Thursday, 18 September 2014

Conflicts with Interest by Michael Ruddy

This book is about 'Defect Litigation'. A homeowner can sue the homebuilder if the house has a flaw in it. The homebuilder in this case is T.R. Morgan and his son Ryan Morgan. T.R. is mourning his wife's death and has developed a gambling addiction, or so the back of the book tells us, it is never really explored in the book. Enter Steve Sanderson, "a ruthless Bay Area lawyer" to sue T.R. Morgan for an imperfectly built house.

So we have the 'good guy' T.R. Morgan, and we have the 'greedy lawyer' Sanderson, who has an equally greedy associate whose main attributes seem to be her breasts and her ability to procure illegal aliens for Sanderson's ranch. We also have a bunch of people from the insurance companies, T.R.'s new girl friend and so on. 

Unfortunately, there was no character development. The plot moves along at the speed of a court case, if you've ever been involved in a court case you know what that is. The ending is not the explosive climax the back of the book promises us.

Thursday, 16 January 2014

Bella Books

Bella Books is the debut publisher of lively and appealing fiction for and about lesbians. From heart-pounding attachment to mystery, erotica and thriller, Bella Books rejoice the girl-next-door, the best friend, the love of our life and the superwoman that lives in all of us. 

In accordance with our promise to give access to pleasurable and fascinating reads for lesbians everywhere Bella partners with other publishers in showing a huge catalog of lesbian and women's paperbacks and eBooks.

Our sister association, Bella Distribution, works with Bella and these other publishers to offer a matchless range of reading options. With more than 2,000 titles in our store from your much loved authors and publishers, to pick from, you'll surely find what you're looking for at BellaBooks.com.

Monday, 13 January 2014

The Bella Books

Bella Books is the debut publisher of lively and appealing fiction for and about lesbians. From heart-pounding attachment to mystery, erotica and thriller, Bella Books rejoice the girl-next-door, the best friend, the love of our life and the superwoman that lives in all of us. 

In accordance with our promise to give access to pleasurable and fascinating reads for lesbians everywhere Bella partners with other publishers in showing a huge catalog of lesbian and women's paperbacks and eBooks. Our sister association, Bella Distribution, works with Bella and these other publishers to offer a matchless range of reading options. With more than 2,000 titles in our store from your much loved authors and publishers, to pick from, you'll surely find what you're looking for at BellaBooks.com.

Wednesday, 27 February 2013

Bella Books

Bella Books is a small press publisher of lesbian literature based in Tallahassee, Florida. Kelly Smith, along with other investors, created the corporation in Michigan in 1999 as an outgrowth of Smith's long relationship with A Woman's Prerogative Bookstore in Ferndale Michigan. Bella Books was named after a Jack Russell terrier who sat court at the bookstore. In 2004 Smith left the company and was replaced by the current chief executive officer Linda Hill, who is also the chief executive officer of Spinsters Ink and BeanPole Books. Hill moved the press to Tallahassee in 2005.

Since the publication of its first title in 2001, its primary focus has been on lesbian fiction. The press publishes lesbian romance, lesbian mystery and lesbian speculative fiction novels and lesbian erotica short-story anthologies. In 2003 it bought the backstock of Naiad Press, including the majority of the backlist for Jane Rule. In 2004, it bought the backstock of defunct Rising Tide Press. In 2005 it acquired distribution rights for New Victoria Press, including the works of Sarah Dreher. In 2008 it acquired reprint rights to the work of Ellen Hart. A typical production year includes 24-30 trade paperback releases as well as reprints of classic titles. Total titles in print exceed 300.

Titles first appearing in English-speaking markets are translated for distribution in France (KTM Editions), Germany (Verlag Krug), Spain (Egales) and the Czech Republic (LePress). Some titles are also acquired for hardcover editions by InsightOut Book Club, a division of the Quality Paperback Book Club.

Monday, 23 July 2012

Bella Italia Reading

Bella Italia Reading is a traditional Italian restaurant offering a broad menu of pizzas, pastas, risottos and meat and fish main dishes, all served in vibrant surroundings by our friendly and attentive waiting team.

Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Reading

Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of constructing or deriving meaning (reading comprehension). It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Like all language, it is a complex interaction between the text and the reader which is shaped by the reader’s prior knowledge, experiences, attitude, and language community which is culturally and socially situated. The reading process requires continuous practices, development, and refinement.

Readers use a variety of reading strategies to assist with decoding (to translate symbols into sounds or visual representations of speech) and comprehension. Readers may use morpheme, semantics, syntax and context clues to identify the meaning of unknown words. Readers integrate the words they have read into their existing framework of knowledge or schema (schemata theory).

Other types of reading are not speech based writing systems, such as music notation or pictograms. The common link is the interpretation of symbols to extract the meaning from the visual notations.

Saturday, 26 December 2009

Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen

A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest

From the Publisher
In 1911 two wealthy British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson, came to a sanitorium in the forests of the Pacific Northwest to undergo the revolutionary “fasting treatment” of Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard. It was supposed to be a holiday for the two sisters. But within a month of arriving at what the locals called Starvation Heights, the women were emaciated shadows of their former selves, waiting for death. They were not the first victims of Linda Hazzard, a quack doctor of extraordinary evil and greed who would stop at nothing short of murder to achieve her ambitions. As their jewelry disappeared and forged bank drafts began transferring their wealth to Hazzard’s accounts, Dora Williamson sent a last desperate plea to a friend in Australia, begging her to save them from the brutal treatments and lonely isolation of Starvation Heights.

In this true story—a haunting saga of medical murder set in an era of steamships and gaslights—Gregg Olsen reveals one of the most unusual and disturbing criminal cases in American history.

My review: I was bored at first when I started this book. But if you look at the books I had read just prior to this, you will see I was on kind of a murder and mayhem high when I started this book. Although this book also deals with a murder, it was a quite different method then I had previously read about. Gregg asked me not to give up on the book, since I was only at the 20 or so page mark I didn't.

The time period of this book as mentioned, steamships and gaslights, a slower paced time and the book follows this, Gregg Olsen carefully sets the stage, drawing the people with care and attention to detail. In the end, one feels that they truly 'know' everyone involved in the case and since you know the characters, you care and want to know what happens to them.

What Gregg does is take a quote from after the case had ended, in some cases from after Linda Hazzard had died, giving the communities take on Starvation Heights, sometime the stories and superstitions that were common in that area. These are scattered about the narrative of the case and the trial. Also we learn the history of Linda Hazzard and her husband and son, how they came to be in Olalla and the trouble that seemed to follow them. Much of it of their own doing it must be noted.

What Gregg doesn't do is report the trial word for word with trail transcripts. He does reprint some newspaper accounts and articles. Enough to keep you informed, but not so much that you are bored.

At the end of the book, he gives you a little synopsis of how he found out about this case and what intrigued him to write it. Where he got most of his information. This is important for me, I am always thinking as I read non-fiction, "How do they know that? How does the author know that this person said that?" And my absolute favorite part is when he talks about digging in the mud with his daughters on Father's Day looking for bones and teeth. Well what else would you expect from a true crime writer on his day?

I recommend this book to fans of Historical True Crime.