Some music touches your heart in ways nothing else can. This CD contains just such music. This music is atmospheric and uplifting. Enya has a voice like fine crystal, pure and beyond compare. The most beautiful track on this CD is Athair Ar Nearmh - it has crystal clear beauty of such quality that you can only imagine the angels of heaven being capable of achieving it - you just need to close your eyes and feel the beauty of it. I am in complete awe ...

This is the story of Edith, Abby, and Neal Grace - three generations of Quinn women who all occupy the family's ancestral home. Edith, the grandmother is a widow who has recently suffered a stroke. Abby, her daughter and mother to Neal Grace, is a widow still mourning the loss of her husband. Neal Grace, Abby's daughter and Edith's granddaughter, has lost both her father and her grandfather. She also feels that she has lost her grandmother to the stroke that paralyses her left side and slurs her speech.

Edith is very depressed as she sees that Abby and Neal Grace don't relate to her in the same way. Neal Grace can hardly bring herself to even look at her grandmother - what she sees is just a shell of the Granny Q she always loved. Abby sees her mother as feeble and pays little attention to anything she has to say. Abby races off to her work as a journalist, continually worrying over whether mother will burn the house down or have some sort of accident while she is home alone. Neal Grace begins skipping school to see a boyfriend who is emotionally and sometimes physically abusive. Believing that her whole world has come crashing down around her ears with the death of her father and her grandmother's stroke, she clings to him like a life raft. Edith, left to mourn all her losses, wishes that the stroke had taken her life. So begins the story of loving and longing ... of three people occupying the same house, yet emotionally light years away from each other.

The wishing jar itself is not central to the plot. It's a jar passed down through generations of Quinn women. It symbolizes for them the ability to change as well as a symbol of prayers answered.

This inspirational story will grab at your heartstrings as the three generations of women begin to grow and change. They begin to find in each other the strength to go on, to move past their losses, to love and laugh again. I highly recommend this book - reading it will enrich your life.

I got this little treasure from the library. I say little because it is very short, but it is jam packed with such truth, such faith.

It's the story of Christine, a burned out nurse who is lonely and downright angry with the way her life has turned out. She bases her life on whether she has a relationship or not and is increasingly miserable and angry at the start of this fable.

Then God arrives. He comes in the form of a handsome stranger on a Harley. Slowly, through this fable, he teaches her what she's been doing wrong and helps her find the meaning of life.

This short book packs a very heavy message ... one that will make you reexamine your own thought processes and the direction of your life. It's a story that will linger in your thoughts for a long time ... it will hopefully make you think ... make you change ... grow.

... and possession and witches if you read this book.

I've been a huge Barbara Erskine fan since reading Lady of Hay. Unfortunately this book (at least the regular-size type edition) has not been released for sale in the United States yet. Fortunately I was able to order it through Amazon.uk.

This is a long, virtual door-stopper size book - at just over 540 pages, this hardcover is a hefty read. Though there were a few spots where it did lag a tiny bit, the plot was well done and the action continued to move at a brisk pace keeping my interest through the entire book.

Emma Dickson is a successful business woman living in London with her fiancé Piers. During a visit to her dentist, she leafs through a magazine and sees a cottage for sale on the Essex coast. It's a house she remembers from her childhood summers in the country. She immediately senses that she must buy the house. Piers wants nothing to do with it. He loves their life in London and flatly refuses to even look at the cottage. Emma goes out to the country herself, falls immediately in love with the house, and puts in an offer for it. She buys it against the wishes of her fiancé, quits her job, and leaves Piers behind in the city. ...the excitement is just about to begin for Emma.

The cottage Emma bought is haunted, as is the local shop, by long-dead spirits who were once in a heated battle - one was a witch (the ghost in Emma's cottage) prosecuted by the Witch Finder General Matthew Hopkins (the ghost in the local shop). The spirits of these people begin a war against each other using the living players in the tiny village, pitting one against the other. Slowly a tide of evil builds in the town. Senseless crimes are committed. Life in the village is thrown out of balance. To restore the balance the age-old battle between warring spirits needs to end.

I don't want to spoil the story by telling any more of this tale. Suffice it to say, this is a very well written ghost story. You will believe in ghosts when you read it. The tales of the persecuted witches is thoroughly engrossing, the glimpses into the past are seamless, and the ending is so well crafted that you will believe it could all so easily happen. This was a highly enjoyable read and is a keeper of the best kind.

This stitchery book is misnamed perhaps? Perhaps not. The title says that it has over 40 small, exciting and innovative projects. What it doesn't say is that many use variations of exactly the same design.

This book centers on the themes of water, fire, air, and earth. One water theme that repeated far too often for my liking with salmon - the identical salmon design was used on a scented pillow, a salmon cushion, a salmon tissue sachet, salmon card, and salmon gift tag.

Now that all having been said, there are a few stunning designs that made buying this book worth every penny. A particularly beautiful design in the water category is that of a "water jewel purse" - it's a beautiful little jewel tone purse designed in alternating stripes of Celtic knots in alternating colors. The design could easily be used, with a little imagination, to create a larger purse. There are also a few other fish designs, a sea serpent design, a knotwork bookmark, knot key rings, a dragon eyeglass case, a Celtic angel pincushion, an eagle bookmark, a triskele box (a sort of spiral design), a saint and birds, a durrow saint sachet, a durrow know clothes hanger, a bird headed triskele scissor keep, a grape vineyard design used on several projects, a design for a chessboard and fabric case for chessmen, a Celtic cross picture design, and most beautiful of all the designs - a Celtic swan needle case.

In the final analysis, this book was well worth buying for two reasons - 1. there were enough beautiful designs inside to make it worth it, and 2. with a little imagination and the instructions for a few types of projects, a crafter could create their own designs.

First off, this book is put together beautifully just as so many other Better Homes and Gardens crafts books are (I know, I own several). It's a large 128 page hardcover book with so many beautiful designs you'll want to make them all.

Though this book is called "A Cross-Stitch Christmas," it has so many designs that could be used year round and in many different projects. For example, the angel tree topper could easily be made into an angel wall hanging or angel pillow. There are also sun, moon, and star designs that could be used year round. Also here, you'll find a wreath design that is a circular motif made up of fruit - you could use it to make a pillow or wall hanging for year round also. There are also items for the fisherman in your life that include a fly-fishing case (for all their lures), and several pocket designs that include fly fishing, golf, racing, and tools. For the lady in your life there is a stunning design for a jewelry roll and accessories. That said there are tons of Christmas designs from ornaments and wreaths to an assortment of embroidered Christmas stockings.

I typically mark my favorite pages in my stitchery books with tiny post it notes - I found that there were so many designs I admired, that I had a virtual storm of post its all over the insides of the book. This beautiful book was so full of wonderful designs! I'm so glad I purchased it, you would be too.

This is the story of Maggie, a psychic empath who listens to crime victims horrible experiences and creates an exact sketch of the criminal. She's very successful up until she begins to help the police with their hunt for a serial rapist who wears a plastic mask and blinds his victims by gouging their eyes out.

John, a wealthy business mogul, joins the cast of characters in this story after his sister is victimized by the killer. After healing from the attack she commits suicide - at least that's what the police think - Maggie and John know better.

Enter the plot points that spoiled the story: Maggie's brother is also psychic and talks to someone who isn't named during the course of the story at all. Then John brings in two friends from an FBI special unit to help with the investigation. They are also psychic.

So there I was reading a thoroughly engrossing story when suddenly the story contained FOUR psychics. That was a bit much. I almost abandoned the book at that point, but didn't. The other spoiler was that all the characters said "Yeah" when they agreed with something - wasn't there an editor involved in this book? Fortunately the story was entertaining enough to finish, but it's not a keeper.

Though there have been hundreds of reviews written for this novel and my review will likely be buried among those reviews never to be seen, I feel compelled to write this review anyway ...

I borrowed the unabridged audio version of this book from my local library. It's a short novel told in very few audio cassettes so I thought it would be a quick easy story to listen to on my daily commute to work. Though it was completed in a few days commute, it wasn't so easy - I found myself wanting to sit in the parking lot on arrival to work to listen to more and then looked forward to listening to more of it at the end of the work day on my commute home. If you read this with book in hand, you would never want to put it down.

This is the story of Eddie, chief maintenance person at Ruby Pier amusement park. He thinks his life has been a waste, that he hasn't impacted anyone. At the beginning of the story we meet the elderly Eddie, sad, lonely Eddie. He makes the rides safe for everyone, except one day something goes terribly wrong. In one last heroic act in his sad life, Eddie throws himself in front of a runaway roller coaster to save the life of a little girl who becomes caught on the track. But did he save her? Eddie's death is so sudden that he doesn't know if he saved her or not ... and neither do we.

Eddie procedes on his path in heaven meeting five key people throughout this engaging, heartwrenching story. It is told in a series of flashbacks through the eyes of those five people. The story is crafted so well and so beautifully that you may wish it was longer. I listened to the last portions of the story of Eddie's life and death with more than a slight glimmer of tears in my eyes. It is such a beautiful story that it will touch your very soul and leave a mark there forever.

The movie version of this story is one of the most fun, exhilerating movies - a favorite in this household. This book bears very little relation to the movie. The only similarities are that the main characters exist as they do in the movie, but they don't live with the aunts and magic is not quite the focus as it was in the movie.

Now, that said ...

This is one of the best books I've had the opportunity to read. Written in the beautiful prose Alice Hoffman is so well known for, it follows the life of Gillian and Sally as they go on their diverse paths. Sally is the stable widow with two girls in tow. She leaves the aunts in New England, leaving her sad life behind, and moves to a Long Island suburb with her two girls where tries to live a normal life. Meanwhile, Gillian is a bad girl who is in and out of relationships and in and out of trouble. She finds the awful, abusive Jimmy and eventually kills him accidentally while enroute to visit her sister. Unsure of what to do, she brings him to her sister's house dead in the passenger seat of the car - she thinks stable Sally would know what to do to keep her out of jail. Sally meets the situation with borderline hysteria at first, then the two decide to bury him in Sally's backyard. Gillian moves in with Sally and her girls and tries to forget the body in the back yard. Sally's boring, stable life changes dramatically while Gillian's naughty life changes to a more stable one. Meanwhile they are haunted by the evil spirit of Jimmy, threatening to destroy the tenuous stability they try to build.

This book is not written in standard chapters - instead it is written in four large sections. Fortunately there are enough scene breaks in each section that you can put it down and read it in separate sittings. The thing is, once you're drawn into the story, you won't want to put it down. You'll want to read this one in a day, in one sitting if you can read fast enough. It is so beautifully written with an edge of suspense and just a tiny touch of magic. It will become a treasure on your bookshelf and one you'll only loan to your most reliable friends. Excellent!

Well, I found out what Romantic Suspense is by reading this book. It is a mix of sizzling romance with mystery/suspense. I read a variety of things, but have never read a book quite like this one.

Special Agent Steven Thatcher is the lead investigator on a series of serial killings in his small town - the killer targets young, innocent teenage girls. He meets his teenage son's teacher, Jenna Marshall who is concerned about his son's falling grades. They feel an immediate attraction for one another, but due to losses and disappointments in their previous relationships, they resist each other's affections.

After the initial chapters, which included sizzling descriptions about how the main characters felt about each other, I almost put this book down. I was afraid the book would be more romance and very little suspense. I was wrong. I am so glad I didn't give up on this one.

Though romance is at the core of this story, the suspense is so hair raising and realistic that I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish reading this book. As with any good mystery/suspense, this writer managed to throw out enough clues to lead you along the path of who the killer was yet still hit you with a big surprise you at the end - the killer is not the person you think he is.

This was a highly entertaining read, I highly recommend it. You may just stay up past your bedtime reading it too.