were born to it, believed in it, almost like a religion. Hunting and football, not opposable thumbs and the ability to laugh, were what separated man from the apes" (p. 37).

"'I used to hunt,' Harland answered and Anna could tell he was uncomfortable with the subject. 'I bought that line about it being a 'challenge.' When I found out that a bull elk had an intelligence level equivalent to that of an eighteen-month-old toddler, I kind of lost my taste for it'" (p. 42).

But she tries to educate as well:

"'There've been no incidents of lions attacking humans in West Texas for the past one hundred years. Not one. Zilch. Nada'" (p. 32).

I've read that these novels get better over time. I look forward to the next Anna Pigeon adventure.

TRACK OF THE CAT by Nevada Barr introduces the reader to an outstanding series and a fascinating protagonist, Anna Pigeon.
The series manages a delicate balance between personal history and the working elements of a mystery. As the story progresses the reader also learns about the awesome landscape of the Texas hill county and the dangerous occupation of a national park ranger.
Each carefully chosen word will hold your eye to the page and bring you back for more.
Nash Black, author of WRITING AS A SMALL BUSINESS and SINS OF THE FATHERS.

First in the Anna Pigeon Series. Years ago I was told that this was a great series, but I just didn't believe the person who told me. Guess I should have. Anna is a National Park Ranger and when two of her fellow rangers have mysterious deaths Anna investigates, almost gets herself killed. Anna will question many things in her life, but she makes for a great character.

When the National Park Service puts a bounty on a killer mountain lion, it rubs National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon's fur the wrong way. It's a knee jerk reaction from the Park's leadership: Mountain Lion Attack! Kill the animal first, ask questions later. Or maybe no questions need to be asked at all. Something stinks at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and it's not just the brutal death of a fellow park ranger whose half eaten dead body was found by Anna in the back country. It's the naturalist vs. the politicians. The Park Service, neighboring cattle ranchers and developers all want the mountain lion disposed of. It seems Anna, suspicious of things that are a little too neat, is the only one taking the animal's side.

This is Nevada Barr's kick off novel, and a good one it is. Anna Pigeon, park ranger, is the hero. Unlike most, Anna is a law enforcement ranger. She didn't think there would be much law enforcement to do in this remote park in West Texas. Most enforcement types are stationed in parks close to urban areas where most crime takes place. Anna chose the law enforcement route because the Protective Division does not only the serious cop stuff, but Search and Rescue, where the real action is. When a mountain lion kills a human, it is not a crime, but when the humans make it look like it was done by an animal, yes, no matter if it is in the bedroom or on a city street or the back country, that is murder.

Because of the excellence of the writing, the natural world as a backdrop, and the character of Anna Pigeon, I've read several of Barr's books and have enjoyed them all.

Having read some of these Anna Pigeon mysteries, this was not my favorite. The people were all just too 'messed up'. Is no one normal in the Park System? Anna herself is quite a dame. A boozer with personal problems, she turns into Superwoman! Actually, she's pretty stupid. As quoted from the book, "Anna, you've painted yourself into a corner this time." Just like in a gothic novel or a cheap horror picure, the woman goes at it alone, walks into the most transparent danger, and then escapes with a few scratches. She should be dead! And of course, friends are always just around the corner as they come to the rescue in the nick of time - oh brother! Why didn't she use her head and the technology available - or the FBI? If someone is leaving an island, there are only so many ports they are going to. Radio ahead, Anna. My greatest gripe is the way this lover of Texas takes to the Great Lakes. She dives and handles all types of water craft like a pro. She faces the storms, docks, leaps from boat to boat, hangs off the gunwalls, and does a tie-on flawlessly. Tell me that's not fantasy. I have trouble imagining how her solo boating ventures could happen without mishap. Having spent time on Superior, I can tell you that it is BIG and DANGEROUS. The author makes that point, but the characters are a little disrespectful of that fact as they boat at night, cruise in the fog, etc. In real life, no one plays around with Lady Superior and wins - not even Anna.

"Superior Death" by Nevada Barr, ©1994

Ms. Barr always writes a good story, placed in various national parks. These are not the normal parks like Yellowstone or Yosemite, but little traveled ones that get their share of visitors, but not a lot of press. Usually she has a map included, this is the first that did not have one.
The story was sad, people got killed and abused, but really easy to read and interesting. Her stories are more on the lines of suspense/mystery, rather then just mystery, and emphasis on the suspense. This does get a bit expectable and, while exciting, you know she will get away and fight another day.
It is also another example of the sleuth who is not a detective. I have read one of a state game warden and a caterer, as well as this national park ranger.

Nevada Barr was recommended to me by Sara Paretsky and I agree - her stories are great. The characters are rich and the background interesting. The story is fast paced and intriguing with a nice twist at the end. Good read.

If you have a major fear of water, don't go near Nevada Barr's A SUPERIOR DEATH. The seconded of the Anna Pigeon takes you to the murky bottom of Lake Superior in a thriller guaranteed to rattle your bones. Anna has been transferred from the dry Texas hill county to a little known national park on the shores of our largest fresh water lake with murder following her.
The park people are sceptical of her and her innate curiosity that demands a personal exploration of a famous shipwreck. Mystery--suspense--thrills in unusual environments are becoming a trademark for Ms. Barr.
Don't miss a page of the excellent story.
Nash Black, author of WRITING AS A SMALL BUSINESS and SINS OF THE FATHERS.

One of the many problems from which this book suffers is a lack of regional and cultural context. As someone who has lived in the Keweenaw Peninsula, I was looking for descriptions or insights the author might offer regarding the area and its people, but these were conspicuously lacking. Obviously, the author had spent some time in the park, but her portrayal was such that Isle Royale seemed to be surrounded by cardboard cut-out locales. Even though Houghton (the location of the park headquarters) is visited, referenced in numerous ways, and even made the location of a lesbian community of interest to sorting out the sexual preferences of various characters, it remains a cipher -- a nearby blank canvas upon which the author can paint some plot conveniences, but nothing else. Readers will learn more about New York City from this book than they will about western Upper Michigan. Likewise, the people and culture of the Keweenaw Peninsula are pretty much absent from the book, unless one counts the moment where a character -- written sympathetically at that point -- compliments the protagonist for having a capacity for introspection she finds absent in those from the Upper Peninsula.

A second major flaw is the over-use of convenient details and timing. So many coincidences just happen to occur during the short period of time covered by the book that the word "implausible" seems inadequate. I realize this is fiction, but even science fiction writers have recognized for decades that good writing demands reasonable limits upon what an author can do within a particular genre or universe. A novel consciously written and marketed as an action thriller, for example, may stretch credibility in order to move from one over-the-top sequence to another, but since that is the point of the exercise, a reader can buy the book expecting to accept the story on its own terms. This was not the case with "A Superior Death", which I purchased expecting to find a mystery novel set on Isle Royale, not a tale that incorporated so many conveniences as to depart the mystery genre entirely and gravitate into Matthew Reilly territory.

I will describe the following examples in fairly generic language, for the sake of those who still want to read the book. A) One of the most obvious cases of laughably far-fetched convenience is the coincidence by which the protagonist catches on to the killer. B) Two characters possessing a crucial teddy bear originally appeared to have been deliberately written as odd for the purpose of making them interesting, yet after a couple of ludicrous coincidences by which the protagonist is saved, it became obvious that their oddity was also the author's cover for not having to come up with a rational explanation for the series of events. C) A character accidentally chokes to death while engaged in an activity that was, for the character, fairly routine; furthermore, this death was not related to the flow of the story, but conveniently occurred at the end of the book in order to provide a warped kind of closure (since, as other characters make unsubtly clear, the reader was being manipulated into being satisfied with this person's death). D) A missing-person subplot is stretched across the entire length of the book -- long after the official disinterest in locating her was plausibly sustainable, particularly given that the murder victim's wife claimed she hadn't initially reported her husband's disappearance because she thought he had gone to be with the other woman in question.

The identity of the killer wasn't too hard to guess, simply because there was no other justification for the prominence of the person in the story, and the author's attempts to cause the reader to consider other suspects were so ham-handed, the discerning reader is unlikely to take the blind alleys seriously. One of those dead-ends involved two diving partners of the murder victim; the three of them refer to themselves as the Three Musketeers. The problem is that the murder victim was nicknamed after d'Artagnan, who was not one of the Three Musketeers. Yet the author uses this very identification to allow the protagonist to link a knife to the dead man due to the initials "d'A". Clearly, if the author had identified the victim with the actual name of one of the Three Musketeers (Athos, Porthos, and Aramis), any mark on the knife would probably have been either less distinctive or more obvious, depending on the number of letters used in the inscription. So, in order to artificially create a mystery-within-a-mystery, the author has to wrongly identify d'Artagnan as one of the Three Musketeers, and then have at least four characters (the dead man and his partners, as well as the protagonist) consistently follow the same mistake. That's as ludicrous as writing a mystery about a murdered sports buff in which one of the puzzles requires the deceased, his friends, and the detectives to brazenly and consistently identify a famous football player with the wrong team.

Finally, while the author offered some details regarding the underwater condition of the Kamloops shipwreck, it (like the Keweenaw) appears to exist merely as a blank canvas for the author's own purposes. The story of the sinking of the Kamloops, including the deaths of those who came ashore and the subsequent discovery of the bottle containing the note written by Alice Bettridge, would have added a lot of background and depth to the events of the novel, even if treated only briefly. Instead, "A Superior Death" seems analogous to a book in which characters deal with wreckage or artifacts from the Endurance, without any overview of the Shackleton expedition. I suspect the reason the author passed up such a golden opportunity is that the motive she creates for the murder requires her to designate the captain of the Kamloops as engaging in criminal activity during the fatal voyage. If there were historical evidence to support such a charge, then the events of "A Superior Death" could not have happened (because there would have been no secret), and it otherwise seems rather unseemly to impugn a historically-identifiable dead man in such a way. It seems reasonable to guess the author and her publisher felt they could not describe the real crew, their story, and their names, and then go on to claim that the lawbreaking dead captain mentioned in the story was a fictional construct bearing no resemblance to the real person, living or -- in this case -- dead. Regardless of the underlying decision-making process, the resulting work manages to ignore the fascinating human history behind the disaster, while appearing to taint the memory of one of its victims.

Those looking for books about Isle Royale should instead consider the excellent titles by Howard Sivertson (Once upon an Isle: The Story of Fishing Families on Isle Royale and Tales of the Old North Shore: Paintings and Companion Stories), Tom and Kendra Gale (Isle Royale: A Photographic History), Peter Oikarinen (Island Folk: The People of Isle Royale), Jim DuFresne (Isle Royale National Park: Foot Trails & Water Routes), and Daniel Lenihan (Shipwrecks of Isle Royale National Park: The Archeological Survey), among others. Everyone else merely searching for a good read should simply look elsewhere.

Anna Pigeon has a Winter Study (Anna Pigeon Mysteries)rather tumultous series of experiences in this book - more than "usual" but held interest and was a 'good read' --

This book should have been edited better. It was too slow. It's about 100 pages too long. As all of Nevada Barr's books, there's entirely too much internal dialogue. If some of that was cut back, it would pick up the pace. I found myself skipping a lot of the pages.

I am a big Nevada Barr fan and have read all her books. Winter Study is just too unbelievable. I found it raw and gritty. No one could live through all that. The plot was hard to follow and characters were hard to keep straight. Don't spend you hard earned money on this one!

I started following Anna Pigeon in Track of the Cat, a book I checked out of the library because it had the word "track" in it back when I was just learning to track. Since then I have read every book I could find by Nevada Barr, even those without the famous Anna Pigeon in them because when it is all said and done, this writer will be a classic. The Anna Pigeon in this latest book has lived through so many harrowing mysteries that she has gained skills and savvy that make her almost a different character. Who says a female protagonist needs to be a ditz? Not that Anna doesn't get hurt in this one, but she gives as good as she got. This is a read where you don't find yourself frustrated with the main character being stupid. Instead you are right with her unraveling the mystery as she does, only being spared the physical pains.

Where to start with this book? My first gripe - not a new one - is an irritating grammar issue. I almost quite reading after five words, because there it was: "Ann'd." For heavens sake, Nevada, cut that out. It's distracting, poor grammar and diction, found in speech but not in writing.

And that plot. Good grief. Was there an editor anywhere in the contiguous 48 states who could have helped? Characters wandered in an out and it was honestly hard to keep track of them, because some were fleshed out so little. And what a pack of weirdos. I think the wolves showed great restraint in not eating them all. Immediately.

Why oh why is Homeland Security always the bad guy? And could it have been more obvious? And if Bob What's his name is supposed to be Katherine's grad prof mentor, and he has so little knowledge of wolves, when she seems to be the expert, how does that work in real-life academia? Hint, it doesn't.

Why on earth does Anna Pigeon seem to hate men so much? It's almost embarrassing. Poor Paul.

And that climax. It went on so long I got bored. End a book, lady. Leave us wanting more, not less.

I could go on. This is enough. Never again.

Very disappointed as the book is more like a movie script (i.e. "He enters the room, voice over") This makes it very dull and I couldn't get into the book altho I tried several times.

Book came in the time frame and in the condition specified.

It has been a long time since I fell on such a good book. Interesting characters intertwine in a decisive decade for Vegas. The story is based on the real life of Frank (Lefty) Rosenthal who left his mark in the gambling industry.

Money, power, greed, lust, and crime with flair intertwine in seventies' Sin City. Pileggi is a natural born story-teller who knows how to make it all work and keep you glued to the book with every turn of the page. The writing is style is spot on. It's so hard to find contemporary literature written with such a simple language, yet capable of conveying an intriguing story.

The fact that I had only seen bits and pieces of the movie, also helped. I could place the faces of De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Sharon Stone behind the characters while still enjoying the novelty of getting acquainted with the story for the real time.

I would recommend this to anybody who is interested in recent history, the mob, and the gambling industry overall.

This book is really great.Hate to tell that jackass who wrote the olsen casino review but its a non fiction story and it was written long before the movie came out. Anyone interested in the mob or vegas will love this book!

Perhaps a little more well known for "Wiseguys", the book that became the movie "Goodfellas", Nicholas Pileggi is as good as they get when it comes to writing about the Mafia, its people and the drama of living the life. It is unfortunate that he doesn't work very fast - more books would be welcome.
"Casino" is the true story of Vegas in its heyday prior to the mega resort/casinos we see today, like Excalibur, New York New York, The Luxor, etc. Before large corporations turned Las Vegas into a theme park with casinos, the Chicago mob pretty much controlled the then famous casinos of the day, like the Stardust, where the movie "Casino" disguises it with the fictional name of The Tangier. Skimming the profits was the mob's business. Perhaps the greatest handicapper of all time, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, ran three major casinos and ran them well. Chicago sent out the legendary Tony Spilotro to keep an eye on "Lefty" and protect him and the moolah. Spilotro, however, had ideas of his own and soon became mired in a horrendous mess, dragging Rosenthal and eventually all the mob controlled casinos to their demise with him. Rosenthal still lives, and even has a web site, but Spilotro at books' end learns the hard way that being insubordinate to the mob and skimming their skim has dire consequences.
Pileggi is a master at showing a picture of the lives of these people, the shady deals, the threats from every corner, from the state, other criminals and the Mob, and how difficult life is for those who choose the gambling scene as a way of life.
It's morbid but fascinating reading. A must for fans of organized crime books.

I really found this book interesting. The details of Brookey and Christine's lives are incredible. Hard to believe it took so long to find Christine's body, sounds like some episode of Cold Case or CSI. Great book for True Crime fans.

This is one of the best true crime stories I've ever read. Not only was it well-written, but the story itself was fascinating. Mr. Puitt found just the right mix of background history, police procedure, and courtroom drama to keep the story clipping along at an even, interesting pace. The imagery, even if there had been no pictures, was so vivid you felt you were right there, even where you wished you weren't. Very, very good! Looking forward to more from this author.

The book did not explain too much about Brookey herself. I wanted more on the withcraft, more on her Dad etc. Fast easy read, just not enough for me.

I was really quite surprised to find such a strange and deceitful person.a real woman could do such horrifying things to her own family. I never thought that true life could be worse than a fiction murder mystery.

Really good book - I got it from some Amazon.com reader's 10 best true crime novels and if this one was any indication of the rest of them - he/she right on the money!! Very graphic - pictures are definitely NOT for the faint of heart. I still can't get them out of my head

The plot had potential, since it is usually hard to go wrong with a Western romance featuring a beautiful and gutsy gal and a tall, dark and handsome half-breed cowboy, but flowery writing and a redundant "I'm the wind" mantra weighed the story down. And does it really make you dreamer to want to find water for your poor skinny cows? It just was not one of Elizabeth Lowell's best books.

This has topped all books I have read as the best ever. The struggle the characters had to realize their dreams was gut-wrenching, any weaker person would have broken. Some of the reviewers couldn't understand why Rio was like he was, but I think the reasons for his inner workings was clearly explained. Like one of the other characters he befriended said Rio's life would have broke a weaker man. He not only had stronger beliefs than anyone ever, but he was a friend to so many in their time of need. The story couldn't have unfolded any other way in order for Hope to learn the far reaches of the kindness and unselfishness of the man Rio was.
Yes there should have been a sequel to show us more of what went into realizing the fruit of the dream of Hope for the Valley of the Sun.

Answer, WAAAAAYYYY too many!!!!!I would have really liked this story except for that one word wich she used over and over and over again.........The characters and setting was good, but enough of that word already!!!!!

(...)
I like western romance novels, and nothing comes close to Beautiful Dreamer. The plot line is refreshingly original, the characters are believable and have won a place in my heart. Elizabeth Lowell paints the west so vividly. I've read several other of Lowell's books, and this is undoubtably my favorite. I really wish there were more books like this. Thanks!

The hero (Rio) in this book is one of my favorites. Although he struggles with his past and his own pain, he his strong, sexy and givng. What I like about this book is that Rio and Hope don't waste thier time fighting all of the time. You can feel thier care and feelings for one another. Hope is strong and independant without being abrasive. The love scenes in this book are sensual without being filthy. I HIGHLY recommend this book!!!! You won't be sorry!!!!

I enjoyed the book, but the last chapter was kind of a dumping ground for everything. Somehow the author of the last chapter threw it all together to end the story --- but it was a mish mosh that I didn't follow very well. I read it because a couple of my favorite writers were in the "pack" --- Mary Jane Clark, particularly. The last chapter was too long and just a mess, in my opinion.

The Phonenix, contrary to the one located on Gay Street, is an upscale spa for the rich and famous. The scene of five murders, this time the characters are all interrelated, which is uncovered in the final chapter. It was all rather convoluted, being the artistic endeavors of thirteen prominent writers, each for one chapter. This is the result of a project to copy the serial novels of the Thirties in which Agatha Cristie was involved. In 'Agatha,' the movie, she was incognito "shadowing" her nemesis in a steam room in England about the same time she was writing such (living a dream). Our Phoenix building downtown has been renovated into high priced condos for strange folks who moved here and think it is novel to live on the main street of this town. No Spa there, however, you have to go to Powell to the Fitness Center to find the hot tub and steam room.

The Phoenix in this story in segments is a place of myster with drugs, adoptions, murders all involved until the Chapter 13 which explains all in detail to the survivors who are all family, interrelated in a weird way. "A family, rising phoenixlike from the ashes." Caroline thanked God for bringint this man into her life; Tennessee congressman Doug Blessing with some secrets of his own. She hadd not "forced her way to freedom" because of an anticipated "need for Doug's more delicate plumbing." This written by a mystery writer as opposed to a romance novelist who would be more explicit. Just a slightly different way of phrasing, which I always used in the book reviews I gave to the literary club -- it was fun to confuse those who weren't napping. The Phoenix had a mud room with its own secret stash.

Some of the gathering of strong personalities include the beautiful made model (Adonis), the kinky actress, the green-haired rock star who went through N.A., the detective Toscana who sometimes acted like God ("and Toscana saw that it was good."), Dante, t he masseur, and Geoff, the assitant pastry chef. The sociopathic personality responsible for the deaths had no conscience, and was evil with no sense of honor. Knowledge was her weapon. A person can only ask, to be granted a wish for anything.

Led by Nevada Barr based this confusing story showing how a character can be killed in a spa. I review another book wherin the pivotal chatacter was killed in the steam room of the notel spa shortly before his scheduled assignation with the main person. So, this premise is nothing new, nor the format. What is different is t he freedom of each of these authors to develop their own characters and circumstances leading to the next sequence of unusual, never-thought-of-before things a client could do at this exclusive Phoenix Spa. This serial format started in 1931 with 'The Floating Admiral' which was serialized in England. Marcia Talley, editor, discovers a link with that first collaboration and declares, "We have come full circle."

Two more recent such workings are 'Naked Came the Stranger ' (1969) by "Newsday" and 'Naked Came the Manatee' serialized in the "Miami Herald."

Nice idea, nice effort, but with a blah outcome. These writers, who are superstars in their own write, had to suppress too much of their natural talent to weave a seamless story. Don't buy, go to the library.

This is a readable tale for a rainy evening, but using thirteen authhors for the thirteen chapters resulted in some extreme changes of direction. It sounded like a cast of characters with multiple personality disorders. Some chapters are better than others. Caroline's raid on the kitchen is really funny. But other chapters don't seem to come across as well. A few situations are transparent, and others are a bit of a stretch. Perhaps it ended up with too many twists and turns.

First of all, to enjoy this sort of novel, you have to be able to appreciate what's going on behind the scenes: backstabbing; plot-twisting; character reinventions. And I'm not talking about the story itself. I'm talking about what the 13 authors are trying to do to each other!
The genre originated wonderfully with the august members of the British Detection Club way back in 1931, in a "serial" novel in which the various authors contrived ways to skullduggle not only the reader but each other and try to make it almost impossible for the final writer to wrap everything up neatly and tie it with a bowknot. That effort, "The Floating Admiral," is still the very best of its type. More recently, it's been done with sparkling wit by the Miami bunch including Carl Hiassen and Dave Barry in a delicious romp entitled "Naked Came the Manatee."
Now it's been tackled by a baker's dozen of America's female mystery writers. Yes, the plot is silly. Yes, the characters aren't all that fully developed. But who cares? The enjoyment of this book, as the others, is in seeing what each successive writer is doing to skewer what has already been written (without, however, contradicting it) and send the story reeling in a provocatively new direction. New openings are abruptly cut off at the knees. (Is she dead? Or is she only concussive?) Contrasting scenarios challenge what you think you've already assuredly figured out.
It doesn't really matter who winds up having done what to whom. If you're enjoying the wicked twists being perpetrated not by the characters but by their creators, then what you're looking for is how the final writer responds to the challenge of wrapping everything up with no loose ends and no plot spins left twisting in the wind--not even the yellow polkadot bikini! And in this regard, Laurie King shines splendidly.
As I closed the book, I was imagining the final dinner party those naughty thirteen were having after they all got to read King's inventive closure, and what a laugh they were enjoying. But the laughter is not at our expense. We share in it.

I wonder from the other reviews whether they either read the same book or didn't finish it. Reviewers point out that the main character Sarah is a little weak willed without the proper will needed to survive the frontier. I think that is the lens of modern feminist sensibilities.

Either way, this book is about true love's transformation of Sarah from a weak, wishy-washy girl to a strong, determined woman. Beginning with her willingness to accept an arranged marriage to a brutal oaf who cared not for her own needs, Sarah becomes a woman who could take care of herself. The tale is about Sarah and Imogene's love and how it transformed the younger woman into the gracious, strong woman that she would become. It's about the grief, heartache and utter joy that occurred in between those two extremes. Bittersweet chronicles what they do to keep that love alive and what it costs them.

I would not recommend the book for anyone who is depressed because it is extremely sad and rife with death. But the blossoming of love between the two characters is sweet and you will definitely root for them. If you need a good cry over what you have or what you lost, this is the book to read. It's beautifully written. Thank you, Nevada.

I loved this book. I have even given it to a number of friends of mine. I liked the book as it is. I also think if Barr wanted she could meake a second book about the lover that has become strong over the years, and where it could lead to a new life with all she has learned. I have a friend who has a family rance in NV and to go from one house to another is 28 miles on dirt roads, dusty, windy,and craggy. I could just picture the coundtry Barr discribed. This is a wonderful book for women's studies.

This is NOT a mystery, this is NOT one of the Anna Pidgeon series. It's a lesbian love story, set in the Old West. The people are real, their world is real. Again, very well-written. I didn't want it to end.

I realized late that this was Nevada Barr's FIRST novel, not her LATEST. Thank goodness she has learned better plot development since Bittersweet, which she wrote in 1984.

The trite title gives it all away. While the characters are well thought-out, consistent and potentially interesting, the plot is graceless and overly contrived. While I wouldn't expect a story about two women becoming lovers in the nineteenth century to be full of rainbows and butterflies, the story focuses primarily on their challenges and tragedies.

Unfortunately the two primary characters are also unlikeable. One is a perpetual victim and weakling, and the other is a sexual predator and a liar. Instead of being moved by their struggle and pathos, I just wanted to smack them.

I bought Bittersweet because I love Barr's style of writing, and I was waiting for the next mystery. I was wondering how I would like Ms. Barr's writing a different style than her Anna Pigeon mysteries.

Once again, Nevada Barr writes a compelling story! This one takes place in the old west and is basically a beautiful love story between two people, and the trials and tribulations they go through to be able to be together. As usual, Barr weaves the main characters intimately to the environment they find themselves in, as well as with characters that come and go in their lives.

This book is definitely for those souls, of any gender, who appreciate a wonderful love story that, like real life, may smell like roses along the way, but in the end, is truly bittersweet.