The Hangman's Curse, based on Frank Peretti's novella The Veritas Project: The Hangman's Curse, is a tight little gothic thriller about a family who work on solving mysteries that appear to have a supernatural element. Rogers High School appears to be haunted by the ghost of Abel Frye, a young man who hung himself on school property ten years before the events that occur in the story. The Springfield family (what appears to be an inside joke....where are the Simpsons from?) infiltrate the school to find out why certain students go screaming insane from a visit by the late Abel Frye. The explanation of the mystery is creative and ingenious though scientifically impossible, but it makes for a good story if you can suspend disbelief.

The acting is quite good though the actor portraying Norman Bloom is a little stiff and Peretti is given to a bit of overacting. The soundtrack has some excellent musical interludes and it is easy to see the director knew what he was doing. I appreciate that goths, geeks, and jocks are portrayed as human beings without resorting to the temptation of stereotypes.

It is interesting to read reviews that are more interested in what they view as too much or too little of a Christian gospel message. The Hangman's Curse is neither an evangelistic tract or a brainwashing tool. It is 106 minutes of fairly good entertainment where, because the main characters happen to be Christians, they act like Christians would act. And yet, in no place does the film become a bully pulpit even with the scene concerning prayer in school. The scene portrays a natural give-and-take that occurs in schools everywhere everyday. If anything, the real "in-your-face" message of the movie is about the horrors of schoolyard bullying.

Bottom line: The Hangman's Curse is an entertaining PG-13 thriller you could show at a teen youth retreat or just kick back for a personal evening's diversion.

Anne Whitehead receives a cryptic call from her brother, David, while he is exploring a supposedly haunted mansion named Goldengrove where ghosts sometimes sing at night. Concerned, Anne travels to the mansion to discover her brother missing and a curious assortment of secretive people tied to the mansion's history as well as her brother's disappearence.

Mary Beth Craft's first novel is a rather standard southern gothic romance with a resourceful heroine surrounded by two mysterious men in conflict with one another. You can tell one fourth of the way through the book who the bad guy is and who will eventually win the lady's heart though there are some twists and turns that show some original thought.

A quick rainy night read, fans of the gothic romance genre will only be disappointed that the ghosts spend far too much time off-stage and act merely as unresolved window dressing.

Though written for the victims of stalkers, this book is a boon for the professional counselor who wants to help those whose lives have been devastated by stalking. Emily Spence-Diehl writes extensively of the physical and emotional needs of stalking victims and, in providing guidelines for victims, also provides external, objective facts for the counselor dealing with an exhausted, confused, and traumatized victim. Most valuable are extensive checklists as well as toll-free numbers and Internet sources for assistance and further information.

I do not like modern poetry as I find most of it to be either pathetic whining that the world will not devote itself to making the writer happy or meaningless babble where the writer thinks themselves clever for being undecipherable.

When I came across Mary Oliver's White Pine, I picked it up with some reluctance. I put it down with complete satisfaction.

Erudite, yet approachable. Deep, but not obtuse. Pointed observations are made, but without preachy self-centeredness. Modern poets can learn a lot from Mary Oliver.

Her descriptions and mastery of language are nothing short of pure magic, but I want to do more than reference Oliver's power of observation and description. Treating the reader with respect (and how rare that is in today's poetry), she lets us walk with her through the wooded hills, lush meadows, and seashores of her native Massachusetts, pointing out the common in new ways, making it all wondrous as if being seen for the first time. She has a philosophy of life that she shares gently, without feeling a need to beat it into the reader with all the subtlety of a crowbar.

I count myself fortunate to encounter Mary Oliver's work and I look forward to reading more of it. White Pine was a great place to start and it would be a great place for you to start too.

Though an avid reader of the works of the late Carl Sagan, I am a newcomer to the actual debate between evolution and intelligent design. As a newcomer, I have found James Perloff's "Tornado In A Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism" a thorough introduction to creationism and he makes the subject approachable and understandable regardless of what side of the argument the reader stands. Perloff also covers the debate from a number of viewpoints including the impact of Darwinism on history, religion, and political and social philosophy. Admitting that truth should not be judged on its historical impact, Perloff also discusses problems of evolutionary theory in the fields of paleontology, genetics, cellular biochemistry and other scientific disciplines. The book also contains an ample index and almost 670 footnotes from both sides of the aisle making the book a valuable reference tool. Most remarkable is a unique treatment of the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" which most people know only through the 1960 film "Inherit the Wind." Perloff documents the many differences between Hollywood's portrayal of the trial and what happened in reality and brings a new perspective to the debate between Darrow and Bryan. My only two complaints are the book could have been better organized concerning subject matter and the reader sometimes gets lost in jumping from subject to subject with little explanation. Finally, whoever edited the book should have recommended to Perloff to drop the attempts at humor, attempts that are at best distracting and at worst, simply annoying. Nonetheless, Perloff has created a very good introduction to creationism and raised important questions guaranteed to stir discussion and debate between the two camps for some time to come.

As an individual who does not traditionally read Christian literature, I found David Ryan Long's _Quinlin's Estate_, a wonderful exception to the rule. The characters are fully alive with human motivations and reasoning. They make mistakes, struggle and misinterpret events around them. They carry emotional baggage and yet, they are still endearing in all their humanity that we identify with instead of looking down upon with disdain.

The plot, written in the romance-mystery genre, does not have the traditional scenes and caricatures one sees churned out so often in the Christian form of the style. There is no saccharin conversion scene, no histrionics, no simple faith, but the story of Eve who, in her struggle to save Quinlin's estate, must come to terms with her past, her motivations and her self-definition. In her quest, she resurrects a past some wish would stay quiet in its grave. She also confronts complex issues of belief and the nature of God.

Most unique of all is that one of Long's main characters is Quinlin's Estate itself. Though other authors are happy to keep a house as a setting and backdrop, Quinlin's Estate, with its mish-mash of architectural styles becomes a character all its own from its tall tower to its meandering labyrinthine maze. Yet it doesn't represent a place of fear and desolation as some stories in the gothic genre, but a place that has come to represent a common and comforting past for the residents of Lowerton, Pennsylvania.

Your journey through the tale of Quinlin's Estate and its unexpected and bittersweet ending is memorable enough to stay with you long after you've put the book down. And that in itself is a good testimony for any novel.

The first thing you notice about Miyuki-Chan in Wonderland is that it makes no sense whatsoever, but that's okay because this 30 minute-long animated DVD isn't supposed to. It's sole purpose, I'm convinced, is to demonstrate what results when CLAMP and Madhouse combine their respective skills in a mutual undertaking.

Miyuki-Chan in Wonderland reminds me of a demo video you would see at an anime convention. Rapid pacing with eye-catching (and eye-popping) scenes that are loosely strung together, the story is basically Lewis Carroll's Alice stories told with an all-girl cast, but with frequent panty-shots, partial nudity and general naughtiness that pushes the rating into PG-13 territory, though not any further.

So how does it do as a demo video? Almost perfect. CLAMP and Madhouse demonstrate (as if past successes haven't already proven it) they work very well together and there are some scenes, such as the butterfly girl and the fairies from the Victoria's Secrets catalog which show an artistic standard higher than most anime. However, it isn't an anime you'd want to show your mother as a definition of the genre.

What isn't perfect? The soundtrack music is horrible, grating to the ears and sensibilities. Also, the preview section is a mess--basically Japanese pop music interspersed with scenes and cuts from the series they are pushing, not taking any opportunity to tell you anthing helpful about the storyline or its characters.

One cute addition to the DVD. Put the DVD disk in your computer's CD-ROM drive for a full-color Miyuki-Chan paper doll print-out.

Throughout the years, lighthouses have served as backdrops for dark, gothic tales of solitary, sea-based horror. If you like a good chilling read and you like lighthouses and the sea, this collection of 17 tales was assembled just for you. Though well-read readers in the genre will have already read Ray Bradbury's The Fog Horn which inspired the movie, Beast From 50,000 Fathoms, the rest of the tales will be new to even the old connoisseur of tales of dark suspense.

The editors take us on a world-wide tour which includes St. Cecilia on the southern coast of England and its keeper slowly going mad from the flowing water that surrounds him. We visit the Isle of the Wise Virgin lighthouse in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to hear a tale about why one doesn't steal from the dead. On a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides, four men and one woman trapped in their lighthouse fight off waves of monsters straight from H.P. Lovecraft while on the coast of Guiana, lighthouse keepers struggle against giant rats. Ghosts, monsters, murder and madness ... they're all here.

Nowadays with the advent of technology, lighthouses are falling into disrepair and neglect, but these 17 tales will keep the wonder and mystery alive when the wind outside is blowing the surf up.

Ray Bradbury's "Zen in the Art of Writing" was first released in 1990 and his views on the psychology, philosophy and purpose of writing are still relevant, captivating and enlightening. Much like Madeleine L'Engle's book "Walking on Water," highlighting the best parts is an exercise in futility as the aspiring writer would have to dip the entire book in yellow ink. Treasures wait on every page.

It is interesting to read Bradbury's book hand-in-hand with Stephen King's "On Writing." Both books appeal to the intuitive writer as contrasted with the methodical writer, both author's love their craft and their audience, and both books are refreshingly honest. However, as King is a garrulous, yet beloved Dutch uncle, Bradbury is the writer's Delphic oracle.

If the writer-[beginner] is not inspired to write after reading this short, but valuable book, maybe he had best seek another line of work.

Concerning the Cthulhu Mythos, Brian Lumley is a writer of the August Derleth school. While Lovecraft and others had the total meaninglessness of the universe as their cosmological base, Derleth wrote the Mythos as a battle between good and evil between ultimate forces. Lumley takes this further, stripping the Mythos of its supernatural aspects and putting it solidly into the realm of science fiction. What were supernatural aspects of the mythos stories are now an alien science as the forces of good personified in the Elder Gods struggle with mankind to keep the evil beings of the Cthulhu Mythos trapped within their eternal prisons and foil the attempts of those who would release them.

Lumley's style is also reminiscent of the pulp genre popular in the 1930's with black-and-white heroic protagonists aided by beautiful heroines in a story of non-stop, bigger-than-life struggles and battles. So, if your taste goes toward the more amoral, often pornographic splatterpunk tales that pass for Mythos stories today, you're going to be disappointed.

In the first book, The Clock of Dreams, Lumley takes us on a tour of H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands adding a consistency and logic that was missing in Lovecraft's Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, but retaining much of the wonder and magic. Like Derleth, Lumley is not fond of loose ends and ties up a lot of threads left by Lovecraft for others to repair. This time, Henri-Laurent de Marigny takes the role as main protagonist as he rescues his friend Titus Crow and his Elder God wife from the dream traps of Cthulhu himself.

In Spawn of the Winds, Crow and company are left behind and we are told the story of Hank Silburhutte, a two-fisted Texan with a striking resemblance to author Robert Howard. A story true to its 1930's pulp roots, Silburhutte and his friends are captured by Ithaqua aka the Wendigo and transported to the planet Borea which may or may not be in our galaxy, let alone our dimension. Be prepared for lots of descriptions of big burly men with rippling muscles and bulging sinews, beautiful alien women, and bloody battles. It's a lot of fun.