A Reliable Wife

A Reliable Wife

Set in 1907 Wisconsin, Goolrick’s fiction debut (after a memoir, The End of the World as We Know It) gets off to a slow, stylized start, but eventually generates some real suspense. When Catherine Land, who’s survived a traumatic early life by using her wits and sexuality as weapons, happens on a newspaper ad from a well-to-do businessman in need of a “reliable wife,” she invents a plan to benefit from his riches and his need. Her new husband, Ralph Truitt, discovers she’s deceived him the moment she arrives in his remote hometown. Driven by a complex mix of emotions and simple animal attraction, he marries her anyway. After the wedding, Catherine helps Ralph search for his estranged son and, despite growing misgivings, begins to poison him with small doses of arsenic. Ralph sickens but doesn’t die, and their story unfolds in ways neither they nor the reader expect. This darkly nuanced psychological tale builds to a strong and satisfying close. (Mar.)
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Twilight The Twilight Saga Book 1

Twilight The Twilight Saga Book 1

The book that started the phenomenon is now available in a deluxe collector’s edition! Featuring a ribbon bookmark, cloth cover, ragged edges, new chapter opener designs, and a beautiful protective slipcase, this edition is perfect for fans and collectors alike.

Bella Swan’s move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. But once she meets the mysterious and alluring Edward Cullen, Bella’s life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. Up until now, Edward has managed to keep his vampire identity a secret in the small community he lives in, but now nobody is safe, especially Bella, the person Edward holds most dear.

Deeply romantic and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight captures the struggle between defying our instincts and satisfying our desires. This is a love story with bite.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars addicting!
thank you so much for the fast delivery of this book! The minute i got it i couldn’t put it down! Thanks again for the fast delivery of this addicting saga!

5 Stars LOVE the Twilight series
Everytime I start a book I get bored with it about half way through, not with this entire series though- I can’t put this book down!!! I would say it’s a love story/ romance with a twist! I’m 27 and most of my 30 year old friends including my 53 year old Mom is obsessed with this book!

5 Stars Great book
The book is really great and enjoyable to read; even though it is quite long, you dont even notice. As you read the first chapters, it is impossible not to relate to Bella and how she fell for Edward. Meyer is an amazing writer; she describes everything in detail, and I wish I had an Edward Cullen of my own. I can’t wait to read New Moon!

5 Stars Wow, great!
Amazon’s business did a great job. I expected this book to be good, but it was awesome!!

5 Stars The beginning of ly love affair…
I am a lover of books and this is the beginning of a fabulous series.

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The Return of Sherlock Holmes

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Just plain fun to read
Sherlock Holmes books are straight up, pure fun to read. They are never vague or hard to follow (except, maybe, for the case itself), and they are good at staying away from some of the more preposterous explanations that mystery novels often resort to. I love how Holmes often knows what’s going on the entire time, but will not reveal it to either the reader OR other characters in the book–if you figure out what’s going on before he reveals the plot, you feel like you are in on the secret with the great detective, and the author never has to make him clueless to preserve the mystery.

All in all a great read, won’t leave you enlightened or thinking about the world differently, just good fun.

5 Stars Sherlock Holmes – Perfect Kindle tales at the perfect price!
This free Kindle download is the second half of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle’s timeless tales are perfect for Kindle and, actually, the Kindle’s electronic voice does an admirable job of reading them to you!

The only downside is that the free Kindle downloads don’t have linked Table of Contents. So how do you quickly skip to a chapter later in the book?

Elementary my dear Watson! (-:

Pick a unique word from the story title. Click MENU > “Search this book”

Then type the most unique words from the title. Alas, this doesn’t always work, and I can’t figure out why. A new mystery! In the meantime, enjoy the classics….

The Adventure of the Empty House

The Adventure of the Norwood Builder

The Adventure of the Dancing Men

The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist

The Adventure of the Priory School

The Adventure of Black Peter

The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton

The Adventure of the Six Napoleons

The Adventure of the Three Students

The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez

The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter

The Adventure of the Abbey Grange

The Adventure of the Second Stain

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The Perfect Poison

The Perfect Poison

Quick (aka Jayne Ann Krentz) delivers her reliable blend of sex and suspense in her latest Arcane Society novel. In Victorian London, spinster botanist and psychic Lucinda Bromley meets her match in Caleb Jones, a member of the Arcane Society and descendant of an alchemist family that makes him the stuff of myth and legend. Together, this paranormal pair of snoops sets out to track down a thief who made off with a dangerous plant implicated in the death of a wealthy lord, but wind up uncovering a sinister secret order. Quick invents two dazzling 19th-century sleuths who combine paranormal prowess and raw sexual heat. But if they excel at fooling Mother Nature, it’s their all too human nature that brings this uncommon Victorian duo to life. (Apr.)
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Rapt

Rapt

From The Washington Post’s Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Paul Bloom Don’t check your e-mail; stop Twittering, browsing, Facebooking, eating, drinking, listening to music and watching the children. Take seriously, if just for a few minutes, what Winifred Gallagher describes as the grand unifying theory of psychology: Your life is the sum of what you focus on. Then consider the main implication of this theory: The skillful management of attention is the key to happiness and fulfillment. Live the focused life. Gallagher devotes much of this engaging book to reviewing the psychology and neuroscience of attention. A journalist and the author of several books about human psychology, including “House Thinking” (2006) and “The Power of Place” (1993), Gallagher blends the science nicely with examples of people whose disciplined attention has contributed to their success: Tiger Woods is extremely focused on golf; Mozart really grooved on music; and when Bill Clinton felt our pain, he did so with all his heart. For the rest of us, the connections between attention and the good life are more complex. Happy people have the adaptive trait of focusing on the bright side of life; the depressed do not. These traits emerge early. Gallagher summarizes some elegant research from scientists at the University of Oregon showing that children differ in their capacity to control their attention: Those who are blessed with a tight grip of their mental flashlight find it easier to concentrate on the positive emotions and pull away from anger, fear and frustration. But even if your child lacks these gifts, it’s not hopeless — certain exercises can improve the focusing power of 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds, and Gallagher makes a convincing case that adults also benefit from techniques that discipline our attention, such as cognitive theory and mindfulness meditation. Such methods might be necessary to combat the pull of technological innovations, many of which sap our capacity for sustained focus. Gallagher notes that young people in America spend over six hours a day tethered to the electronic world, many of them engaged with more than one medium at a time. Spending an hour doing just one thing — such as reading a book or practicing a musical instrument — may soon be the equivalent of wearing spats. This would probably be a bad thing. As Gallagher puts it, if you grow up processing information at a superficial level, “when you’re finally forced to confront intellectually demanding situations in high school or college, you may find that you’ve traded depth of knowledge for breadth and stunted your capacity for serious thought.” Like many proponents of unified theories, though, Gallagher tries to do too much. Just about every aspect of human life can be described in the language of attention. Do you give money to charity? You are “attending to the pursuit of virtue.” Are you religious? You are “directing your attention to a deeper reality.” To conclude, as Gallagher does, that attention is at the root of all good things is to muddle cause and effect. I can focus on golf with powerfully rapt attention for every waking minute; it won’t turn me into Tiger Woods. Also, your life is actually more than the sum of all that you attend to. We can be affected — or as psychologists say, primed — by factors that we are unaware of. A large body of psychological research shows that social and physical environments affect thoughts at an unconscious level. People are nicer, for instance, when they are outside a bakery with the smell of fresh bread in the air or after they have just found a dime in the slot of a pay phone. In addition, our happiness is affected by what we do, not just what we think. Successful therapy for depression isn’t just a matter of shifting perspectives; it’s getting the sufferer to change his or her behavior. Even something as superficial as coaxing a person to smile more can have real, positive effects. The attentional puritans are right that we usually do best with total focus. But often it’s more efficient, and more fun, to do two or more things at 80 percent capacity than one thing at full capacity. I listen to music in the gym, check my e-mail while I’m on hold, and walk and chew gum at the same time. And what’s so wrong with any of that? Nobody should doubt the power of rapt attention, but there are benefits to a wandering mind. You can check your e-mail now.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Can never be reminded enough about the importance of being aware and engaged to be alive
As someone interested in mindfulness, I read a number of books on this topic. Rapt caught my attention because it is doing so well on amazon. Winifred is a great writer. I haven’t read her other stuff but I don’t need to. She is a great writer. She sucks you into her stories.

But the best parts of the book are not her ideas. I loved the ideas of the people she interviewed. She interviewed a number of people who study and write about happiness: Richard Davidson, Barry Schwartz, the Nobel prize winning economist, Daniel Kahneman, and Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi (whose work she seems to rely on a great deal). The quotes from these thinkers is worth the price of admission.

Her premise is a good one: what we pay attention to, in the end, becomes our life. Of course, the book opens up with a quote by William James that says exactly the same thing (that he wrote over 100 years ago). And then there is the classic 1990 book: Flow: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness Thus, I am not sure what is new in this book.

For a fresher approach to attention, mindfulness, and how it can improve our lives, I would suggest that people read these other recent books:

Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life

The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living

After all, these books were written by people who do the science and help clients create happy, meaningful lives. Makes more sense to go straight to the experts than the journalist.

5 Stars Skillfully Manage Your Attention For Success. Exceptional book exploring the relationship between attention, focus, and success
I like this book because it makes the neuroscience understandable and applicable. I enjoy books that are based on hard science backed by examples and stories that bring it home at the layman’s level.

I found this book fascinating on many fronts. It takes a deep look at how what we focus on tends to be more of what we get and goes in depth on adaptive focus.

The two chapters I found most interesting were the chapters on work and productivity and Nurture: This is your brain on attention.

The author makes a strong argument about the superficial amount of focus children give due to technology overwhelm. Where hours of focused practice made for successful mastery of subjects, today’s youth (and increasingly, many adults) are unable to focus long enough to complete tasks requiring intellectual rigor or deep thought. Or in the words of the author: “when you’re finally forced to confront intellectually demanding situations in high school or college, you may find that you’ve traded depth of knowledge for breadth and stunted your capacity for serious thought.”

In a time of information overwhelm, this is the one book that everyone should read, thoroughly.

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