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Mary T. Browne is an internationally renowned psychic, teacher, and the author of Love in Action, Life After Death, and The Power of Karma. For over twenty-five years she has used her psychic gift to counsel thousands of men and women who have come to her for private consultations. She has dedicated her life to teaching people how to uncover life's hidden mysteries, as well as helping them achieve their desired goals.

Now, in The 5 Rules of Thought: How to Use the Power of Your Mind to Get What You Want, Browne turns her attention to the subject of thought -- the most powerful tool we have for bringing the things we want into our lives. Like the teachers who contributed to the bestselling book The Secret, Mary T. Browne takes what she has learned from studying the ancient wisdom of The Masters and from her more than two decades of experience as a spiritual counselor to offer readers a precise program they can use to apply the Power of Thought to get the things they want. The 5 Rules of Thought take you beyond positive thinking, creative visualization, and the law of attraction to an understanding of what you can do to transform your life by transforming your thought. Mary T. Browne will teach you how to use the 5 Rules of Thought to get the money you desire, the true love you crave, and better health. In short, the life you've always dreamed of.

This life-changing book will take you on the most exciting adventure of your life.

• Sales Rank: #703225 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-07
• Released on: 2008-10-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.50" h x .90" w x 5.00" l, .55 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Mary T. Browne is a renowned psychic and the author of Love in Action, Life after Death and The Power of Karma. She has appeared on Weekend Today, CNN, and Good Day New York, and has done over 400 radio interviews. In addition, she has been featured in many magazines and newspapers including New York Magazine, Worth, American Health, Elle, Vogue, and the New York Times. She lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
What Is Thought?

A thought is an image projected into the ether. It is vibration. It is force and energy. It is creative power. It is spirit. It has color. It has sound. It has substance. Thoughts are completely alive. There is nothing more powerful than thought. You are what you think.

Every aspect of life is generated by thought. There are noble thoughts. There are mean thoughts. There are low thoughts. There are elevated thoughts. There are good thoughts. There are evil thoughts. All success and all failure are the results of our thoughts.

Everything you love is thought. Everything you hate is thought. Everything you feel is thought. Emotions are brought on by thought. Everything you see is materialized thought. Everything you hear is a sound wave composed of thought. In order to create anything, you must begin by seeing it in your mind. The thought is always first. Action is a direct result of thought.

You can get anything you want if you learn how to control your thoughts. In order to learn how to do so, it is important to understand that thought produces a dual effect: vibration and form.

Vibration

A vibration is a wave of feeling that comes from the mind of the thinker. It expresses the character of a thought. For example, it may be kind, loving, generous, or angry. A vibration is also known as a thought wave.

Vibrations tend to impact the minds of others who are vibrating at a similar frequency. In other words, they cause the same kind of thoughts in the receiving minds as those sent by the original thinker. Thought acts as a magnet that attracts similar thought. Like attracts like.

Have you ever gone to a party and found yourself drawn toward a stranger for no apparent reason? It was not because of the person's looks or clothes. You had not spoken a word to that person. Yet there was something sublime. You could not put your finger on it, but you were drawn toward this individual like a magnet to a refrigerator. The person's energy drew you in. The person had good vibrations. If you got to know that person, you'd discover an individual who had a fine character and was a nice person.

A vibration emanates as long as the thought is held. Every vibration is instantly followed by a form, which is a picture. This is known as a thought form.

Form

Thought forms are mental pictures in the mind. If you think about an apple, the mind produces an image of an apple. If you think about a friend or a lover, the mind produces a picture of that person. If you are trying to write a novel, you will think about a concept. You will form ideas that bring the story alive. Once you have an idea, you can begin to write.

The intensity and the clarity of the thought determine the weight, power, and shape of the form. We have a million passing thoughts every day. These quickly come in and out of our minds. In the morning, the alarm sounds to wake us up. We think "alarm" and quickly turn it off. By then the thought is gone. You think, "Open the door." You open the door and then forget about it a moment later. You did not create a heavy form because you did not hold the thought, and you likely did not put much emotion behind it.

On the other hand, if you are really angry at someone and you keep holding the thought, it will intensify and take on a nasty form. This will then provoke an action. Maybe you will yell at that person, gossip, or start a fight. This type of thought form vibrates for a long time, even after you stopped thinking about it. Your actions were the direct result of the intensity and the duration of the thought form. Just because you say you are over your anger does not mean the results of the anger are gone. An angry thought form can live long after the action.

Thoughts create a form. The form becomes a picture. The picture may not be instantly apparent to the physical eye, but it is living in the "mental" plane. That is why thought forms are sometimes referred to as "elementals."

Thoughts that are directed toward someone move from the mind of the originator to the other person. A self-consumed thought will hang around the originator. This type of thought is completely about yourself or something you desire. For example, you have a strong desire for certain foods that are fattening and unhealthy. You think intensely about these foods even though you are disciplining yourself not to eat them. This intensity produces a distinct type of thought form known as a "hanging" thought form. It is called hanging because it persists as long as you have the desire for something. You created a form that hangs over you even if you focus your mind on other matters. As soon as your mind is free, the hanging thought form will become apparent again. You will have an overwhelming urge to consume the foods you were trying to avoid. You will go to the bakery, buy a cake, and eat it, even if you are not hungry. You will call this temptation, but in fact you created this yourself. Nobody tempted you. You were the one who created this thought form. Strong thought forms always manifest. Therefore, it can be very difficult to stay on a diet. A clear thought, visualized and repeated will manifest itself in the physical world. Sometimes it may take time to manifest, but it will happen.

This is the same with addictions. Any addict will tell you how difficult it is to overcome an addiction. The physical craving can stop long before the mind lets go. The body will no longer crave them but people still cannot quit. The memory and desire for the addictive substance are still there. The person may stop indulging for a period of time, but the thought form is alive and waiting to be activated. In order to treat an addiction successfully the thought form must be changed. It must be rendered powerless. If the thought form hanging around the addicted person remains forceful, a relapse is inevitable. Thought is powerful. In order to avoid a relapse, a new even more powerful thought form must be created. The addict must learn to focus the mind on a clear, intense, detailed picture of being happy and free of the addiction. These positive mental pictures will help a great deal as one takes the active steps needed for recovery. These steps could include joining a specific program, consulting a medical expert, or even hospitalization. Any support system that works for the individual could be used.

Hanging thought forms aren't only connected to food, alcohol, and drugs. I have seen them hanging in the auras of clients who were obsessed with an ex-lover or spouse and could not get over these relationships. These types of obsessions can lead to mental and physical problems.

The age-old advice given by our grandmothers, "It takes time and someone else to help us put our past relationships to rest" is very potent. When we are able to replace the thought of our ex-love by the happy thoughts connected to a new love, the hanging thought form starts loosening its hold on us. New thought forms are sent out from us to our new loves. I know it isn't easy to focus our thoughts on a happy future while we are involved in an unhappy personal situation. But change can be more easily enacted if we use the power of our minds to get rid of any hanging thought forms. I am not suggesting that you deny your feelings. Denial will only put the hanging thought forms out of your mind for short periods of time. The moment your mind is free, the hanging thought form will be apparent.

If you don't have a new love in your life, you must learn to see a clear picture in your mind's eye of yourself happy and in love. See this picture as many times a day as possible. Don't try to see a specific person whom you are in love with. Just see yourself happy and in love.

You can develop thought forms that will bring to you what you want. This is a skill. Like any skill, it takes desire, discipline, time, and effort. You have to acquire good habits of thought. This takes concentration and patience. You must see what you want clearly and learn to focus on it with intensity and faith. These are the first steps toward bringing your desire into form. You get what you think.

Copyright 2007 by Mary T. Browne

Most helpful customer reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
This is it!
By Rick M. Reynolds
This book is such an incredible gift from Mary T. Browne. I am recommending it to my friends and family. And I urge everybody to approach it with an open mind and at least look at it for even a few minutes. Even a small dose can only help your soul.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
amazing book...
By Solange
I read the entire book in two days...I truly believe in the power of our thoughts and how our thoughts can have a profound impact on the quality of our lives...this book offers practical tips and ideas to help retrain our thoughts so that we can 'grow' our soul....well written...I enjoyed it very much and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to live a more 'meaningful and spiritual' life....

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
It Works
By Robyne
I used the techniques Ms. Browne prescribes to overcome stage fright. It's the first time I've seen "manifestation" literature produce a very quick turnaround with the actual result sought. Thank you, Ms. Browne.

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^ Download Ebook Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir, by Natalie Goldberg

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Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir, by Natalie Goldberg

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Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice Of Writing Memoir, By Natalie Goldberg. Is this your downtime? Just what will you do after that? Having extra or complimentary time is really amazing. You could do every little thing without pressure. Well, we intend you to save you couple of time to review this book Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice Of Writing Memoir, By Natalie Goldberg This is a god book to accompany you in this spare time. You will not be so difficult to know something from this e-book Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice Of Writing Memoir, By Natalie Goldberg More, it will assist you to obtain much better information and also experience. Also you are having the fantastic tasks, reading this book Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice Of Writing Memoir, By Natalie Goldberg will certainly not add your thoughts.

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Twenty years ago Natalie Goldberg’s classic, Writing Down the Bones, broke new ground in its approach to writing as a practice. Now, Old Friend from Far Away—her first book since Writing Down the Bones to focus solely on writing—reaffirms Goldberg’s status as a foremost teacher of writing, and completely transforms the practice of writing memoir.

To write memoir, we must first know how to remember. Through timed, associative, and meditative exercises, Old Friend from Far Away guides you to the attentive state of thought in which you discover and open forgotten doors of memory. At once a beautifully written celebration of the memoir form, an innovative course full of practical teachings, and a deeply affecting meditation on consciousness, love, life, and death, Old Friend from Far Away welcomes aspiring writers of all levels and encourages them to find their unique voice to tell their stories. Like Writing Down the Bones, it will become an old friend to which readers return again and again.

• Sales Rank: #90971 in Books
• Brand: Goldberg, Natalie
• Published on: 2009-03-10
• Released on: 2009-03-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.44" h x .90" w x 5.50" l, .65 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
"A celebration of the memoir form...an impassioned call to write, delivered by an author who knows how to zero in on the truth, and lead others there as well. If you're serious about finding that voice inside yourself, Natalie Goldberg is a teacher you have to meet." -- Steve Almond, author of Candyfreak and (Not That You Asked)

"A writer -- both energized and enlightened." -- Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way

"An invaluable addition to any writer's (or reader's) bookshelf. Each new chapter is another gift, unlocking the mystery of the story of the human heart. There isn't a better approach to memoir. Beautifully written, this book is for everyone." -- Robert Wilder, author of Daddy Needs a Drink and Tales from the Teachers' Lounge

"The brilliance of this book is that it immediately gets you writing your story. It opens the inner treasure and the inner zoo, makes you wriggle and weep, pawn the family jewels, laugh out loud, tear down memory lane, and reawaken to the mystery of your own life." -- Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart

"Natalie Goldberg doesn't fool around. The moment I started reading her new book, I found myself compelled to follow her lead. She's a master and this book is a must-read for anyone who even thinks about putting pen to page." -- Cheryl Richardson, author of The Unmistakable Touch of Grace and Take Time for Your Life

"A richly abundant how-to book full of deep personal insight and practical go-get-'em. Memoir writers, buy this book, put it on your personal altar, or carry it with you as you traverse the deep ruts of your old road. Really, this book could save your life." -- Tom Spanbauer, author of The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon

About the Author
Natalie Goldberg is a poet, painter, teacher, and the author of twelve books, including her classic, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (which has sold more than 1.5 million copies) and Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir. She has been teaching seminars for thirty-five years to people from around the world and lives in New Mexico. 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Read this Introduction

There is nothing stiff about memoir. It's not a chronological pronouncement of the facts of your life: born in Hoboken, New Jersey; schooled at Elm Creek Elementary; moved to Big Flat, New York, where you attended Holy Mother High School. Memoir doesn't cling to an orderly procession of time and dates, marching down the narrow aisle of your years on this earth. Rather it encompasses the moment you stopped, turned your car around, and went swimming in a deep pool by the side of the road. You threw off your gray suit, a swimming trunk in the backseat, a bridge you dived off. You knew you had an appointment in the next town, but the water was so clear. When would you be passing by this river again? The sky, the clouds, the reeds by the roadside mattered. You remembered bologna sandwiches made on white bread; you started to whistle old tunes. How did life get so confusing? Last week your seventeen-year-old told you he was gay and you suspect your wife is having an affair. You never liked selling industrial-sized belts to tractor companies anyway. Didn't you once dream of being a librarian or a dessert cook? Maybe it was a landscaper, a firefighter?

Memoir gives you the ability to plop down like the puddle that forms and spreads from the shattering of a glass of milk on the kitchen floor. You watch how the broken glass gleams from the electric light overhead. The form of memoir has leisure enough to examine all this.

Memoir is not a declaration of the American success story, one undeviating road, the conquering of one mountaintop after another. The puddle began in downfall. The milk didn't get to the mouth. Whatever your life, it is urging you to record it -- to embrace the crumbs with the cake. It's why so many of us want to write memoir. We know the particulars, but what really went on? We want the emotional truths under the surface that drove our life.

In the past, memoir was the country of old people, a looking back, a reminiscence. But now people are disclosing their lives in their twenties, writing their first memoir in their thirties and their second in their forties. This revolution in personal narrative that has unrolled across the American landscape in the last two and a half decades is the expression of a uniquely American energy: a desire to understand in the heat of living, while life is fresh, and not wait till old age -- it may be too late. We are hungry -- and impatient now.

But what if you are already sixty, seventy years old, eighty, ninety? Let the thunder roll. You've got something to say. You are alive and you don't know for how long. (None of us really knows for how long.) No matter your age there is a sense of urgency, to make life immediate and relevant.

Think of the word: memoir. It comes from the French m?moire. It is the study of memory, structured on the meandering way we remember. Essentially it is an examination of the zigzag nature of how our mind works. The thought of Cheerios ricochets back to a broken fence in our backyard one Nebraska spring, then hops over to the first time we stood before a mountain and understood kindness. A smell, a taste -- and a whole world flares up.

How close can we get? All those questions, sometimes murky and uncomfortable: who was that person that was your mother? Why did you play basketball when you longed to play football? Your head wanted to explode until you first snorted cocaine behind the chain-link fence near the gas station. Then things got quiet and peaceful, but what was that black dog still at your throat?

We are a dynamic country, fast-paced, ever onward. Can we make sense of love and ambition, pain and longing? In the center of our speed, in the core of our forward movement, we are often confused and lonely. That's why we have turned so full- heartedly to the memoir form. We have an intuition that it can save us. Writing is the act of reaching across the abyss of isolation to share and reflect. It's not a diet to become skinny, but a relaxation into the fat of our lives. Often without realizing it, we are on a quest, a search for meaning. What does our time on this earth add up to?

The title Old Friend from Far Away comes from the Analects by Confucius. We reach back in time to another country. Isn't that what memory is?

'To have an old friend visit

...from far away --

...what a delight!'

So let's pick up the pen, and kick some ass. Write down who you were, who you are, and what you remember.Copyright © 2007 by Natalie Goldberg

Most helpful customer reviews

92 of 96 people found the following review helpful.
An ache, a longing
By John Thorndike
What I love about Natalie Goldberg's latest is how the book grows, how it swells, how it starts with small, private memories and joins these to the larger world. "The reason we want to write memoir," she says, "is an ache, a longing, a passing of time that we feel all too strongly." The longing calls up stories, calls up details, which are the anchor of any memoir. The details are vital, "but detail devoid of feeling is a marble rolling across a hard wood floor."

Memoir, says Goldberg, "is taking personal experience and turning it inside out. We surrender our most precious understanding, so others can feel what we felt and be enlarged." Our feelings connect us not just to the past, but to the rest of the sentient world, even the political world. We may lead a lucky life compared to others around the globe. We may write about a red wagon or "the slow spring we remember in Ohio, while at the same time atrocities, torture, genocide are happening. It's not wrong that our life has been graced, but it's important to acknowledge that while a rose blooms a bomb is being dropped."

Much of Goldberg's advice on writing we have read before, in her earlier books. But her suggestions here for putting the mind and heart in gear, as we put pen to paper, are perfectly fresh. More and more of us want to uncover and write down our own stories, and Old Friend from Far Away will be welcomed by anyone struggling to set down the sweet or painful pressure of her life, the past as it flows into the present. The book is filled with inventive observations, and with Natalie Goldberg's infectious belief in writing practice. "Stay connected to the power," she says, "the pleasure of writing. Come back to that over and over."
A lovely and trenchant book.

49 of 49 people found the following review helpful.
A Juicy Treat
By Story Circle Book Reviews
In Natalie Goldberg's new book, Old Friend from Far Away, the theme is in its subtitle: The Practice of Writing Memoir. Best known for her seminal book, Writing Down the Bones, Goldberg once again preaches the dogma of PRACTICE... Ten minutes of freehand writing on any topic. Just get it down.

This is not a book about how to put together a memoir, what topics to write about, or how to publish. Plenty of other memoir-writing books cover those topics. Goldberg is 100% cheerleader--reminding us over and over to "Shut Up and Write" because what we have to say is fleeting and so important. There are no great answers for who we are; don't wait for them. Pick up the pen and right now, in ten furious minutes, tell the story of your life. I'm not kidding. Ten minutes of continuous writing is much more expedient than ten years of musing and getting nowhere.

Natalie Goldberg is first and foremost a poet, so you can expect the pages to drip with delicious imagery. She is particularly adept at food analogies:

"Memoir gives you the ability to plop down like the puddle that forms and spreads from the shattering of a glass of milk on the kitchen floor."

"You crack open sentences, like egg shells letting the bright yellow, the clear white, in all its unorderliness, fall out."

The author advises us to jump in wherever we like; this is not a book to be read from front to back. In fact, she wants us to WRITE our way through the pages in whatever order we desire. And because life is not linear, you want to approach writing memoir sideways, using the deepest kind of thinking to sort through the layers. You want reflection to discover what the real connections are.

If you want to dive in and find exactly the inspiration you need, she provides advice in an index of phrases--a great place to start.

"Go for the jugular."
"Don't try to make it pretty."
"Trust your insides to lead you."

If you want to read some great memoirs, Goldberg provides a list of her favorites (and some of mine), including: Anne Lamott, Mary Karr, Maxine Hong Kingston. She features an eclectic mix of memoirists within her text from James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston to Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsburg.

If you are already an old friend of Goldberg, you will find comfort in her newest tome. If you are new to her work, you are in for a juicy treat.

by Karen Ryan
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

60 of 66 people found the following review helpful.
Feels like meeting an old friend from far away
By Dr. Cathy Goodwin
Old Friend from Far Away is supposed to be about writing a memoir. It's really a set of exercises to help readers begin writing about themselves and their memories, interspersed with tantalizing glimpses of the author's own life.

On the positive side: The topics for the ten-minute timed writings (Goldberg's significant contribution to the world of writing) seem like fun. She teaches us to see details, not get derailed into abstraction. Her own writing demonstrates these principles. The author's own memories -- all too brief -- are the best part of the book. I loved her stories of studying with Alan Ginsberg and finding an unusual coffee shop for writing. As always, her writing elevates mundane events and gives them meaning.

But I was disappointed to see so many pages with just a sentence or two of writing exercises. Is she just tired of writing, I wondered, forcing herself to finish her book to meet the demands of her publisher? We don't get the kind of background Goldberg shares in earlier books, especially Thunder and Lightning. We get snapshots when it would be nice to have a movie. We don't get new exercises. And I'm not sure we get helpful insights into memoir as a genre.

For publication (or a good review, if you self-publish), memoirs need to make meaning of a life. The strongest memoirs carry a theme of struggle and redemption. We read about someone's life and something resonates with our own. Or we see this story a part of a bigger theme, giving us new insights and ideas. Weak memoirs leave the "so what" question unanswered.

Maybe that comes later...after you've written dozens and dozens of timed writings. Maybe it's not possible till you realize you've got to face down the truths that Natalie Goldberg urges us to expose in writing.

Or maybe I just feel frustrated because I know a few people who ought to be writing their memoirs. This book won't help them.

The last part of the book includes a list of published memoirs, a curious selection. Although Goldberg has made a recording with Julia Cameron, and Cameron's blurb appears here, there is no mention of Cameron's own memoir. There's an obvious allusion to the James Frey story (although no names are mentioned) and the author briefly describes some memoirs she likes.

Ultimately, the title describes the way many readers relate to the author herself. Those who like Natalie Goldberg will pick up this book to visit with an old friend. What's new in her life? Will we get an update of what happened since she wrote about the monk and the bartender?

Alas, our visit will be more like a fast encounter at an airport, catching up between changing planes, than a long satisfying conversation in one of those coffee shops where Natalie Goldberg used to sit and write. She really is an old friend from far away, and she's not getting any closer.

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# Ebook Free Thirty Nights with a Highland Husband (The Daughters of the Glen, Book 1), by Melissa Mayhue

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SCOTLAND, 1272. Connor MacKiernan, a descendant of the Fae Prince, is a warrior who lives only for honor and duty. Though he's vowed never to marry, that's exactly what he must do to save his sister. Enter a little Faerie magic, and the search for a bride is on.

DENVER, 2007. Caitlyn Coryell is having a really bad day -- she just discovered her fiancé with another woman! Imagine her surprise when she puts on some sexy lingerie and an antique pendant and Connor appears in her bedroom, begging for her help. He offers a simple yet outrageous adventure: travel to his time, marry him, and return home.

But nothing's simple when Cate is trapped in the thirteenth century. The wedding's delayed, someone's trying to kill her, and in the middle of all this, she realizes she's falling in love with a man who can only be her husband for thirty nights.

• Sales Rank: #853219 in Books
• Brand: Brand: Pocket Books
• Published on: 2007-06-26
• Released on: 2007-06-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 6.75" h x 1.00" w x 4.19" l, .39 pounds
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 356 pages

Features

• Used Book in Good Condition

Review
"A powerful debut for Melissa Mayhue, an author with a magical touch for romance!" -- Janet Chapman

About the Author
Melissa Mayhue is the award-winning author of Thirty Nights with a Highland Husband, Highland Guardian, Soul of a Highlander, A Highlander of Her Own, A Highlander's Destiny, A Highlander's Homecoming, Healing the Highlander and A Highlander's Curse. She and her family live in Colorado in the shadow of the beautiful Rocky Mountains with three insanely spoiled dogs, one domineering cat, a turtle with an attitude, and way too many fish in their aquarium. Visit her website at MelissaMayhue.com.

Most helpful customer reviews

125 of 135 people found the following review helpful.
Nice
By K. Bagwell
Well...I'm not going to explain the book because you can read the previous reviews and the back cover to find out what this book is about. I am, however, going to review/critic the book.

As a first time reader of Ms. Mayhue I didn't know what to expect. I just read the back, remembering how I enjoyed Karen Marie Moning's highlander/travel through time series, and thought "why not?". At first, when I read the prolouge, I thought it was going to be one of those super cheezy romances with too much "I love you" and not enough depth to plot or characters. Boy was I wrong...the heroin in this story often reminded me of the witty, funny, yet strange females that Moning weaves in her books. And of course, the hero in this book reminded me of the hot, intellegent, yet overprotective men in Moning's books as well. I would have ALMOST considered it a rewritten/spinoff from Moning's Highlander series, if Mayhue hadn't added a Fae Legend to the story. Moning's Highlander Series followers would DEFINITELY enjoy this book, especially since that series is either on hold or ended.

Ms. Mayhue did a wonderful job weaving an incredible but energetic plot with characters who have depth--a trait that is sadly missing from so many romance novels written today. Ms. Mayhue seems to have quite a career ahead and I would almost say that she is the next Moning....if Moning wasn't still writing.

38 of 43 people found the following review helpful.
Thirty Nights With a Highland Husband
By Amazon Customer
Scottish warrior Connor MacKiernan has vowed never to marry. As a
descendant of a fae prince, he has also vowed to protect the women of
his family. In order to protect his sister, Connor must marry. Using
faerie magic, Connor travels from Scotland, 1272 to Denver Colorado,
2007 to find his bride.

Caitlyn Coryell is having a wretched day. After finding her fiancé
with another woman, she goes home to lick her wounds. Standing in
front of the mirror wearing nothing but an antique pendant and what
was to have been her honeymoon lingerie, Caitlyn is stunned when a man
appears begging for her help. Connor asks Caitlyn to return with him
to his time, marry him and then return home. Though the plan sounds
simple enough, reality is anything but simple. The wedding is
delayed, someone is trying to kill Caitlyn and to really complicate
matters, Caitlyn is falling in love with Connor.

Melissa Mayhue's Thirty Nights with a Highland Husband is enchanting.
Connor is totally pant worthy and Caitlyn is so deserving of his
love. Thirty Nights with a Highland Husband has a suspenseful plot
and an unlikely villain. The secondary characters tickled my fancy
and I am begging for books for each of Caitlyn's brothers. Honor,
love, and faerie magic make Thirty Nights with a Highland Husband
captivating!

Annmarie
Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
A KEEPER!!
By Kirsten Richard
Be careful when you start this book because you will not be able to put it down! I love the main characters Caitlyn and Connor. Caitlyn has just the right amount of spunk to hold her own with a Highland warrior. Connor is yummy, a strong alpha with a heart. The story pulls you on as you worry and wonder how these two will find their happy ending when it seems as if everything and everyone is conspiring to keep them apart. When you close this book, I promise it will be with a smile on your face. Ms. Mayhue is an author to watch. I can't wait for October when the next book in the series, HIGHLAND GUARDIAN, is released.

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## Free Ebook Mr. Speaker!: The Life and Times of Thomas B. Reed The Man Who Broke the Filibuster, by James Grant

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James Grant’s enthralling biography of Thomas B. Reed, Speaker of the House during one of the most turbulent times in American history—the Gilded Age, the decades before the ascension of reformer President Theodore Roosevelt—brings to life one of the brightest, wittiest, and most consequential political stars in our history.

The last decades of the nineteenth century were a volatile era of rampantly corrupt politics. It was a time of both stupendous growth and financial panic, of land bubbles and passionate and sometimes violent populist protests. Votes were openly bought and sold in a Congress paralyzed by the abuse of the House filibuster by members who refused to respond to roll call even when present, depriving the body of a quorum. Reed put an end to this stalemate, empowered the Republicans, and changed the House of Representatives for all time.

The Speaker’s beliefs in majority rule were put to the test in 1898, when the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor set up a popular clamor for war against Spain. Reed resigned from Congress in protest.

A larger-than-life character, Reed checks every box of the ideal biographical subject. He is an important and significant figure. He changed forever the way the House of Representatives does its business. He was funny and irreverent. He is, in short, great company. “What I most admire about you, Theodore,” Reed once remarked to his earnest young protégé, Teddy Roosevelt, “is your original discovery of the Ten Commandments.”

After he resigned his seat, Reed practiced law in New York. He was successful. He also found a soul mate in the legendary Mark Twain. They admired one another’s mordant wit. Grant’s lively and erudite narrative of this tumultuous era—the raucous late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—is a gripping portrait of a United States poised to burst its bounds and of the men who were defining it.

• Sales Rank: #169053 in Books
• Published on: 2011-05-10
• Released on: 2011-05-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.30" w x 6.12" l, 1.45 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

Review
Advance Praise for



Mr. Speaker!



“Thomas Reed—Czar Reed, the all-powerful Speaker of the House at the end of the 19th century—was an architect of the modern American state. Sadly, he has been lost to history. But in this lively, intelligent biography, James Grant brings him back, with gusto, humor, and a sense of tragedy.”

--Evan Thomas, author of The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst and the Rush to Empire, 1898

“No period in American history is more colorful or relevant to our own—for better and worse—than the Gilded Age. James Grant brings it all memorably to life: Mugwumps and Half-Breeds, congressmen of flamboyant plumage for sale, not to mention a political process frozen in partisanship. Looming above it all, literally larger than life, is Thomas B. Reed, perhaps the most fascinating politician you’ve never heard of. A hero to young Theodore Roosevelt, as Speaker of the House Reed singlehandedly crushed the filibuster. (One is tempted to say, Boy do we need him now). At the same time, Reed’s erudition and stinging wit may well have cost him the White House. In the end, his ambition yielded to his principles, prompting him to resign the speakership rather than endorse the imperial vision of his fellow Republicans. It’s taken a century, but Reed at last has a biographer equal to his story.”

--Richard Norton Smith, author of The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R.

McCormick, 1880-1955 and Scholar-in-Residence of History and Public Policy at George

Mason University

About the Author
James Grant is the founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, a leading journal on financial markets, which he has published since 1983. He is the author of seven books covering both financial history and biography. Grant’s journalism has been featured in Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs. He has appeared on 60 Minutes, Jim Lehrer’s News Hour, and CBS Evening News.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Preface

THOMAS BRACKETT REED was the rock-ribbed Maine Republican who led the U.S. House of Representatives into the modern era of big government. From the Speaker’s chair early in 1890, he unilaterally stripped the legislative minority of the power to obstruct the law-making agenda of the majority. Enraged Democrats branded him a “czar,” which epithet Reed seemed not to mind at all.

Modernity was Reed’s cause from his first Congress in 1877 to the day he resigned in protest over America’s war of choice with Spain. As society was moving forward, he contended, so must the government and the laws. That meant, for instance, the abolition of capital punishment, a cause he championed while representing Portland in the Maine legislature immediately following the Civil War. On the national stage, it meant protective tariffs, peace, women’s suffrage, federally protected voting rights for African-Americans and a strong navy. He heaped ridicule on the Democrats for their Jeffersonian insistence on strictly limited federal powers. The tragedy of Reed’s political life was that the government he helped to cultivate and finance turned warlike and muscular, just as his Democratic antagonists had predicted it would. His friend and onetime protégé Theodore Roosevelt rode that trend into the history books. Reed, heartsick, retired to Wall Street to practice law.

Peace and prosperity make a superior backdrop to everyday living, but they do not necessarily commend an era to the readers or writers of history. Not that either Reed’s life (1839–1902) or his times were anything but eventful. Boom and bust, free trade or protection, race, the rights of subject peoples and the relationship between the individual and the state were the staple points of conflict during his quarter-century in politics.

Czar Reed had a suitably tyrannical presence, standing well over six feet tall and weighing close to 300 pounds. He married a clergyman’s daughter, Susan P. Jones, who opposed women’s suffrage; Katherine, their daughter, lived to advocate it. Reed’s eyes beamed with intelligence but his massive face was bland enough to stump the portraitist John Singer Sargent. “Well,” Reed quipped as he beheld the painter’s failed likeness of himself in 1891, “I hope my enemies are satisfied.”

The party labels of Reed’s day may seem now as if they were stuck on backwards. At that time, the GOP was the party of active government, the Democratic party, the champion of laissez-faire. The Republicans’ sage was Alexander Hamilton, the Democrats’, Thomas Jefferson. The Republicans condemned the Democrats for their parsimony with public funds, the Democrats arraigned the Republicans for their waste and extravagance. And what, in those days, constituted extravagance in federal spending? Arguing in support of a bill to appropriate funds for a new building to house the overcrowded collection of the Library of Congress, Reed had to answer critics who charged that Congress should do without the books rather than raid the Treasury and raise up one more imperial structure to crowd the capital city’s already grandiose thoroughfares.

The library fight was waged with words, but the politics of Reed’s time were shockingly violent. It was embarrassing to Reed to have to try to explain away to his congressional colleagues the near war that erupted in his home state over the stolen 1879 Maine gubernatorial election. Reed had grown used to political bloodshed in the conquered South, but even he, worldwise as he was, had never expected the descendants of the Puritan saints to have to call out the militia to get an honest count of a New England vote. Meanwhile, in Washington, on the floor of the House of Representatives, ex-soldiers would put aside public business to hurl charges and countercharges over the wartime atrocities at Andersonville or Fort Pillow. Reed himself was not above the occasional jibe at the ex-Confederates—“waving the bloody shirt,” this style of political discourse was called—but he affected not one jot of martial vainglory. A supply officer aboard a Union gunboat on the Mississippi River in the final year of the war, he drew no fire except the verbal kind from his own commanding officer.

As a professional politician, Reed could talk with the best of them. In the House, he was the acknowledged master of the impromptu five-minute speech and of the cutting, 10-second remark. He talked himself into 12 consecutive congresses, including three in which he occupied the Speaker’s chair. “The gentleman needn’t worry. He will never be either,” he once remarked to a Democrat who was rash enough to quote Henry Clay’s line about rather being right than president.

Reed’s wit was his bane and glory. An acquaintance correctly observed that he would rather make an epigram than a friend. Too often, he made an epigram and an enemy. “They can do worse,” he said of the Republicans who were sizing him up for the GOP presidential nomination in 1896. “And they probably will,” he added prophetically. In the museless and pleasant William McKinley, the Republicans did, in fact, do much worse. Mark Hanna, McKinley’s strategist and the first of the modern American political kingmakers, set his agents to mingle in the western crowds that Reed sought to charm in the 1896 campaign season. “There was nothing Lincolnian about Reed, obese, dapper and sarcastic,” Hanna’s biographer recorded. “He wasn’t too friendly when they came up to shake hands after meetings. He was an Eastern Product.”

That Reed fell short of the presidency was his contemporaries’ loss, even more than his own. That he has made so small a mark in the modern historical record is a deficiency that this book intends to rectify. The Gilded Age produced no wiser, funnier or more colorful politician than Speaker Reed, and none whose interests and struggles more nearly anticipated our own. Reed, like us, debated the morality of a war that America chose to instigate. He wrestled with the efficacy of protecting American workers and their employers from foreign competition and resisted the calls of those who would cheapen the value of the dollar. He was—as it might be condescendingly said of him today—ahead of his time on issues of race and gender. Actually, in many ways, his views harkened back to those of the Founders. Too loyal a Republican to speak out against the McKinley administration’s war in the Philippines, Reed would let drop the subversive remark that he believed in the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Roosevelt wondered what had gotten into him.

If Reed resigned from Congress in bitterness, he served with zest. He loved the House and especially the Speakership, an office, as he liked to say, that was “without peer and with but one superior.” In parliamentary finesse and imagination, he was among the greatest Speakers. Such 21st century political scientists as Randall Strahan and Rick Valelly rank him on a par with the great Henry Clay of Kentucky. Reed’s signal achievement was to institute an era of activist legislation to displace the prevailing system of party stalemate. Empowered by the rules he himself imposed, the Republican majority of the 51st Congress, 1890–92, passed more bills and appropriated more money than any preceding peacetime Congress. To critics who decried the appropriations record of that Congress—a shocking $1 billion—Reed approvingly quoted someone else’s witticism: “It’s a billion-dollar country.”

The overtaxed and -governed 21st century reader may wince at the knowledge that the hero of these pages was an architect of the modern American state—certainly, his biographer does. However, Reed did not knowingly set out to create Leviathan. He wanted not a big government but a functional one. He opposed what he took to be unwarranted federal intrusion into private matters, including big business, even though—to a degree—that business owed its bigness to the tariffs that the Republicans erected to protect it from foreign competition. In middle age, Reed found the time to teach himself French, but he stopped short at reading Frederic Bastiat, the French economist who demonstrated the compelling logic of free trade. The truth is that economics was not the czar’s strongest suit—then, again, it has rarely been Congress’.

Burning bright through the full length of Reed’s congressional years was the question of what to do about money. Alexander Hamilton had defined the dollar in 1792 as a weight of silver (371¼ grains) or of gold (24¾ grains). Most of Reed’s contemporaries agreed that the law meant what it said. Money must be intrinsically valuable, worth its weight, or something close to its weight, in one of the two precious metals. Paper money was acceptable only so far as it was freely exchangeable into the real McCoy. Let the government just print up dollar bills, as it had done during the American Revolution and again, under Abraham Lincoln, in the Civil War, and inflationary chaos would descend.

In the final quarter of the 19th century, not a few Americans would have welcomed inflation with open arms. Falling prices were the norm; on average during Reed’s political career, they fell by a little less than 2 percent a year. For debtors, the decline was a tribulation. They had borrowed dollars, and they were bound to repay dollars, but the value of the dollars they owed was rising. Thanks to material progress itself, the cost of producing goods and services was falling. Steamships had displaced sail, the automobile was gaining on the horse, and the telegraph and telephone were providing a fair preview of the wonders of the Internet. In consequence, prices fell even faster than wages did. Many Americans profited in the bargain, though a vocal minority lost, and this angry cohort did not shrink from expressing its demand for cheaper and more abundant dollars. Silver was a cheaper metal than gold, and paper was cheaper than either. Let money, therefore, argued the populists, be fashioned out of these common materials, the better to serve a growing nation and not incidentally lighten the debtor’s load. For most of his public life, Reed took the opposite side of the argument. Supporting the gold standard, he contended that a stable, value-laden dollar best served the interests of all, wage-earners not least.

As pro-inflation sentiment was rife in Maine, Reed maintained his hard-money view at some political risk to himself. He hewed consistently to gold until the mid-1890s, when the monetary battle was raging hottest. And then, to some of his friends’ despair, he casually indicated a preference for bimetallism, the monetary system under which gold and silver cohabitated (and in which gold was likely to be driven from circulation by the cheaper, and cheapening, alternative metal). To uncompromising gold-standard partisans, Speaker Reed suddenly seemed to go soft when he most needed to stand tall.

Reed’s mordant sense of humor was oddly out of phase with his upbeat view of the human condition. Unlike his friend Mark Twain, he was prepared to contend that reason was on its way to banishing war, purifying religion and eradicating poverty. For Reed, there was no bygone Arcadia; always, the best was yet to come.

But not until he took matters into his own hands was there anything on Capitol Hill to resemble the ingenuity of Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell. Until what were known as the Reed rules took force in 1890, the House was hostage to its own willful minority. If those members chose to obstruct, they would simply refuse to answer their names when the clerk called the roll. In sufficient numbers, sitting mute, they could stymie the House, which, under the Constitution, requires a quorum to function. Present bodily, they were absent procedurally.

So for weeks on end, the main order of business might consist of parliamentary fencing and the droning repetition of roll calls, each absorbing 20 or 25 unedifying minutes. The 50th Congress, either notorious or celebrated for its inactivity (depending on one’s politics), contributed 13 million words to the Congressional Record on the way to no greater legislative achievement than the institution of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. By contrast, the 36th Congress, as recently as 1859–61, while debating war and peace, union and secession, freedom and slavery, had uttered just four million.

Reed, elected Speaker for the first time in the 51st Congress, transformed the House by declaring those members present who were actually in the House chamber, whether or not they chose to acknowledge that fact by opening their mouths. Democrats excoriated him for doing so, their rage compounded by Reed’s seeming imperturbability under fire. Not that they were alone in their disapproval. The voters, deciding that Reed had overreached, handed the House Republicans (though not Reed himself) a lopsided defeat in the congressional elections of 1892. By and by, Reed lived to see both himself and his rules vindicated, the Democrats themselves coming grudgingly to adopt them in 1894.

Reed, a first-term congressman at the age of 37, had seen something of the world as Maine legislator, attorney general and Portland city solicitor. His political education continued in Congress with service on the commission to investigate the crooked presidential election of 1876. Each party had attempted to steal it, the Republicans finally out-filching the Democrats. Reed, as partisan a politician as they came even in that partisan age, distinguished himself in the investigation by bringing to light Democratic malfeasance while explaining away (or trying to) Republican offenses.

Reed held sacred the right of majority rule. Especially did he hold that right dear, as a journalist of the time dryly remarked, when he agreed with the majority. But the majority and Speaker Reed finally parted company in 1898 over the administration’s program to add to American possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific. From the Speaker’s chair, he engaged in his rearguard actions against the war. Holding up the Hawaiian annexation measure, for instance, he refused recognition for the members’ pet hometown appropriation measures on the grounds that “the money is needed for the Malays,” or—concerning a proposed Philadelphia Commercial Museum—“This seems like a great waste of money. We could buy 15,000 naked Sulus with that.”

Reed was as prone to error as the next mortal legislator, but he was inoculated against humbug. The language of McKinley’s aggressive foreign policy brought out what may seem now, with a century’s perspective, the best in him. “It is sea power which is essential to every splendid people,” declaimed Henry Cabot Lodge, a close friend of Reed’s—and of Roosevelt’s too—in the Senate during the run-up to war. Said Reed, simply and winningly, “Empire can wait.”

© 2011 James Grant

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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Good as Gold
By Ira E. Stoll
Thomas B. Reed, a Republican congressman from Maine who served six years as speaker of the House of Representatives, mainly in the 1890s, is an obscure enough figure that this book uses a subtitle to explain who Reed was: "The man who broke the filibuster."

I came away from the book admiring Reed's defense of voting rights for blacks and his support for women's suffrage, but less than entirely convinced that the rest of Reed's policy program -- including a tariff to protect American industry from foreign competition and an isolationist bent in foreign affairs -- deserves to be rescued from obscurity.

What does deserve to be rescued from obscurity, though, is this period in American history, and here Mr. Grant is an able guide and Reed a better-than-serviceable vehicle for the narrative. For many Americans, exposed to their country's history mainly in yearlong high school survey courses, Civil War Reconstruction jumps pretty quickly into Teddy Roosevelt's trustbusting. But pause to look around rather than rushing on through, and it turns out that the period between the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century was full of ferment, not least on the monetary policy matters to which Mr. Grant, as founder of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, brings particularly deep knowledge.

To anyone following the current headlines about Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and the price of the dollar in gold or silver, Mr. Grant's account of the events of 1869 (when the Resumption Act was passed, providing that as of January 1, 1879, $20.67 would be exchangeable for an ounce of gold) through 1900 (when the Gold Standard Act was passed), is valuable context.

In between came the 1874 Currency Bill (vetoed by President Grant); the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, directing the Treasury to buy silver, and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, directing Treasury to buy even more silver. As Grant puts it, "The monetary question -- whether a dollar should be backed by gold or silver or nothing at all -- would preoccupy much of the country, and seemingly obsess the rest of it, for the next 25 years."

Mr. Grant reports that in 1876, both the Reed Republican and the Democratic party platforms supported the return to the gold standard. He reminds us of the origin of the phrase "sound money" -- "A sound dollar was one that, if dropped on the counter, would literally ring." And he demonstrates that this was "no dry and technical" debate, recounting a song of the Greenback Party of Maine, to the tune of "America": "Thou Greenback, 'tis of thee/Best money for the free/Of thee we sing. Throughout all coming time/Great souls in every clime/will chant with strains sublime -- Gold is not king."

Mr. Grant quotes Justice Stephen Field, the sole dissenter from the Supreme Court's 1884 majority decision in Juilliard v. Greenman, which said the federal government had the power to print money in peacetime. "I see only evil likely to follow," the dissent said. "Why should there be any restraint upon unlimited appropriations by the government for all imaginary schemes of public improvement, if the printing press can furnish the money that is needed for them?"

Nor is the debate over money the only way in which Reed's period is relevant to today. Then, as now, technological advances, imports, and immigration were blamed in some quarters for contributing to unemployment. Then, as now, procedural rules in Congress are blamed for delaying legislation, though now, owing in part to Reed's rules, it is the Senate, rather than the House, where bills tend to bog down. Then, as now, railroad subsidies and capital punishment (Reed opposed both) were issues.

But it's the explanation and background of the monetary policy stuff that make it worth forking over the fiat currency for a copy of this book.

Disclosure: I was sent a review copy.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
House Rules
By Christian Schlect
My knowledge level of U.S. political history takes a nosedive for the years between the aftermath of the Civil War and the onset of World War I.

Therefore, James Grant has provided a significant service to me, and I would hope to many other readers, with his interesting and well-written biography of Thomas B. Reed, a.k.a. Czar Reed.

The boom-and-bust economic cycles, obscure tariff battles, and the intense debates over the federal currency (to be backed by silver or gold or both) of the times are nicely explained by the author, who is a financial expert. Reed was an early supporter of voting rights for women and one who did not see the value in going to war to acquire off-shore territories. Most important, he reformed House rules to ensure that elected majorities had the opportunity to rule on questions of the day and were not made ineffectual by recalcitrant minorities.

Reed, a hard partisan warrior, comes across as a funny, honest, and bright guy. And one of those rarest of politicians, one who walked away from true power on Capitol Hill at a time of his own choosing and with the admiration of his peers.

Anyone with an interest in our nation's political history, especially that of the U.S. House of Representatives and the late 1800s, should buy and read Mr. Grant's book.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Emphasis in the title should be on the "AND TIMES"
By Mara B.
I first became interested in Thomas B. Reed after reading Evan Thomas's excellent book The War Lovers and was excited to see this biography on the shelf since I was eager to learn more about him. Reed was renowned for both his sardonic wit and his willingness to stand apart from the crowd, both of which make him an extremely promising subject for a biography...Unfortunately this book was not quite what I expected.

Grant seems much more interested in describing the general political context of the 1870s-1890s, particularly the economic issues that were being debated at the time, than he is in creating a detailed and in-depth portrait of the man the book is purportedly about. It isn't until the last third of the book that Reed is even reliably center-stage, and before that there are long sections of the book where his name barely appears at all.

This doesn't mean the book is a waste of time, as it is a good treatment of the politics of the time and Grant can be quite funny and insightful in his descriptions of the political landscape. I learned a lot! But I do feel like there's a lot more to be said about Reed, and I think we're still waiting for a biography that fully does him justice as the fascinating man he was.

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** Ebook Download Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile: A Mystery (Oscar Wilde Mysteries (Paperback)), by Gyles Brandreth

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One of the shining stars of historical crime fiction returns with this eagerly anticipated addition to the series that Booklist hails as “pitch-perfect” and the Toronto Globe and Mail calls “a lot of fun.”

In Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man’s Smile, the famous playwright and raconteur leaves England for a lecture tour in the United States, where he meets P.T. Barnum, sees Jumbo the Elephant, becomes involved in a saloon shoot out, and entertains Broadway’s brightest stars. But soon Wilde becomes entangled with the LaGrange acting dynasty, whom he befriends aboard an ocean liner. Things are not what they seem with this family, and Oscar’s shrewd curiosity may get the better of him as he investigates their hardships. Once the troupe arrives in Paris to perform Hamlet, the tragedies mount. As Oscar digs deeper into these seemingly random events, he will discover a horrifying secret…one which may bring him closer to his own last chapter than he could ever imagine. Gyles Brandreth has crafted another enchanting entertainment that is as intelligent as it is beguiling.

• Sales Rank: #1170751 in Books
• Brand: Touchstone
• Published on: 2009-09-01
• Released on: 2009-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.20" w x 5.25" l,
• Binding: Paperback
• 365 pages

Features

• Great product!

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Oscar Wilde once again makes a convincing detective in Brandreth's excellent third whodunit to recreate the late Victorian age (after 2008's Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder). Framed as a puzzle posed by Wilde to his friend Arthur Conan Doyle in 1890, this adventure concerns a series of mysterious deaths plaguing a French acting troupe, the Compagnie La Grange, which Wilde encounters aboard ship in 1883. The first death is of a poodle, Marie Antoinette, whose body a customs officer in Liverpool unearths in a dirt-filled trunk that Wilde believed to be full of books he was bringing home from America. Human victims follow, forcing Wilde and his Watson, real-life journalist and Wilde biographer Robert Sherard, to untangle the complicated nest of emotions at play among the members of the Compagnie La Grange. John Dickson Carr fans will be gratified to find echoes of his style in several places, including the use of false endings. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Immensely enjoyable, one of the best in the canon of literary mysteries." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer

Review
"Immensely enjoyable, one of the best in the canon of literary mysteries." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING WILDE
By Red Rock Bookworm
Author Gyles Brandreth's latest Oscar Wilde mystery takes the reader on a journey that begins in the wild west of Leadville, Colorado circa 1882, and continues with an ocean voyage on which Oscar becomes acquainted with the LaGrange family, well known for its hundred year history in the theater. Invited by the senior LaGrange to add his personal touch to the script of Hamlet, Oscar follows the family to Paris. It is in this venue that Mr. Wilde encounters murder most foul and the reader is introduced to Mr. Wilde's inner circle.......a treasury of the famous and the infamous ranging from Sarah Bernhardt, complete with her animal menagerie, to Arthur Conan Doyle and James Russell Lowell. Complicit in this tale and cast as the narrator/chronicler of the story is Wilde's friend and compatriot, poet Robert Sherard.

Clever and unusual murders and the solution to the mystery aside, the historical aspects of the novel are engaging as are the salacious peeks into the dark underbelly of late nineteenth century Paris. Known to one and all for his pithy witticisms as well as his ability to regurgitate the equally amusing social observations of others, Oscar comes across as a varitable warehouse of pronouncements arrived at following intelligent scrutiny of the human animal, i.e., "The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions", or "In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking", or "Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read".

While the story does address Wilde's flamboyant style of dress and his preference for large amounts of absinthe and laudanum (opium/morphine) it neatly skirts his questionable sexual orientation and presents him as a man completely enamored of Constance Lloyd (the woman whom he later married). This is a forgivable sin, since Brandreth's Oscar is as completely captivating and entertaining a protagonist as one could ask for.

For anyone who enjoys their historical fiction liberally peppered with recognizable names coupled with an amusing, relatively easy read, OSCAR WILDE AND THE DEAD MAN'S SMILE are well worth your time.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Slow start, but an OK read
By Kaleidocherry
Having greatly enjoyed Louis Bayard's "The Pale Blue Eye" (featuring Poe as a detective during a mystery at West Point) I thought it might be enjoyable to read a similar book featuring Oscar Wilde. The layout of this book is much like a Sherlock Holmes mystery: Wilde and his Watsonian sidekick, Robert Sherard, are dining at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum with, in fact, Arthur Conan Doyle. They discuss a murder mystery that Oscar was instrumental in solving a few years previously, and at Wilde's behest, Sherard gives Conan Doyle a copy of a manuscript about that mystery. The main section of the book is the mystery, written from Sherard's point of view, and the epilogue is the recap of the mystery at another dinner with Conan Doyle.

The book has a fairly slow start. It seemed like the author was simply plugging the narrative with every Oscar Wilde quote I ever heard, but setting it in a scenario appropriate to the context of the quote. La Grange's description is very crudely done: a lot of blunt sentences starting with "He was" or "He looked" or "He had." Very awkward to read.

However, once we get to the point where Wilde is in Paris, things start to even out, and the book is quite good from that point on. I did stay up late to finish it. There is one big glaring thing that confuses me, though. During Wilde & Sherard's recap with Conan Doyle at the end of the book, they discuss the murders that took place. One of these took place on the boat coming back from America. Wilde emphasizes that a set of four murders had been planned, after which point all the killing would be finished. (We had learned about this "set of four murders" much earlier in the book, but here he recapitulates for the benefit of Conan Doyle.) However, at this point of the story when the first murder is committed, before the boat docks in England, there is not yet a motive for any of the three future deaths. The criminal mastermind has no reason to kill until much later in the book. So are we to believe that the mastermind simply wanted a set of four arbitrary deaths, just to show off, and that conveniently, this person later learns that there are people nearby who need to be killed?

I may reread it tonight to see if I misunderstood that part, but it seems to me that is a pretty glaring mistake.

Otherwise, this story hews very closely to the format used by Bayard, where the famous person and his non-famous sidekick work out the mystery to the gratification of the local authorities, and then in a closing chapter the famous person turns the explanation around and shows that it actually happened differently. I really hated this when Bayard did it, but it doesn't bother me in this book, and I don't know why that is.

The book was a satisfying read, and by the second third of the book I was quite content with its narrative and progression. There was a little bit too much about Sherard's personal life, which was slightly detrimental to the story, but these sections are mostly skim-worthy.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile: A Mystery (Oscar Wilde Mysteries)
By W. Carter
Maybe my expectations were too high! I read the first two installments of Mr. Brandwreth's Oscar Wilde mystery series and was quite amused and entertained. Therefore, I had high hopes for this third in the series.

Let's go back to the beginning. Mr. Brandwreth is a very good writer and has demonstrated the ability to spin an admirable yarn. That being said, I found Dead Man's Smile to be disappointingly long and tedious. Even the storyline grew hazy at times. There are a multitude of characters and although many are well depicted, too many characters can easily slow a book's pace.

I will concede that sometimes I am not in the mood for a specific type of book and/or writing style and this may have been the case; however, I found Oscar and Robert Sheridan's slow moving investigation somewhat irksome. Perhaps I missed the uniqueness of Mr. Wilde's campy sense of humor and unparalleled wit. To me, this installment presented him as being somewhat pedestrian, if not downright pedantic. Where was the "fun" that the first two books captured and presented so easily?

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