5 comments about The Old Farmer's Almanac 2008 (Old Farmer's Almanac).

1. Plenty of good advice for the farm or the vegetable garden, and the weeds of advertising really proliferate in the 2008 issue. An older issue I had either had no advertising or very little advertising. The biggest advertising spread in the classifieds is for astrology. And I am told on page 228 not to sign contracts when mercury is retrograde. I'll try not to do that, but I can plant radishes,I hope.



2. I bought this Farmer's Almanac for my dad and he absolutely loved it. Even though he's not a farmer, he is having a great time learning fun and curious facts and even experimenting with pot planting.



3. There's so much fun and useful information in these little books. It's fun to look up dates for lunar/solar eclipses, etc. There are also tables to show when precipitation is misting, sprinkles, light rain, etc. Just lots and lots on interesting information.



4. It's a classic. Great for killing some time, reading on the train or plane, learning something new, and of course, on the "Throne."



5. I have purchased The Old Farmer's Almanac for years. They have many interesting articles and information and predict the weather really well. Usually on the money.

5 comments about A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York (ArtPlace series).

1. This book provides an armchair walking tour of the meaningful places for the writer Dorothy Parker in NYC. It is also an excellent accompaniment to the Portable Dorothy Parker.



2. The first half of the twentieth century was filled with constant change and development; it was an exciting time to be alive. "A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York" is a focus on the woman herself, but a bigger focus on the city she lived in and its constant change through two world wars, a great depression, and so much more events. Filled with countless photos, both color and black and white, "A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York" is a seminal look at the woman and the city, sure to please fans of her work and New Yorkers alike. "A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York" is highly recommended for community library biography collections and students of the history and culture of New York City.



3. This book is a fun and informative read. Any fan of Dorothy Parker needs a copy of this book (hell, I have two!) Kevin is able to provide the reader with a tour of an era. Great!



4. I love Dorothy Parker, New York, and the 20's, 30's and 40's to include the clothes, music, theatre, books, personalities - the whole culture of that era. This book touches so much of that. It's the portal for stepping back 70-90 years - and for becoming addicted to celebrating all things DP. You can take your own tour with this book (either actual or virtual) and feel the energy and excitement of New York, see buildings that no longer exist or now have different facades or purposes. You can even pop into a pub along the way and fully develop that hint of whisky or gin that you think you smell in the alleyways - or on the pages.
   
   I have purchased copies of this book as gifts to friends and loaned my copy out several times because it never fails to prompt further interest in Dorothy Parker, the Vicious Circle, and New York in general. I've found that A Journey Into Dorothy Parker's New York is equally enjoyed by friends you might say are more academically inclined as well as those who are more experientially motivated.



5. Detailed enough for Parker enthusiasts, yet accessible to the new Parker fan, this beautifully illustrated book has something for everyone. Even after reading the book, I find myself dipping back into it to reread various sections and look at the gorgeous photographs. If you or someone you know is a Parker fan, buy this book!!

5 comments about A House on the Water: Inspiration for Living at the Water's Edge.

1. As a landscape designer, I was consistenly impressed with how these wonderful houses fit into their site, lifting out the critical views and respecting the nature of the place. Having enjoyed the houses that Robert Knight designs, I was pleased to learn why his houses and those selected for his book are so satisfying to see and experience. O'Rourke's photographs are spectacular and with the plans, really help to visualize the structure and the setting and how they fit together. Design professionals and homeowners alike with whom I've shared this book rave about it. A perfect gift for friends and family!



2. I found this book both educational and handsome in content and in photography. As an architect practicing in different regions of the country, I'm always thankful for having opportunities to do design work in Maine. Maine, as a place to live, is simply wonderful and unique, but the sense of peace in these "Houses on the Water" is elevated creating a noble inspiration for the reader.



3. This book is wonderful at capturing the rare beauty of various architectural wonders through vivid photographs and welcoming text. You never get bored flipping through this book and it is incredibly inspiring. It combines several differently designed homes that will appeal to a variety of readers. Reading this book is like daydremaing on paper. Highly recommended.



4. I was excited to get this book in the mail, as I thought it would have some real good ideas on how to build a larger home on the water that had some character. I found most of the homes rather odd, homes for people that would name their children Jupiter or Flower. I am back today ordering more books. Also most homes either are RIGHT on the water or set back in rock. Didn't find much in the way of regular 100ft setback from the water, woods, maybe a walkout basement type of MN lakes home. There was one from WI but again, it was right on the water, which you normally can not build now days.



5. If you are about to build a home...or just enjoy seeing the details that make other structures a "home" then you will love this book...
   
   Very informative...beautifully executed...homerun all the way...

5 comments about The Sound of Music Companion.

1. Lawrence Maslon should be thanked and congratulated for offering a concise and informative Sound of Music book. Although there have been a few Sound of Music books written in the past, this book is probably the first of its kind to tell the story in a concise manner. The Hirsch book on the film and the reissued Max Wilk book on the stage show were great books in their own right, but I think this book tops them all.
   
   Although the numerous photos are the draw of this coffee-table book, a coffee-table book should offer much more than pretty photographs. For this it certainly delivers. His meticulously researched, well-written text tells us the whole Sound of Music story from Maria's birth to the first Austrian stage production in 2005. This book covers all important stops in the history of SOM up till now, and does not dwell too long on any one time period. An added treat is the inclusion of song lyrics and commentaries on the songs, explaining how they were written and what role they played in the musical. I admit there are a few typo errors in the text, but this well-researched book is jam-packed with facts of the musical. You could literally dip your teeth into it and come out a Sound of Music junkie. I do wish there were also lyrics and commentaries for I Have Confidence, So Long, Farewell and also The Lonely Goatherd.
   
   In short, a really great Sound of Music book that makes a splendidd addition to any Sound of Music collection, except that the print tends to be a little too small for the size of the book. Otherwise, a really wonderful book from cover to cover, and a seminal work in the entire world of this well-loved musical. I think this is a book that deserves to be in print forever.



2. Wonderful! Very complete compilation of many sources regarding the Sound of Music. Covers not only the movie, but also the stageplay, the history behind the script and music, and the history of the Von Trapps themselves. The pictures are absolutely beatiful! There are stills from the movie, from the original Broadway cast, from many Broadway revivals, as well as many behind the scenes shots. This is a must have for anybody who loves the story of the Sound of Music.



3. This is a wonderful book for THE SOUND OF MUSIC enthusiast. Lots of great background information and photographs. Thank you.



4. The Sound of Music Companion by Laurence Malson, Andrew Lloyd Webber should be owned by all who enjoyed the movie.
   
   
   Thanks



5. I bought this book for my daughter who is a Sound of Music affectionado. She loved the book and all the background materials provided.

4 comments about Working with Your Woodland: A Landowner's Guide (Revised Edition).

1. Intelligently written for amateurs, much more readable than academic literature.

   It is written for New England woodlands, but its principles are applicable everywhere.




2. If you own even a few acres of New England forest, you should read this book. "Working With Your Woodland" gives a thorough introduction to forestry for the landowner. Even if you do not own any woodlands, and are just curious about the forestry profession, this book will acquaint you well with the issues. From the history presented of the New England forest through Forest Management to their postscript on stewardship, the three authors present their information clearly and sensitively. Highly recommended.



3. This book is a basic introduction to woodlot management with a focus on the forest ecosystem, basic valuation metrics for trees, and tax and other financial concerns associated with selling your trees.

   The major difference between this title and the Hilts et al text is that this book devotes substantially more space to financial, legal, and logistical issues associated with harvesting trees. Conservationists will probably prefer Hilts while the reader focused on income from his or her woodlot will prefer this book.

   Neither text goes very far helping the reader identify specific health problems in a woodlot; look more to Pirone et al. for an excellent introduction.




4. Having bought a woodlot in the past year, I praise this book based on real-life experience. This book is an excellent introduction to the forestry terms and practice. I learned all the background I needed to understand a forest management plan and discuss it intelligently with a professional forester. This book discusses forestry issues in detail, but without getting bogged down in arcane minutiae.

   I disagree with a previous reviewer that the Hilts book is preferable to the conservationist. I bought both books, but found the Hilts book unsatisfying. It is geared more to people who are considering how to return former farmland to a wooded state. It sidesteps the detailed forestry issues, such as thinning overcrowded stands, usually by saying that a forester will provide the information. These are the areas where the Beattie book is especially strong. Since my land is already forested, I appreciated the breadth of information on forest management techniques in the Beattie book. But the book can also be helpful to people who are undecided about whether or not to actively manage their forest land. It provides good background on how northeast forests have developed, and how a woodland would mature without intervention.

   1/8/2002
   I'd like to add a recommendation for a companion book: Reading the Forested Landscape by Tom Wessels. See my review there.

1 comments about Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Published by MobileReference (mobi)..

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
   
   Alcott has a talent for writing realistic family stories and sweet romances, without letting them get dull.

5 comments about City Secrets: New York City.

1. Great guide to quirky shops, less well-known sports and odd bitss of history. A joy to read and to guide your explorations.



2. Every winter I spend a week in NYC -to attend the opera, theater, concerts, museums, etc. I hoped this book would offer me some unexpected, relatively undiscovered places to explore. Not so. A waste of my money.



3. This book has some good secrets but i found some not very useful or interesting or yet non existant (or so secret they change the adress regularly). Depending on your profession look in the collaborators index for a person of whom you think you identify with or you like their resume and try looking at their secrets its the easier way i found to get some useful and intersting secrets (some colaborators are simply ill-chosen are i don tknow why they were found to be useful to adress in the book). BUt mainly if you are the 7 day vacation turist go for a amercian express ou rough guide to the city and you'll get just fine!



4. I was soooo looking forward to getting this book - but I have to honestly say that the layout is so utterly boring that I just can't get past it. The book is full of beige, beige, and more beige (other than the black on white text that is).
   
   For an individual that is "directionally-challenged", I would have difficulty locating where I'm supposed to be in the city based strictly upon written instruction. Plus, frankly, I love to look at the beautiful photography that can be found in some guidebooks (and some imagery would help determine if a particular walking tour was a good fit to the reader). I really think if the layout were made more appealing that more people would get into this book.



5. I have an armload of NYC guides and this one is a delight to read. It is a love affair with the big apple and a great addition to a standard get around the city type book

5 comments about Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England.

1. If you have ever wandered around Maine, you will have noticed a unique form of farm architecture. But ask most people why 19th century Maine farmers made such a concerted effort to physically connect the structures on their farms and the answer is "they needed a way to get to the barn through the winter snow." Trust me, I have gone around and asked current dwellers of Maine farmsteads. Thomas Hubka carefully points out that if that were so, we'd see similar connected farm architecture in parts of the nation where winters were even more inclimate and snowier. Yet Maine farm architecture remains almost totally enigmatic. Hubka's diligent field work reveals that forces were at work in mid-19th century Maine that conspired against the rural farmer: industrial competition for hand-manufactured goods produced at home for cash suppliment, a labor drain to other more prosperous farming regions, and unyielding land. The brilliance of Hubka's work is that he evokes how, despite all this, Maine farmers strove to adapt by creating resilliant islands of industry with the structure of their homes that defiantly sheltered year-round dooryard work efforts from wind and snow, but also change abroad. This book is also a perfect source of pithy detail and illustration regarding 17th century cape-style house architecture which, it turns out, is still ubiquitous in New England. Highly recommended, a stiking work.



2. Lets get this straight, this is NOT a coffee table book - if you want lots of colour pictures of old farms and barns - look elsewhere. What it is though, is a well written, brilliantly researched and documented assessment of a largely by-gone way of life in rural New England. Look - I'm even British and I loved (OK - I do have an interest in New England and architecture)
   
   If you are vaguely interested in old rural life, agriculture, history and social history, or vernacular architecture (or any combination of these) - buy it you won't be disappointed.



3. Very imformative. The images of the older New England homes are very interesting and useful.



4. The author gives the "how and why the connected farm emerged in the mid-to-late 19th century and the story these buildings tell about the common New England farm and the people who made them."
   Hubka has written extensively about traditional American buildings and architectural design methods and teaches at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
   I love the old pictures like the one showing a family and horses in front of a Saco house and barn.
   "According to Hubka, the primary reason for connected farms was agrarian reform, which was spurred in the 1840s and '50s by competition from new, larger farms in the Midwest. Connected buildings allowed New Englanders to take on home-based industry, such as candle- and cheese-making, while continuing to farm and still have everything centralized. Fashion also played a part: Connected farms became the latest thing, and keeping up with the neighbors was important even then." (This Old House)
   "An important pioneering effort. The book commemorates both an unique indigenous architectural expression and a way of life that has become extinct . . . The style is economic and clear and Hubka's affection for architecture binds the buildings to their people and their times." -- Maine Sunday Times



5. This book has some interesting stories about houses that are unique to this area of the country. I especially liked this book because it features a homestead that has been in my family since it was built. This is a good book to read about the development of the concept of the Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn where all the elements are connected.

5 comments about I Served the King of England (New Directions Paperbook).

1. Generally speaking, I don't enjoy novels translated into English as much of the eloquence and humor is lost in translation. However, I really liked this book by Bohumil Hrabal (translated by Paul Wilson). Although the book is based on the rise and fall of a fictional person, the historical background is real enough. We trace the personal history of a young man named Dite (which means child in Czech). The story begins during Czechoslovakia's first republic, the nation's golden age. Dite is working as a lowly busboy, but he has dreams and is ambitious. We are with him when he loses his virginity at the local bordello and meets his first love. Dite, always on the lookout to improve his wealth and status, takes a new job at a very prestigious elite hotel, where he meets a whole host of fascinating characters.
   
   Unfortunately, he loses his job, but lands a new one at the swank Paris Hotel in Prague (still exists by the way). He falls in love with a Czech citizen of German ethnicity - unfortunately in 1938 when the Germans had seized the Sudetenland and some Czechs had become extremely hostile toward all ethnic Germans. (Czechs have a long history of being occupied/exploited and are consequently xenophobic.) His girlfriend Lise is attacked by an angry Czech group, and Dite seeths with anger. The tables are turned, however, when the German army occupies Prague later that year, and Dite and Lise are being served by now subservient Czechs. Dite, despite being Czech, is nominally accepted into the ethnic-German community.
   
   His life begins taking a surrealistic turn when he lives in a Nazi-designated breeding town, Decin. Though once passionately in love with Lise, they are drawn apart as the pressures of war and Nazi ideology separate them. Typically, despite this, they have a little boy, which Dite later discovers to be somewhat retarded. When the war comes crashing through Bohemia, Dite's life with Lise lies in ruins, and he is jailed first by the Nazis and then by the Czechs. After many months in prison, he is released and is determined to start a new life.
   
   Dite takes all the substantial savings he has accumulated over the years and invests it in a rather fantastic idea for a hotel. His idea takes off and is hugely successful. Unfortunately, fate deals him another cruel hand as the communists come to power in 1948. Inexplicably, he turns himself in to be imprisoned with all the other successful bourgeois hotel owners he has worked for. After his stint in a monastery prison, he is exiled to the now-depopulated Sudetenland to work as a roadkeeper on a road going nowhere.
   
   The beginning of the book is fun, racy, and exciting, but as the book continues it becomes more sober, introspective, and melancholic - much like the life of an average man I suppose. Hrabal does a wonderful job of bringing characters to life and revealing much of the humor and sadness of everyday Czech life.



2. Ditie is the modest protagonist of this quirky, anecdotal fable set amid the backdrop of 20th century Czech history.
   
   Hrabal's writing is detailed, and has a rolling, dreamlike rhythm that is fiercely engaging, and the novel holds up to repeat readings very well.
   
   I was pleasantly reminded of certain Fellini films - Hrabal similarly blends fantasy and the wooziness of memory with stark and sometimes nasty historical events.
   
   Recommended.
   
   -David Alston



3. This is a fantastic novel - both literally and in the colloquial sense of that word when it is used as a hyperbolic form of praise; in this instance the praise is merited. Originally published in Czech in 1971, I Served the King of England certainly qualifies Hrabal to be considered as eminent a practitioner of "magic realism" as Gabriel Garcia Marquez or, for that matter, the Gunter Grass of The Tin Drum. If this places the author in elevated literary company, he has earned his place there.
   
   The story begins as a picaresque autobiography of the narrator, the runt "Ditie" who recounts his adventures as a busboy and waiter in Prague and elsewhere. Amazing and awe-inspiring things happen throughout the young man's career, often involving unlikely candidates (waiters, hotel owners, traveling salesmen) for the performance of outrageous or admirable deeds. Ditie is always game for adventures, especially of an erotic nature, and his lavish descriptions of the anatomy and enthusiastic love-making of his favorite prostitutes and other girlfriends is sensually arousing while touching and humorous at the same time (an erection with a heart of gold, wreathed in flowers. as it were.) The story takes a grimmer turn when he falls in love with Lise, a Bohemian German gym-instructor who is even more diminutive than he is. He becomes her knight-errant in a situation of deteriorating relationships between Czechs and Germans as the war approaches, and in his haste to defend his lady-love's honor he turns away from his countrymen in their time of need and oppression, a decision which eventually comes to haunt and discomfit him. This leads to their marriage and his subsequent odd career as a despised waiter at a Nazi "Lebensborn" resort for young women programmatically impregnated by warrior-studs. To the music of Wagner and under the banner of duty to produce a specimen of the Teutonic New Man, he and his wife conceive a stunted, retarded child. At the war's end his wife wends her way heavenward (hellward? Or perhaps just into the ground) courtesy of an Allied bomb, and Ditie has the chance to return to his beloved venue of hotel-and-restaurant in Prague. He is not received warmly by his old colleagues, but manages to create a unique hotel in an abandoned foundry on the grounds of a quarry, using as his capital a fortune Lise looted from Polish Jews during her war service. With his stained wealth and an uneasy conscience he creates a sort of dreamy hotelier's paradise, which is soon doomed to destruction by the new political regime. There is a hilarious interlude at a newly established Communist Party "prison/reform camp" for millionaires, where the prisoners and their guards (all former miners who miss their old job) become interchangeable and totally confused about what is expected from whom - it's a wonderful parody of Lenin's who-whom rhetorical question. Throughout these adventures Ditie has been driven by the desire to become a very rich man, because as a youth he thought that rich men lived the most admirable and rewarding lives; he also desires the admiration of other rich men, especially those from the ranks of the hotel owners. After he realizes this dream he watches it go sour and be crushed. When he is released from the millionaires' prison, things take a final turn for the worse for Ditie, but only in the most superficial sense, because in his new life as an almost totally isolated rural road repairman (he has four animal companions) he discovers a kind of pantheistic tranquility and an impulse to recreate and reconsider his life by writing it all down -- the "arc" of his story is now "from-rags-to-riches-to-rags-again", with the final rags being the frowsy but durable mantle of a self-made philosopher.
   
   The way the story is told - the characterizations and especially the language of Ditie the narrator - is as important as the tall tales themselves. This raises a tricky point. The irascible but occasionally brilliant F. Nietzsche once made the observation that "it is neither the best nor the worst" of a language which is untranslatable, implying that there is a vast range of thought and expression in the "middle" of this spectrum in which deeper meanings and emotional overtones depend upon the unique subtleties of each language and are therefore beyond translation. In a brief after-note the translator, Paul Wilson, writes, "Bohumil Hrabal's work, Czechs say, is untranslatable. This book is my response to that challenge." I don't know how truly bilingual readers evaluate his effort, but for English-language readers I can say that Wilson's translation is much more than serviceable -- it is direct, colloquial, jaunty, funny, and poetic and reflective when it needs to be. It creates a vibrant voice which the reader who does not speak Czech hopes is an authentic mirror of the original. It is definitely a voice you want to listen to, compelling and amusing. Mr. Wilson should be praised for this.
   
   While I feel the above review does the book some justice, I also know that it is impossible to capture its animation and warmth in a brief sketch. How do I know that? Because I have read the work of the man who wrote about Ditie, the Man Who Served the Emperor of Ethiopia, and who himself was instructed by Skrivanek, the Man Who Served the King of England, and, once they -- we -- have been chosen for such estimable parts and acquitted themselves well, people like that just know certain things, don't they?



4. First published and distributed secretly during the 1980s in Czechoslovakia, this tragicomic novel by Bohumil Hrabal is a first-person account by Ditie, a teenage busboy at a rural hotel who progresses to waiter, and eventually to successful hotel owner before his fall when the communists take over. The picaresque plot serves as the framework for a series of often hilarious stories about the people Ditie works with, the lives they have led, the values they maintain, their hopes for the future, and the sometimes large chasm between their dreams and reality.
   
   Set in rural hotels, in German camps during their occupation of Czechoslovakia, and in Prague, where Ditie served, not the King of England, but Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, the novel concludes at the "end of the road," where Ditie resides with his horse, goat, and cat, living on his memories and writing his autobiography--this book.
   
   Ditie is a charming story-teller, using the casual, almost innocent language of a young boy at the beginning and becoming philosophical and contemplative by the end. Hrabal's sensitivity to small details and his accurate depiction of real people responding to real situations in sometimes odd and often darkly humorous ways make this sometimes satiric novel a delight to read. Ribald and rowdy in his descriptions of his own sexual awakening and in the stories of his customers' peccadillos, Ditie maintains his dignity when he describes the important people with whom he comes into contact--the headwaiter who "served the King of England," the President of Czechoslovakia, and eventually Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, for whom Ditie is personal waiter.
   
   The novel takes a new, darker turn, when Ditie marries a German woman and leaves Prague to live in the mountains--at a breeding station the Germans have established to develop a "refined race of humans." Lise, his wife, travels widely for the Reich, once returning from Warsaw with a suitcase full of valuable stamps, confiscated from Jews, which guarantee their financial future. Their lives are less secure, however, and Ditie eventually dissociates himself from the Germans and tries to re-establish a life of his own, this time as the owner of a Czech hotel built with the proceeds from the sale of the stamps.
   
   By turns hilarious and poignant, satiric and sensitive, the novel depicts many aspects of Czech society and culture, but it is, above all, the story of Ditie, in many ways a Czech everyman. With symbolism throughout, and a repeating character, Zdenek, the headwaiter who "served the King of England," who appears at every crossroads in Ditie's life, the novel is more than a comic romp. A record of a time, place, and culture, it is also Ditie's meditation on his life and his role, if any, in the wider world. Soon to be released as a major film by Academy Award-winning Czech director Jiri Menzel, who also directed the film version of Bohumil Hrabal's Closely Watched Trains, this novel deserves to find a wide, long-overdue audience. n Mary Whipple



5. I know I'm pretty much alone down here in two star land, but I was really disappointed by this novel. The style was irritatingly coy, cute and cliched. The narrator is insufferable. He brags about making whores fall in love with him and making absurd amounts of money selling hot dogs. Money always seems to equal happiness in this book, and there's much wasting of money too, gaily throwing it in the street and so on, to show off. Many cliches about rich people and their lovers. Is it all a spoof, a satire? Still tiresome, whatever it is. Creepy scene where he's "blessed" by Haile Selassie. Precious vignettes. Bursting at the seams with cliched phrases: "tears of joy", "a heavenly expression on his face", etc, etc (you can't blame them all on the translator). The hero is too perfect: even his flaws are "charming". A two dimensional, banal narrative masquerading as a picaresque "masterpiece".

5 comments about Death at Rottingdean (Robin Paige Victorian Mysteries, No. 5).

1. This is an excellent addition to the Kathryn and Charles series. In this book we find out about another aspect of Victorian England - smuggling and other nefarious schemes. There are actually two storylines in this book, and the authors deal with both of them very well. They certainly keep their readers interested. I like the obvious research that goes into each one of these books, and the totally different view that we are given about life in England just before the turn of the last century. The books are always enteratining and we get a history lesson too.



2. Loved the story , maybe I am being biased for I am lucky enough to live in Rottingdean. I was able to read the story while sitting by the village pond & on the beach.The historical research into the area is first class. Great read for the Summer or a seaside holiday.



3. At the end of the last book of this series, Sir Charles and his wife Kate were happily residing at Kate's ancestral home at Bishop's Keep. In the interval between that book and this one, Sir Charles' brother has died and the couple is now Lord and Lady Sheridan. Being the fifth Baron of Somersworth has placed a great deal of added responsibility on the couple's shoulders not the least of which is Lord Charles' seat in the House of Lords. While in London, the pregnant Kate ventures into the slums to aid in the care of the sick and becomes sick herself. Not only does Kate almost die but she also faces a far different future based on the permanent physical damage caused by the disease. Her feelings about this change in circumstances are bottled up inside as are the feelings of her husband and this background story ends up playing a large role in the plot as a whole.
   
   Lord Charles has promised Kate a holiday away from London where they can spend time together like they did before Charles inherited all of these new responsibilities. They head for Rottingdean, a little village on the Channel taking along only Amelia and Lawrence, their two most valued servants. They arrive just after the body of a Coast Guard has washed up on the beach, a death the local constable writes off as a suicide. Soon another Coast Guard is found shot and by a gun the likes of which Charles has never seen. Unfortunately for Charles, he is at a party with the Crown Prince when news of the second death arrives. Remembering the bang up job Charles had done in a previous investigation that saved the Crown a great deal of embarrassment, His Royal Highness put Lord Charles in charge of the case. So much for their quite holiday!
   
   Charles and Kate are soon hard at work and slowly they begin to uncover what seems to be a vast conspiracy. A conspiracy that at face value doesn't make any sense at all. They are aided immensely by a local boy named Patrick who knows far more than he is willing to tell at first. He is after all quite fond of some of the people who are very deeply involved in the conspiracy. I have a feeling that we will see more of Patrick in future books.
   
   Besides the Prince, the other historical figure who shows up in this book is the famous author Rudyard Kipling, who also aids the investigation a great deal. The appearance of these real people in this series adds a greatly to the stories as does the very realistic atmosphere. The authors are to be commended for their skill in story telling and their willingness to do a lot of research to make everything so believable. These stories are so realistic that while reading a previous book in which the characters must have drank gallons of tea, I started craving tea and had to break out the Earl Gray. In this book they drank lemonade and I ended up sending to the store for some of that. It takes a very talented storyteller to take a reader that deeply into a story. This is just a marvelously fun and suspenseful book that will keep you glued to it's pages from beginning to end.



4. I love this series. Not only are the stories well told but I love how the books include real authors from the period in the story lines. This is usually done with fairly minor characters but Rudyard Kipling plays a major role in this book. The books are also very well researched and in this particular book I learned a great deal I had never known before about the smuggling that went on in England. These mysteries are also very family friendly. I would recommend them to anyone.



5. I enjoy this series because so much research is invested in them, and it shows. The authors manage to bring a great deal of historic detail to their work, bringing actual events into the story to make it more plausible. Here the author Rudyard Kipling and his family, including his aunt, the social activist wife of a famous painter, are introduced to the reader in the small town of Rottingdam. The actual town's history of smuggling activity is woven into a very plausible plot of murder and intrigue which is resolved by the sleuthing duo Lord and Lady Sheridan with the help of a small boy and the famous author.
   
   Although I usually have some difficulty divining the culprit because of the abundance of red herrings that twist through the plots of these works, I was already well on the culprit's trail this time. Knowing--or at least suspecting--the guilty party in no way detracted from my enjoyment of the work, however. As with any well crafted panopoly of characters and colorful settings, the "visit" is what makes the whole work worth while.