General-partner

In Puerto del Sol in the southwest desert, private sleuth Mick "Brew" Axbrewder feels self loathing and guilt. During an alcoholic stupor, he killed his brother. Adding to his despondency, his detective partner and lover at that time Ginny Fistoulari blew off her hand with a grenade saving his butt from his latest blunder. Though a doubting Thomas about his abilities, Brew struggles with sobriety vowing in a personal covenant to take care of the depressed Gin, who has not mentally recovered from her trauma.

Gin and Brew are hired to protect First Puerta del Sol National Bank Chief Accountant Reg Haskell. He tells them he lost a lot of money gambling at the El Machismo and has been threatened if he fails to pay off his debt. Though they doubt Reg's claim, Brew serves as his personal bodyguard. However as the sleuths investigate his story they find other fabrications and conclude the entire tale is fiction. When several murder attempts occur, Brew and Gin struggle to put aside their personal problems to uncover the person wanting their mendacious client dead.

THE MAN WHO RISKED HIS PARTNER is the second tale of an expansion of novels written in the 1980s under the name Reed Stephens (see THE MAN WHO FOUGHT ALONE). The story line mixes a hardboiled detective story inside an angst relationship drama. Though Reg is a great support character with his changing explanations fun to follow, the tale suffers from an overabundance of negativity. While Gin behaves semi comatose barely living, Brew is the poster boy for guilty loser. Their angst overwhelms a solid private detective tale, depressing the reader.

Harriet Klausner

i would expect no less from Stephen Donaldson writing under an asumed name, author of the Gap series, a brilliant mystery novel if you like them this is a good one

The 2nd book in a 3 book series by Reed Stephens. Brew, feeling responsible for Ginny's disabliity, forces Ginny to take a job as body guards. They almost end up the targets of a mob hit. A great follow up to The Man Who Killed His Brother

As a pastor I strongly recomend that each and every lay person and board member read this book. It is encouraging and insightful, it will challenge each person to a deeper prayer life.

This book was released in churches all over America along with an excellent video on creating pastoral prayer teams. I've used the combination to start prayer teams in several churches. If your church does not have an organized team that lifts your pastor in prayer this book will help you create one.

I will be honest about one drawback. This book effectively uses several studies to highlight the struggles many pastors wrestle with. However, some of these studies are now over a decade old.

This book answers many questions about the value of intercessory prayer. One of the best resources I have every found on making prayer effective in our personal lives and to add power to the pastor and local church.

Following in the grand tradition of New Formalist poets, the author brings his unique contribution to the forefront of poetry that should be read and re-read today. Harking back to Thomas Hardy, W.B.Yeats, Robert Frost,Walter de la Mare, John Masefield, W.H.Auden, A.E.Housman and carrying forward in the footsteps of modern greats like Richard Wilbur, Gjertrud Schnackenburg, Elizabeth Jennings,A.E.Stallings, Dana Gioia,and John Hollander, Mr. Williamson shows he is a poet that is to reckoned with. Although technical prowess is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition to be counted with the masters, Greg is well on his way with the poems selected here. Favorites include Counterfeit and Winter. It would be an even greater tribute to his skill to see some villanelles and sonnets in his next collection. A must have addition to the poetic repertoire of what Yeats called 'words set to life's music'.

The poems in this volume are rare in contemporary poetry in that they manage to be both clever and moving at the same time. Williamson writes adeptly in regular meter and rhyme, and his take on the world is fresh and often surprising.

These make me think of snow globes, delightful little worlds in miniature. The topics are clever - the unrecognized artistry of a counterfeiter; the abstract beauty of the world as seen through someone who needs glasses; the historic significance of junkyards full of cars. Because the poems are personal this book would make a nice gift.

Insightful, but only scratches the surface as to the life of single people. Too many case studies without helpful details. Didn't really offer enough solutions, more of a study of the dating game rather than useful tips.

this was an excellent book from start to finish I found it to be very relative & helpful to today's dating scene amongst african american singles. I can't wait for the follow up! Kudos :-)

I enjoyed very much reading this book. It suprised me, because the lack of photographs did not prejudice the quality of the report given by Meier, although it could have helped it to become a perfect one. Its great for an architecture student like myself to become familiar with all the design process, its problems and joys; in a project that took 13 years to conclude. What I found most interesting was the way the architect exposed his work methods, his life and his own learning during the construction of the building that he considers to be his masterwork.

One of the finest architectural masterpieces of the 20th century is depicted in this wonderful book written by the master builder himself - Richard Meier. This new Parthenon of modern times shows that modern architect are still capable of producing timeless buildings like in the age of classical Greece. The book is an insightful and delightful story about creating a mega project from the idea to implementation. A rare book which reminds of Vitruvius and Alberti in many ways. Higly recommended...

With Jeff Hook, Fred A. Kuglin makes a practical analysis about the conclusion and management of alliances during their lifecycle. Kuglin provides a framework to determine the need for an alliance that on its turn provides a roadmap to determine what type of alliances makes sense. Kuglin gives his readers a useful outline to draft the letter of intent, definitive alliance agreement, alliance business plan, and non-disclosure agreement. Each of these outlines is particularly useful for his readers who have already had the opportunity to take an in-depth look at these documents. To his credit, Kuglin repeatedly emphasizes the importance of involving internal and/or external counsels in drafting these documents from the beginning. Kuglin shares his experience with his readers about the working of alliances in different industries such as aeronautics, transportation, and telecommunications. Furthermore, Kuglin provides a roadmap that allows his audience to reassess the validity of keeping an alliance alive over time or not. Knowing when to disband/adapt an existing alliance is as important as making a new alliance. Finally, Kuglin builds on his expertise to define the critical success factors in establishing alliances and uses both General Electric and Cisco Systems of his "Hall of Fame" to illustrate them. In a second edition of Strategic Alliances, Kuglin could perhaps further elaborate on the first mover advantage in making an alliance or not. In their excellent Will and Vision, Gerard J. Tellis and Peter N. Golder debunk the myth of the first mover advantage by demonstrating that pioneers are rarely rewarded for their efforts at the end of the day. Is this empirical observation of both Tellis and Golder also true for the conclusion and management of alliances over their lifetime?

This book is awesome! It represents a senior executive view on alliances, yet provides a step-by-step process to lead and manage alliances.With the conditions of the global economy dictating "Adaptive" enterprises, companies will be heavily relying on alliances to extend their core competency reach. This book provides the insights to successfully execute alliances - something that only the best of companies are doing today. It is a must read for anyone involved with alliances.

This guide is simply great and very helpful. Complete and precise includes all the needed tips and tools for saving a max.

Great survey of tax ideas for 2002. None better.

In this fascinating, well-researched and highly accessible book, journalist Isabel Vincent more than adequately covers the mind-boggling spectacle of the selfishness, inhumanity, and well-organized corruption of the European fellow travelers of the Nazis, who aided and abetted the progress of Germany's preparations for and later prosecution of the Second World War. Far from being the nonaligned neutral countries they claimed to be, Swiss, Portuguese, and other bankers and financers from supposedly neutral countries unscrupulously served the insidious purposes of the Third Reich by dealing with the ill-gotten goods extorted from displaced Jews, the gold bullion of the conquered countries, and the stolen art work looted from all of Europe. One finds it hard to comprehend the degree to which the Swiss in particular deliberately decided to collude with the Nazis in accepting gold in exchange for the hard currency the Germans needed to finance the war effort it began to prepare for in the 1930s.

Although the author's writing style is somewhat limited, and her approach to relating critical historical events seems a bit trivial and oversimplified, the story she tells distracts one from such minor drawbacks to the book. I also found myself wondering how much of an earnest research effort the author made, as she has a tendency to quote a few authors extensively, and attributes all the quotes from each of them to a single book, such as "Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich". She also tends to repeat herself unnecessarily, and uses one particular quote from one of the protagonists on the book cover, again in the narrative a few times, and then yet again in a newspaper clipping used as part of the photo section describing Holocaust survivor Renee Lang. Yet all this seems more the result of limited experience and poor editing than anything else. Again, given the riveting story she has to tell, using first person recollection, one finds a great deal of well organized information here regarding the cupidity and deviousness of the Swiss in giving dissembling and dishonest answers for decades about the stolen treasures and life savings of so many displaced and murdered Jews still stored in Swiss bank vaults. The sad story of how and why the Swiss were allowed to get away with one of the most profitable crimes of the century makes for sad but still fascinating reading.

This book is much like another more recent book, "Pack Of Thieves", by Richard Chesnoff (see my review) in its painstaking description of the varieties of humiliations, dispossessions, and barbarisms perpetrated against European Jews, gypsies and other non-Aryans by the Nazis during their twelve-year reign of terror. To Ms. Vincent's considerable credit, her story is personalized by the use of a single family to tell the tale; and this device helps to bring the unbelievably horrific nature of the persecution of the Jews into bold relief. This is a book that tells a cautionary and still topical true story well, and is one that reminds us that human beings are capable of almost anything, from the wonderful acts of personal courage she often describes and attributes to specific named individuals based both on personal recollections and eye-witness accounts as well as a number of interviews with Holocaust survivors who were kind enough to share their stories with her. I recommend this book for anyone interested in the detailed history of how Swiss, Portuguese, and other bankers avoided repatriation of billions of dollars worth of money, gold bullion, and art treasures stolen from displaced and murdered Jews during the Holocaust.

Isabel Vincent masterfully relates, in an objective and balanced manner, the gripping story of the Hammersfeld family and their quest to recover property stolen by the nazis and their inheritance deposited in Swiss banks by their grandfather, a wealthy Austrian merchant. The story revolves around their fight for justice, aided by a young crusading lawyer, amidst a flurry of world events that brought attention to the revision of Switzerland's conduct during WWII , and a thorogh examination of the myths of Swiss neutrality and banking secrecy. Vincent's account is balanced and fair, and she is careful not to blame Switzerland for all the evils of the war, while at the same time, scrutinizes the scandalous conduct of the banks towards Holocaust surivors and account heirs over a period of 50 years following the end of the war. Vincent also gives an insightful account of the political mileage sought by politicians and organizations dealing with this issue. Vincent's book is the winner of the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem prize, and has been widely acclaimed by the press in France, Germany, adn Switzerland itself, as a result of its carefully researched and balanced account of the events.

"Partners" is a story about a man and a woman who only know each other from passing each other on the stairs at the decrepit boarding house where they both live. One night, the man finds a baby lying on the boarding house doorstep and nearly frozen to death. Together he and the compassionate young woman fight for the baby's life, and fall in love in the process. It's a little bit simpler than a lot of Hill's books, but it's still a sweet story with a message of faith at the core.

This is a very quiet and lovely story that I dismissed at first reading but have learned to love and can now read over and over. The heroine's future looks very bleak indeed, but her hard circumstances lead her to look for God. There are some very profound spiritual truths here having to do with God's care for us when life is difficult -- not everyone comes out unscathed -- and the main characters come to know God during the course of the book.

This book really was a very thoughtful account of some psychological ways of thinking about pet problems that are really not about pets but about the people who are involved in relationships and also have pets. I liked the explanation of projection and how we project feelings that we do not want to own as part of who we are onto other people and sometimes onto pets. I found the chapter on grief really helpful because I recently lost a cat. I think the book is an important contribution to animal literature and relationships between people.

My husband Mark says when we got married he entered my biosphere. This came as something of a shock to him, because he really expected to have a relationship like the one his parents had. His mother did not like animals of any sort. Before Mark and I met my household consisted of: one six year old boy and his garter snake collection, a large mutt named Smitty whose head was level with the kitchen table, and a zen master cat named Charlie. We all got along just fine, thank you, but had to make room for Mark. Mark had never been allowed to have pets when he was a kid, except for a series of moribund goldfish which tried to survive in a small round fishtank without benefit of air filters. Learning to care for what were now OUR pets gave Mark the chance to make up for what he had missed as a boy. The dog, however, had never really wanted a Mark in his life. My son was also not always enthused. Mark and Smitty and David were all natural competitors, Smitty ate Mark's breakfast every morning without fail. David listened to cartoons (loud!). Mark's response when he is in a rage is to pretend that the offending party doesn't exist. It's very hard to ignore a dog when he's bigger than you are,and a kid who turns the TV set up full blast to really enjoy Woody Woodpecker. It's not easy to live with a man who is angry at you all the time because he's jealous of your child and your dog either. I felt like I was stuck between all three of them. Maybe if we had had the benefit of Dr. Gold's book we could have solved our problems a lot faster.

This book really changed my life. It saved a relationship with my boyfriend of three years. It has forced me to really listen to other people's advice and opinions. It has let me truly see myself for the first time. For all those people who might look at this book in a skeptical light, Your wrong, it is a marvelously written and wonderfully enlightning book and I encourage everyone to read it, even if you aren't having problems with a partner and a pet.