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At the height of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston was the preeminent black woman writer in the United States. She was a sometime-collaborator with Langston Hughes and a fierce rival of Richard Wright. Her stories appeared in major magazines, she consulted on Hollywood screenplays, and she penned four novels, an autobiography, countless essays, and two books on black mythology. Yet by the late 1950s, Hurston was living in obscurity, working as a maid in a Florida hotel. She died in 1960 in a Welfare home, was buried in an unmarked grave, and quickly faded from literary consciousness until 1975 when Alice Walker almost single-handedly revived interest in her work.

Of Hurston's fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God is arguably the best-known and perhaps the most controversial. The novel follows the fortunes of Janie Crawford, a woman living in the black town of Eaton, Florida. Hurston sets up her characters and her locale in the first chapter, which, along with the last, acts as a framing device for the story of Janie's life. Unlike Wright and Ralph Ellison, Hurston does not write explicitly about black people in the context of a white world--a fact that earned her scathing criticism from the social realists--but she doesn't ignore the impact of black-white relations either:

It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.

One person the citizens of Eaton are inclined to judge is Janie Crawford, who has married three men and been tried for the murder of one of them. Janie feels no compulsion to justify herself to the town, but she does explain herself to her friend, Phoeby, with the implicit understanding that Phoeby can "tell 'em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf."

Hurston's use of dialect enraged other African American writers such as Wright, who accused her of pandering to white readers by giving them the black stereotypes they expected. Decades later, however, outrage has been replaced by admiration for her depictions of black life, and especially the lives of black women. In Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston breathes humanity into both her men and women, and allows them to speak in their own voices. --Alix Wilber.
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Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..." Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building where the POWs were held) is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy--and humor..
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In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron’s home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death—in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence that would shatter a man’s already broken life…and let a true killer go free. Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh-hour drama, John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction reads like a page-turning legal thriller. It is a book that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence—a book no American can afford to miss.
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DEVIL'S PACT [Erotic Western Romance/ Menage a Trois]: Epitome of pure evil, born without a heart, soul, or conscience ..even his parents did not claim him. He is an outlaw who takes what he wants... The moment Devin Spawn stumbles upon the exquisite beauty bathing alone in a river, he wants her. Morality non-existent, yet he struggles to keep his distance. His sexual excesses and massive proportions would be too much for the tiny girl who appears more waifish and innocent than womanly. She is a widow with so much to give... The instant Megan Spawn feels his heated touch and potent sensuality, her flesh burns with wanton desires. It matters little he is the devilishly handsome outlaw known as the Devil's Spawn, the most feared, lethal gunslinger in the West-and her stepson. Together they risk everything in the devil's playground... Where sexuality is as untamed as the bloodthirsty savages roaming the western frontier, and childhood sweetheart Caleb Walker is guilty as sin, the dark side of lust and passionate surrender comes at a hefty price when you forge a Devil's Pact. ** 5 Angels, Fallen Angel Recommended Read: "Devil's Pact is the kind of book for people like me who enjoy reading about an overly aggressive testosterone filled man in love. Devin is not a gentleman; he's crude, kind of mean but the same passion he uses when killing is exactly what he brings to the bedroom. Samantha Cruise's historical feast was more than just a well developed story with guns, danger, mayhem and delicious wickedness. Devil's Pact was a story that sucked me into the emotional upheaval of the characters. I was right there during the orgasmic interludes that left me sweating and anxious for more. I was with them as they attempted with their bodies to say what each found so hard to say with words. I can't say enough how much I actually loved this book, all 497 pages of it. A story that had me on the hook from the first encounter with Meg to the final culmination when finally a decision was made on if Devin and Megan could make it, if their passion was more than rabid frenzy lust but something life altering, something meant to be forever. Caleb, the third in the ménage, was just icing on a cake already flowing with goodies, but he wasn't Devin: a man readers will go away loving or detesting. That is why I think Ms. Cruise did a great job no matter the impression you get, strong love or hate for some of her characters. She did something special by seducing you into the story to feel anything at all." --Fallen Angel Reviews ** "Devin Spawn is an outlaw. Given away at birth by his father, Devin travels to his father's ranch to find out why. When he gets close, he comes across a tiny, beautiful woman bathing in the river. Since he has the devil inside of him, Devin does the one thing that comes natural to him--he seduces and makes her his own. There is one thing Devin doesn't know. He has just had relations with his stepmother. Megan Spawn has had a tough life. Rescued from a life of drudgery by her now deceased husband, she wants to spend her life caring for her stepdaughters and possibly being able to have a relationship with the town doctor, her first love, Caleb Walker. That is, until she is touched by the outlaw known as Devil's Spawn. Caleb Walker has loved Megan ever since she was a little girl. When his family caught them in the barn when they were teenagers and sent him away, Caleb has despaired of ever being able to be with Megan. He loves her and is willing to give her time. However, with the arrival of Devin Spawn, time may be running out because it seems that no matter how much Caleb loves her, she might not be his for the taking. Samantha Cruise has written a ménage unlike any I have read and I plan to read anything else she releases. She caught my attention with Devil's Pact and I think she will hold it for a long time." --Joyfully Reviewed..
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"It is not only what you eat that makes the difference, but also of extreme importance is when you eat it and in what combinations," say Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, authors of this classic bestseller. Their program results in eating balanced, nutritious, high-fiber foods, making dieting "unnecessary and as obsolete as sealing wax."

The Diamonds explain that body functions have a daily cycle: noon to 8 p.m.-- appropriation (eating and digestion); 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.--assimilation (absorption and use); 4 a.m. to noon--elimination (of body wastes and food debris). Fit for Life aims to return you to a lifestyle based on your natural body cycles. That means 70 percent of your diet should be "high-water-content foods"--fruits and vegetables--which facilitate all body functions. Consume nothing but fruit or fruit juice until noon, then eat salad and vegetables with every meal for the rest of the day.

Two-thirds of the book is explanation and discussion; one-third is menu plans and recipes. You won't be hungry, your food choices will be healthy, and you'll lose weight without dieting. --Joan Price.
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