Devoted to the plants of Big Bend National Park this book also captures the stark beauty of the park. After brief sections on the preface, acknowledgement and design of the book, the book opens by explaining the environment in the short chapter headed, “Big Bend, The Land of Extremes.” Along with rainfall rate, temperature extremes, […]

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Recently released by Texas A&M University Press this reference guide is a comprehensive and detailed look at the rare plants of Texas. While useful for the layman, the book is primarily of interest for botanists and others deeply immersed in the subject matter. As such, the book is highly technical in nature and written in […]

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It is a hot July in the early sixties and 23-year-old Ray Kelly is coming home from his stint in the Air Force. He reunites in New York City with his dad, Willard Kelly, Sr. who seems a little nervous and off with him but Ray just puts it down to Ray being gone several […]

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I first came across Paul Mark Tag when I was invited to review Prophecy, I can honestly say from page one, I was hooked. I think high adrenalin thriller is how I would sum it up. I suspect Paul liked my review, as he kindly sent me a copy of his first novel Category 5. […]

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Claire Hanover is not very happy these days.  Her husband Roger spends way too much time at work, the kids are grown and out of the house and her gift basket business isn’t much consolation. Rather bored and lonely, this wasn’t the way her life was supposed to go at all.  Then, there is the […]

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You many not have been aware of it but Minneapolis is the home of Private Detective Sean “No Middle Initial” Sean.  Yes, you read that right. His first name is his last, he has no middle name, and maybe that is why he looks at everything just a little differently than most would. He’s short […]

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(Knopf / 978-0-307-26658-3 / July 2008 / 528 pages / $26.95 retail)
Although I had heard of Stephen L. Carter long ago, this is the first book of his that I have read. As a Baby Boomer born six years prior to Mr. Carter, I have been living through and following the same historic, modern American […]

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I really enjoyed Dan Ronco’s latest book, Unholy Domain, it is set in the near future, and paints a bleak picture of what might happen in the aftermath of a computer virus that spreads through the Internet. More and more the net is becoming part of the worlds infrastructure. Email is no longer a luxury, […]

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A Courageous Story Of Addiction, True Love, And Forgiveness
This is a powerful book, and also a very sad one.
I run a Computer Lab, we offer free classes, and we offer free internet access. It is based in a large homeless shelter, probably the largest shelter in North America, we offer beds to over 1,100 people […]

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Hi all!
I recently had the great opportunity to read a new children’s book from Joanne L. McGonagle. The Tiniest Tiger documents a lost kitten’s journey through the zoo, talking with the other big cats there and attempting to find a place to call home.
As the author and illustrator of this book, McGonagle has created an […]

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As I noted in a recent review of another title in this series, the last thing I want to do when I come home from teaching and working with kids all day is to stand in the kitchen and work on making dinner. I primarily work with special needs students which are often physically demanding […]

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Hiding out in Puerto Lagarto as the novel opens, our hero Joe Dunne begins a detailed confession to a traveling American priest. He has been hiding out for two years with no one to talk to and clearly is a bit lonely. Besides that, he has been watching the American in a clerical collar chasing […]

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After recently reviewing “Williams-Sonoma Food Made Fast: Grilling” primarily for my newspaper column in Senior News and later elsewhere because I liked the book so much, I decided to see what my library had to offer in the series. While I am primarily a meat and potatoes kind of guy, I like to cook and […]

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Truth be told, I have been a big fan of this series for a long time. Author Jon Talton consistently turns out novels that are complex and ones that quickly engage the reader. This recent release does it again on every level.
Cactus Heart
By Jon Talton
Poisoned Pen Press
www.poisonedpenpress.com
May 2007
ISBN: 1-59058-352-3
ARC
As this fifth novel of the very […]

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(Elf Books / 978-0-981-56791-4 / February 2008 / 488 pages / $17.78)
Jacqueline S. Homan is acutely disturbed by poverty in America, her own as well as everybody else’s. What differentiates her book from most of those that delve deeply into the same subject matter is that she is talking about lower class white poverty. Although […]

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Speed of meal preparation is all the rage these days and is evidenced here as well both in terms of the series and this book. The longest section of the book opens the cookbook with “30 Minutes Start To Finish.” With delectable choices such as “herbed flank steak with tomatoes,” “florentine t-bone with spinach,” or […]

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Blacklin County, Texas is a fairly, quiet place most of the time which is how Sheriff Dan Rhodes likes it. His idea of a citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy had seemed like a good idea at the time in that it would teach folks about the department and generate some good publicity. Now he is getting flack […]

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This is Terry Turchie and Kathleen Puckett’s second collaboration in the book world. The first, Hunting The American Terrorist I enjoyed immensely. Terry was the lead FBI investigator on the Unabomber hunt, and also spent a year leading the hunt for Eric Rudolf. Kathleen was his head profiler, and between them they changed the way […]

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It is that time of year where you want to stock up on some books to read while on your summer vacation. Some Kind Of Angel might be one to put on your list.
Melvin Harter is a retired doctor and Some Kind Of Angel is his debut into the wild world of books. In this […]

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Move over Oprah, here are Jason Starr’s summer reading picks for Summer, 2008.  These novels are guaranteed to entertain you, thrill you, and scare the hell out of you while you’re lying on the beach this summer.
ONCE WERE COPS by Ken Bruen
This novel won’t be out till the fall, but I read an advance copy and this will undoubtedly be […]

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Among all of the highly readable, intelligent and well-crafted novels Mike Resnick has written,  three of my favorites are Walpurgis III, The Dark Lady, and the book under consideration here: Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia (Del Rey/Ballantine, 1998).
Although Resnick considers it a novel, it developed from a short story he was asked to write by […]

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There are a plethora of sci-fi books that have explored what the Earth would be like after the apocalypse, and generally the apocalypse in question is a nuclear war, or some sort of plague.
Unholy Domain takes this genre in a new and very thought provoking direction. One only has to spend a couple of minutes […]

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There are two very different schools of thought about historical fiction. One school rationalizes that it is an easy genre to write, the plot already exists, all you have to do is put it in your own words. The second school says that this genre is very hard to work in, much of the story […]

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Quarry was a hit man and very good at his job. These days he is retired and not so good at that. He retired not because his conscience was getting to him, but because he had amassed enough money to live comfortably and not kill for money any more. So, he quit and through a […]

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Santa Fe Dead” could easily have been named “The Boring Return of the Evil B-word Barbara.”  That might have been more honest and would have better reflected the disappointingly weak quality of Stuart Wood’s latest effort. It would have also worked naming it “Santa Fe STUPID.”
It is time once again to hang out with Ed […]

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Former newspaper reporter turned freelance photojournalist Reynold Frame travels to the village of Wilders Lane, Vermont to get a story and steps back in time. Figuratively, that is, because Wilders Lane has been restored to its pre-Revolutionary War look.The village is named after its oldest family, the Wilders, whose history is pocked with inexplicable, seemingly […]

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In the summer of 1925, the residents of Dayton, Tennessee had a first-hand look at a controversial trial that centered on the debate between evolution and creationism. The community of less than 2,000 citizens was primarily an agricultural region, with most folks believing in the latter, especially the hard-core Baptists like Betty Barker.
The trial is […]

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If mystery fiction has its own equivalent of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this might be it. It’s not a wholly accurate description, and I’m sure there are a lot of folks who’d take me to task for it, but The Fabulous Clipjoint may be the closest thing in spirit—though without the comedy—to Mark Twain’s […]

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The third in the action crime Baby Shark series opens in May 1957.  Kristin, aka Baby Shark, is still wielding guns and pool sticks with deadly accuracy. She is still working with Otis and the latest case and resulting plan of action were supposed to be relatively simple. Travis Horner has a girlfriend who got […]

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This rollicking tale of a woman wronged begins with the heroine, Francine Harper in jail for attempted murder of her handsome, no-good, two-timing musician husband Dwayne and his silicone-enhanced stripper girlfriend Carla. (Digression – how do you describe a musician who has broken up with his girlfriend? Unemployed… and homeless!) Discovering them in bed together, […]

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