Stray

My girls and I love this book! What a pleasure to be able to look out our window and now be able to identify the types of birds that live among us. We even now can recognize a bird by sound.

This book includes wonderful pictures with easy to read descriptions of the birds and their habits.

What a great way to spend time with each other having fun exploring and learning.

A book that can be enjoyed at any age.

This really useful field guide has great drawings of over 100 species found in neighborhoods in US and Canada. Has a simple system to instantly tell you the region and feeding preferences of birds, in other words, where you are most likely to find them. The drawings are beautiful, colorful and accurate, clearly showing the difference between male and female, and defining markings. I've enjoyed mine thoroughly!

"The Collected Stray Bullets" is among the finest noir I've ever seen or read, and I've seen and read quite a lot.

I don't remember why I initially picked up my first issue of Stray Bullets, I'm just incredibly happy that I did. Except for my frantic, nervous search for every new issue that comes out, this book is a pure joy. Filled With incredibly real and fleshed out characters, who may not all be too likable, but who can all grab my attention without losing it for a second. Weaving between times and setting, between reality and fantasy this book is crafted absolutely flawlessly, and is among the greatest Crime-Noir books that have been made.

When veterinarian Melissa March gets an after-hours call about a dog who has been accidentally struck by a car, of course she goes to the dog's rescue. Pets are her friends and her life; she has a little more trouble dealing with Peter Winthrop, the handsome, friendly man she meets. But when Melissa meets Peter's daughter Angie, who is terrified of dogs because she believes a dog killed her mother, Melissa knows that she somehow has to try to help Angie--and perhaps she will help Peter and herself along the way.

Annie Kimberlin's debut novel is a masterpiece of storytelling, real people, and all kinds of love--love for animals, love for friends, love for family, love for a life partner. Ms. Kimberlin injects exactly the right amount of detail to make her story come alive in a world just like the one the reader lives in. STRAY HEARTS is not only one of the best contemporary romances I've read, it's just a plain ol' Great Read--for romance lovers, pet lovers, and story lovers.

Kimberly Borrowdale, Under the Covers Book

I am not a romance reader by nature or habit. However, I am a dog lover and have been active in showing and training for several decades. Therefore, I really appreciate it when an author gets her dog stuff right,and Anne Kimberlin definitely does! But unlike some authors who try to a) educate their readers about dogs and/or b) impress their readers with their knowledge, both to the detriment of the story, Ms. Kimberlin successfully works her doggy info into the web of her story without calling attention to it. The romance was fun, too, of course. I wish I could find a man like her hero! Do they really exist? Warm, sensitive, funny, charming, intuitive, handsome (of course!) and gainfully employed--what more could you ask of a man?

This is one of the most charming books I have ever read, mind you having a box of tissues next to you is a handy idea. I really enjoyed the way it was written, almost from the animal's perspective. Lots of enjoyment, light reading and one I am very glad to have in my collection. I'm now going to try the other two books by Margaret Reinhold about her animals in Provence.

good books always let you enjoy all your life. who do not want a beautiful around you? even sometimes the spirit of the book could make you defence the difficult situation of the life and refresh you when feel very tire and disappointed for what happened in your life. I just like it and will read it again and again to rich myself. thank you for reading my writing and hope this world become better and better with the help of good books, good poems like what Tagore did here.

It's hard to know where to start with Stray Bullets. Make no mistake, this brilliant series, an ongoing crime tale written and illustrated by David Lapham, is definitely worth looking at. It has an incredible depth of character, exploring the motivations of the people at the heart of these crimes as much as it does the crimes themselves. This fact is especially true in regards to one major recurring character, a young girl named Virginia Applejack who has a gruff exterior but who readers can't help but fall for due to her quirky sense of humor and continual triumphs over adversity. Combine this great characterization with innovative storytelling techniques and labyrinthine plots, and you have all the makings of a classic.

But where to begin? To start at the beginning might seem obvious, yet it's actually a bit misleading. The second issue, a story called "Victimology" which was offered as a Free Comic Book Day offering last year, is perhaps the strongest single issue of the entire series. Yet the first "story arc" is merely a collection of vignettes that establish various characters and their roles in the bigger picture. The second and third arcs are pulled together a little more clearly as one whole story. However Lapham still seemed as if he was becoming comfortable with these characters as he went through both of those plotlines, and the stories in them almost gets too complicated at times.

The best option then is to begin at the end, with the most recent storyline to have been completed and collected. Soon to be released, the fourth Stray Bullets hardcover contains a story entitled "Dark Days" demonstrates everything this book can be when it really gets going. Originally running from issues 23 to 30 in the ongoing format, the bulk of the story (issues 24 through 30-issue 23 was an unrelated and separate story) focuses on the mysterious disappearance of two young children.

"Dark Days" does involve many characters who have appeared in the book before in previous arcs, including Virginia Applejack and her fictional alter-ego, the most wanted criminal in the galaxy, Amy Racecar. Yet the story is still surprisingly easy to follow, even without having read the issues prior to it. Lapham accomplishes this accessibility by vaguely referring to a sense of history for these characters while letting any relevant details reveal themselves as the story progresses without the need for long passages of exposition to fill in the backstory.

"Dark Days" also utilizes multiple points of view as the story unfolds, making it seem as influenced by Faulkner as by other crime writers like Chandler. Lapham explores the kidnapping from the perspective of the victims, the cops conducting the search, the caretaker of one of the victims. All the while he also jumps around from point to point, with flashbacks and flash-forwards that let us piece together all the details of the kidnapping gradually. In this situation the consequences of certain actions are occasionally revealed before we see the actions themselves. Some might think this technique would eliminate any suspense, but Lapham keeps us interested in the hows and whys behind the answers we receive to the very end.

Before you go out in search of this book, let me reiterate that I'm referring to the fourth volume of Stray Bullets in hardcover. Lapham releases a TPB for every four issues, and September is supposed to see the release of the 8th, which contains issues 29 through 32. The hardcovers, on the other hand, are larger in size and contain more issues. That makes this package a bit more expensive than your average TPB ("Dark Days" retails at $...). However, here the story is complete, whereas these same issues are spread out over three TPBs (the sixth, seventh and eighth volumes), for a total cost of $... Even though those TPBs would then contain four more issues (the HC contains issues 23 through 30, the 3 TPBs contain issues 21 through 32), the hardcover is in an oversized format. The larger pages allow Lapham to showcase the art more, and the extra space means he can include many extras like script excerpts and sketches, making it well worth the price.

I produced and directed the Los Angeles Premiere of this play in 1998 and it ran for 14 weeks instead of the original six. A big hit.

It is a poignant look at how humans treat each other and how we are kinder to dogs than we are to humans.It concerns John who wishes his dog Buddy were a human being because Buddy would make the perfect lover. Poof! The Fairy Dog Mother makes it so.

But when John gets murdered--Buddy the dog is left to fend for himself as a gay man in New York City. It is a funny black comedy by Robert Chesley who also wrote the very successful Jerker. This play, as we found out in its Los Angeles run is an undiscovered classic.

David Goldyn

Mr. T. Lawrence Lamb had a wife, a daughter, and a commutation ticket. He worked hard, looked at women on trains and did nothing about it, suffered his wife to play about platonically (he thought) with a Mr. Leonard Gray, who was interested in amateur theatricals. Mr. Lamb was, in a word, the Great American Commuter. That was before he met the russett man in the woods, and woke up one morning to find himself a handsome balck stallion, practically free from his wife and the world. It interfered with his business and social life, but Mr. Lamb didn't particularly mind that - and there were compensations. After that Mr. Lamb became in succession a good many different kinds of creature, all of which helped to give him a new viewpoint on the world - as for instance: a sea-gull, watching the beautiful Sandra in her less public moments. "The Stray Lamb" is a hilarious book, a gay, ribald, knowing book, with a deep strain of wisdom and humanity flowing beneath the brilliance of the story.

Not for the easily offended but for those interest in the human condition. Honest stories beautifully illustrated.

An undescribable, beautiful graphic comic novel series