By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Author of "This Is The Place" and "Harkening

This is one that no matter how tender that T-bone was, you'd be more interested in the sizzle! The author of a new novel called Desert Heat, Kristie Leigh Maguire, tells a story about a steel magnolia who has come out west to live and gives both the men and women in her life a run for their money.
Here is a protagonist who lives sexy encounters and dreams sexy encounters yet we still feel she is a three-dimensional character. She has a husband she loves, a new job and, to her chagrin, a new love-interest. How does a happily married, career-minded woman handle a situation like that?
A reader of this new first novel has a choice. She can follow the story to find out or she can simply turn the pages to the love scenes that are--handily--all in italics and inhale them or lap them up.
If it's cold outside this book is a perfect substitute for a nice, warm hearth.
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(The reviewer, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, is a columnist for the Pasadena Star News. Her first novel, "This is the Place," has won eight awards.)

By now most people in the western world know about the so-called "Honor Killings" that are still condoned in the Arabic World. We are shocked, disgusted, and appalled.

Honor Lost is a memoir, a first person account of just one of those legalized murders in Jordan. Author Norma Khouri lived through the horror of seeing her best friend-a part of her heart, soul and life-cut down in her prime by her own family. That is an amazing story but there is another. Ms. Khouri escaped to the West to tell about it.

Jordan, a democratic country where such heinous crimes are not only disregarded but encouraged, is led by royalty that opposes these deeply-rooted customs but is powerless to make a difference. Efforts by the UN and humanitarian agencies have also been ineffective. This author hopes to achieve what they can't with the power of her pen.

She tells her story and that of her beloved friend clearly and dramatically. Although the prose is not faultless, the story is as riveting as a finely wrought novel, the language simple and honest. Khouri includes an afterword that explains the tribal beliefs and politics that foster this horrendous outcome of intolerance, along with short descriptions of similar documented cases from her country. She tells us that the practice is not declining but growing. Her book ends with a section titled "Farewell" that seethes with the melancholy experienced by those who have no home.

The book does not include a section offering steps that each of us might take to begin to mitigate these crimes against humanity. I know they exist. Perhaps this information will be addended in the next edition. Perhaps it could be placed on her publisher's Website along with the excerpt they provide. Concrete suggestions would be the brilliant cut diamonds in the crown of Ms. Khouri's cause.

(Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This is the Place, has won eight awards.
Her newly released Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remember has won three.
Both are about loving a home one cannot easily live in.)

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of "This is the Place" and "Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered"

The Ultimate Competitive Advantage by Donald Mitchell and Carol Coles is an unexpected treasure. It will benefit anyone in the business world who wants to improve their chances for success.

Using case studies the tried and true MBA way, this book offers more because it cuts a broad swath across the fabric of the business world. There will probably not be an example or model presented that can not be adapted to any business, large or small, from manufacturing to retail.

This is a book that talks about customer value and reducing the cost of service like many good business books might. Unlike some others, this one takes the reader from principles to adapting those principles to the business-at-hand-whatever that might be. These authors use all the right words-profit, benefits, innovation; the difference is that when a reader finishes this book she'll walk away with some concrete ideas that she's adapted to fit her own needs.

(Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This is the Place, has won eight awards.Her newly released Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered has won three.Both give an insider's view of Salt Lake City at a time when the Elizabeth Smart case is in the news.

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of "This is the Place" and "Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered"

Is a poem by any other name truly a poem?

Tim Miller has written a book about childhood that sent chills down my back from the first moment: "They chased each other through a field just as the clouds hunted one another above; they hid among the whisperingweeds and crouched beneath the thick sheets of unforgiving steel..."

If a reader can embrace Dostoyevsky's quote, "You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from childhood," then it is definitely hers to hold in her hand and in her heart.

Songs of Innocence tells short stories (are they stories?) that will make you laugh or cry as surely as if they were full-length movies or a novel of that lives through the ages. Each piece of truth (fiction is it? or truth?) is numbered. The intimate horror of Number 95 is worth the cost of this small volume, enough to shame us, make the best of us think about what it is that we do, think, and pray for in this world.

Number 4 is simply a quote from Baudelaire: "Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will." Need I say more?

(Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the award-winning author of This is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered.

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of "This is the Place" and "Harkening"

In Georgia's Ghostly Getaways, Kathleen Walls shares her love of mystery, mayhem and marvelous stories. She has given those who savor the paranormal plenty of material to ponder and new places to go.

This book is divided into areas or districts. A reader might read this book for the fun of it or for the research of it and then, if they can only give over a few days for a romp among specters, choose a specific locale in Georgia to explore. An example is the Americus and Plains, Ga., area where Jimmy Carter grew up and where the Habitat for Humanity was birthed. If you read Carter's book, Why Not the Best? you'd know about a house that haunted his memory but you might not put that knowledge to work in a way that would result in a trip to the region.

Walls wrote the mystery "Last Step." She knows the area intimately and shares all the ghostly possibilities for this rural region. She also gives the reader helpful contacts including telephone numbers and some websites at the end of this and every other chapter. She covers everyplace from genteel Savannah, "Georgia's Hostess City", to the "Bloody Fields of War."

Georgia's Ghostly Getaways is well researched. The credits at the back of the book might even serve as a guide of sorts for a traveler destined to experience the spirits and specters of our American South. The book rings with phrases like "Man in Black" and "Whispers Coffee House." Brrrrr. What fun for those so inclined!

(Carolyn Howard-Johnson's "This is the Place," won eight awards. "Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remember" won two.)

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Aha! Here is a romance, light as whipped cream, and suitable for the young.

Author Lori Soard sets the pace for "Housebreaking a Husband" with a humorous, romantic and action-packed beginning

A feisty young woman with a scarred past meets a man with heavenly green eyes on the beach behind her home-or rather she entangles that man with a dog, leash, the arms and legs of children and some of her own body parts.

It turns out this man with whom Sarah has become entwined has some scars of his own. He is about to lose custody of two beautiful twins and, excepting for the deep love he feels for them, is determined to be emotionally unavailable to all others.

This romance is titillating but is also so free from explicit sex that it would be suitable for most 14 year olds. Like most families, Sarah's is slightly dysfunctional and quirky and absolutely lovable. it appears that Soard is incapable of formulating a cookie-cutter character. They all have a reality quotient of 10.

This is a story about how love can be corrupted by a lack of communication and by unaddressed fears. There is much more to it than a quick, romantic read.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson [author of] This is the Place

Jacqueline Marcell is the perfect person to help those who must care for aging parents. She has been there, done that. She is an ideal guide through what is often a limbo of survival by hook or crook because she has a sense of humor.

Marcell teaches by example. With a light heart she tells of her own experiences with an aging father and with a system that can be far more exasperating than dealing with her difficult father. The light heart did not come easily. Because of the hard-earned know-how Marcell shares in "Elder Rage," the process will be much easier for you.

This book has been endorsed by many self-help gurus including John Bradshaw and Bernie Siegel. It has a succinct and well-written addendum on treating dementia by Rodman Shankle, MS, MD. He is the former medical direct of the University of California at Irvine's Alzheimer's Center.

Occasionally Marcell lapses into lingo that may be too hip for some; because of that, it might not be understood by some of those in-between generations who aren't suffering from Alzheimer's (yet!), but mostly the humor comes through loud and clear and does exactly what it should do.

Pain and love are often inextricably intertwined; following Marcell's story is like reading any good memoir. Because it's told from the heart, we identify and learn and then learn some more.
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(Carolyn Howard-Johnson [author of] "Harkening"

...

"Did we really look like that?"

When family gathers around old snapshots it's a comment you're sure to hear. Here we have a fat little paperback (pages unnumbered) chock full of old photos that look much like the ones from your own album. Each has an explanation or a memory from the author's families so it's sort of a memoir gone mad.

In the acknowledgment the reader is assured that these anecdotes contain "flagrant exaggerations and distorted facts" as a trio of humorists, identified only as Tim, Phyllis and Bob, share their family secrets. And, though lampooned, the reader is aware that this zany family is also loved and perhaps a whole lot less dysfunctional than many.

In addition to the little yarns explaining each picture, there is often a sassy blurb in the tradition of your decades-old high school yearbook with a little more spice that would have been...er..ahem...appropriate in the 50s.

This book will make a great gift for someone who needs to loosen up a bit, laugh more, get on with it, for gawd's sake. Wait! Don't give it away yet! Read it first! I'm sure this trio of nuts will have no objections at all to their book doing double duty.

Brian Littlefair manages to write a literary thriller because of his superb imagination, his powerful story-telling instinct, and his mind for metaphor.

"Desert Burial" is primarily set in Mali which the author notes is now "one of Africa's more vigorous democracies;" that adds a note of irony to this futuristic horror story. That Littlefair's predictions for that country and the world might actually come true makes this story fascinating and devastating.

Ty Campbell is a geologist who has finagled his way into being paid by an obscure US government agency to live with the silent rocks and aquifers in the heart of eastern Africa. The opening chapters tell of the isolation, quiet and mineral deposits he loves are exquisite. They are a mind-numbing contrast to the bedlam that is about to engulf the world with tentacles so pervasive they reach out even to Campbell's self-imposed isolation in the desert. There are some restrained romantic interests. He comes to know several women of substance who personify the different ways that people might try to make a positive difference in the world. He comes to know some men who are doing their best to undermine world order. He learns a lot in the process.

Littlefair's imaginary (I sometimes wonder if it isn't more clairvoyant than fictional) world is, at times, difficult to follow. The ins and outs and ups and downs of politics, the underworld, and the human traffickers aren't immediately clear. This book is about international intrigue and I'm not sure it wouldn't lose something if the reader stopped to trace every intricacy. Further, I don't feel it is necessary to catch every relationship and motivation to understand and to love a story.. I thought this one was well worth the ride.
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(Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of "This is the Place"

"Veiled Sentiments" is academic. It is the outcome of the author's living in a Bedouin community in northern Egypt (the Western Desert) for two years, a feat of no mean proportions.

Lila Abu-Lughod came to a deep understanding of such aspects of the culture as blood ties, veiling and poetry not only because of her talent and training but also because she has ties to that culture. She calls academics like herself "halfies" because they belong both "inside and outside the communities they write about." She realizes that such a situation benefits them in terms of gathering knowledge within close cultures.

The veiling of women (or rather women's veiling of themselves) is an important topic because of recent events including world politics and of the ongoing research in feminism. It is also important because it is so often misunderstood and so difficult to understand even when it is explained.

After reading Abu-Lughod's renowned (in the world of academics) book, "Veiled Sentiments," I think I have a better handle on veiling than I ever would have had otherwise. It was not easy to absorb the concepts that surround it. That it took  of a 315 page book to do it (a conservative estimate) is a testament to the intricacies of and the psychological motivations behind this cultural /religious practice.

Learning more about veiling alone made this study one well worth reading. But the surprise for both the reader, and-as explained by Ms. Abu-Lughod-the author herself is the discovery of this culture's use of poetry. To take it one step further, the insight into how societies in general (at least ours and that of the Bedouins) similarly use their poetry and relate to it.

Abu-Lughod finds that poetry is used somewhat differently among women in the Awlad ' Ali tribes than it is used by men. Because I am writing my own book of poetry called "Skyscapes: A Woman's View," I was especially interested in this aspect of "Sentiments;" it also was, by the author's own admission, an amazing and important cultural discovery. A group of women in China have their own secret language apart from the men; now this anthropologist brings to our attention how the poetry and veiling customs of these women reveal their emotions and are rooted in the traditions of a society in which they live quite separately from men.

Though this book is not meant for mainstream readers, I hope that many who have no ties to anthropology will make an effort to read it. I believe that women will find it especially interesting but men will also find pertinent information for today's political climate within its pages. No amount of travel could impart the depth of understanding of this culture, and-by extension-similar cultures that this book does.

(Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of "This is the Place..." )