Book Description
1997 Grammy® Award nominee
1996 Listen Up AwardBest Humor

Enjoy the best of Garrison Keillor's comic fables from A Prairie Home Companion, all about true love and other tribulations, brought to life by a cast of brilliant radio actors.

Contents:
This Man This Woman; Taking a Chance on Love; Bertha's Kitty Boutique: Cat Box Video; Greenwich Village Days; Cafe Boeuf: Secrets of the Kitchen; Beebopareebop: The Operation; Cowboys: The Second Lefty; Famous Celebrities: New Years Eve; Just One of Those Things; Chicken Little-Starring Tom Keith; Beebopareebop: The Dream; Adventures in Ethics; Guy Noir, Private Eye: Tony Rigatoni; Fred Farrell Animal Calls; How I Met George Gershwin; Little House on the Desert; Silver Lining: Cold Weather; Mel's Big Boy Buffet; Newt; La Influenza; Lutheran's On-Line; Silver Lining: Getting Older; The Ketchup Advisory Board; Bemidji Fishing Opener Song; Beebopareebop: The Contest

Plus a bonus joke collection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Laugh Your Sanctified Brethren Butt Off!
Where do I start?

(A pretty good impersonator of) Mr. Rogers tells little kittens everywhere that "when you get that special feeling inside, that means it's time to visit Mr. Litter Box" in the "Mr. Rogers Catbox Video".

Guy Noir, the sardonic private eye, makes yet another appearance (minus the wise-cracking, tongue-twisting Pete), being handpicked by an ex-con-turned-poet to publish some poetic parodies in the Paris Review, including a hilarious take-off on Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening".

"Cold Weather" tends to cheer you up on those super-cold December evenings when the apartment has no heat (hopefully that's just me).Cold weather, according to Mr. Keillor can come in many forms including, but not limited to, your teenage son kicking you out of your own house because he's afraid of his friends coming over and finding the dad in the house.

"You come to New York looking for one thing, and you find another.And Bob Dylan and Carol Channing found each other," in this spoof of the young sixties generation livin' for today in New York City, hanging out with Truman Capote, Larry King, Kirk Douglas, Paul Harvey, and Mr. Rogers ("Found the mushrooms that were so amazing...right here in the neighborhood.").

"Little House On the Desert" is a guarantee side-splitter for any "Little House" enthusiasts out there, when Ma fakes tuberculosis in order to convince Pa to load up the wagon and get the heck out of Minnesota.

For Mother's Day, be sure to take your mom to "Mel's Big Boy Cafe" at the mall.Chewing is optional.

"Newt" is a toe-tappin' little tune about the former Speaker, which is sure to draw laughs from conservatives and liberals alike.Likewise, the Bemidji Boroughway [sic?] song provides a strong warning to ice-fisherman everywhere about the dangers of mistaking cigars, brautwurst, and dynamite.

I could go on and on and on about how great a collection of laughs this is, but I'll end my rambling with "Getting Older", my personal favorite from the three compact discs.This monologue warns us about the dangers of getting older: your grown children getting you as a present one of those stupid books about "the joys of aging"; similar to "Cold Weather", the teenage son lectures his dad on not dropping him off at the front door of school anymore; the vegetarian waitress goes ballistic when her patron orders "the 47-ounce beef-butt in the hot lard sauce" with french fries and butterbrickle ice cream.

In short (a little late for that), this collection has something for everyone.

very impressive
i found this audio book funny and very impressive because he really tried to make the listener feel he was in each situation. ... Read more

Book Description

Allison Leahy is the US Attorney General, the mot renowned lawyer in America. She and her wealthy husband are the twenty-first-century version of the couple who has it all: a happy marriage and two successful careers. To top it off, Allison is the highly touted Democratic nominee for the presidency.

Customer Reviews (30)

Can't stop reading it!!
I began with his first two books, however The Abduction has caused me to think about the book all day, especially when I can't read it. Its a page turner, and I may say it doesn't contain any graphic descriptions the first two contained.Excellent writer, I will read on....

Okay story, but not the best.
I listened to this book on tape and although the story was fairly entertaining, Mr. Grippando used the word "grimaced," so many times I was truly distracted.However, the reader pronounced the word, grim aced with a long "a," rather than grim uhsed.The word was used probably 40 times in the book and became such a distraction that I cringed every time I heard it.As well the major theme of the book was never answered in the end.Frustrating!

A Fast-Paced, Gripping Read!
The Abduction involves the kidnapping of the granddaughter of one of the two candidates for President and its investigation by the Attorney General, who is also the other candidate. The plot grabs hold of your attention and doesn't let go until the very end. The characters are interesting and pretty well-developed, although some aspects in their development requires you to suspend belief a bit. While The Abduction is not great literature, it is a very good choice for when you have a plane ride or a vacation coming up, or whem you just want to escape in a good book. Enjoy!

Great Read
I'm in the middle of reading all of his books. They are all page turners. Bob in Virginia

Maybe it was the ABRIDGED book on tape format...
...but I thought this one was a total dog of a book.

Normally, I am a big fan of Grippando's books - they are interesting, full of lots of intrigue, unexpected twists and politics. I've reviewed several of them and have given them high marks. So, when I found one written about presidential politics and read by Allison Janney from 'West Wing' I thought that this was bound to be a great book on tape.

However, the politics in this one was just silly. Before the action gets going in the book, Grippando has the two candidates, literally less than a week before the election, sitting around their houses. Think about the last presidential election. Was Kerry sitting around his house with 3 days to go. Was Bush? No - they were in the midst of a marathon of speeches and events that had been going on for at least a month. I remember when Bob Dole ran against Clinton - he literally made appearances for 48 hours straight - right through the night before election day and through election day until the polls were closed.

Also, there's no secret service protecting these people or their relatives. Plus, people don't recognize the candidates when they are in public. Come on - Kerry, Bush, Gore, Clinton, Dole - they are forever ingrained in the minds of any TV-watching American, especially the day before the election.

I was even more confused by the bad guy with the Italian last name and the Russian accent. Either Allison Janney is the worst actress ever with accents or they left out a vital piece of information in the abridgement.

***********Caution - Spoiler**********************

I was also bothered by the shallowness of the Attorney General / Democratic Presidential Candidate. Literally hours after she discovers the awful truth about her husband's involvement in her baby daughter's kidnapping - hours after her whole world has been turned upside down, she's busy making goo-goo eyes with the head of the FBI. Lame

**************End of spoiler*********************

Grippando usually mentions Florida gubernatorial politics in his other thrillers. He is familiar with politics, but like many candidates who aspire to the national stage, I don't think he was ready for the presidential level when he wrote this book.

I give this one a grade of D. ... Read more

Book Description
It takes just a moment for a family's life to be changed forever. For a twelve-year-old boy to dash across the street for a pack of peppermints. For his seven-year-old sister to follow him into traffic. For a bus to swerve out of control. And with that terrible moment, a family's search begins for the unlikely miracle that will put together their shattered lives -- and bring their daughter back to life...

In a small hospital room little Frankie Heywood lies in a coma so deep, no one -- not even those who love her the most -- can reach her. It is a parent's worst nightmare. For months the Heywoods have kept an uneasy vigil at their daughter's bedside, waiting in vain for the least sign of hope. Now the experts are telling them that prolonging Frankie's existence may be damaging to their son Ben, who is slipping deeper and deeper into a dangerous emotional isolation. Their marriage already strained to the breaking point, the Heywoods are desperate. Against the expert judgment of all around them, they grasp at their last chance: the brilliant neurologist Elizabeth Chase.

Lizzie Chase knows what it's like to lose a loved one to the darkness. She has dedicated her life to coaxing children back from the brink of oblivion. Her revolutionary work offers the only hope to families like the Heywoods. It has also drawn the unwanted attention of those who, through ignorance, greed, or fear, would do anything to stop her. But Lizzie and the Heywoods refuse to be stopped. They are certain that somewhere, just beyond their reach, Frankie is waiting for the lifeline that will lead her back to them.

The Lazarus Child is that rare story that touches you in a way you didn't know you could be touched. It is an unforgettable testament to the power of love, hope, faith -- and the inexplicable magic of family. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

intriguing
This story was a thrilling medical drama, filled with intriguing details of ethical issues and the limitless power of the human mind. Very different than my usual reading material, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Doesn't Live Up to Its Potential
This book had the potential to be a great emotional powerhouse.Here we have the Haywood family in total disarray:young Frankie is hit by a bus, Ben is wracked with guilt and denial, the father Jack has been kicked out of the house for having an affair and his airline business is tanking, and of course themother Alison is caught up in the middle.

This potential drama is spoiled by Mawson's subpar writing.Of particular note is Mawson's uncanny ability to skip over the most intense moments.Instead, Mawson skips ahead, then backtracks through dialogue or a couple skimpy paragraphs.The ultimate example is at the end where at the end of Chapter 17, the kid is coming out of the coma, then the story skips ahead to weeks or months later.The whole story was building towards Frankie coming out of the coma (and I'm not spoiling anything for you, fair reader, since the book is titled the LAZARUS Child), and then Mawson glosses over the climax.

You can call it inexperience of a guy writing only his second novel, or if you're less generous, you would say it's purely lousy storytelling.Either way, Mawson's poor writing takes a potential 3 or 4 star book and drags it down to 2 stars.

The plot itself is pretty average and predictable, but the characters are fairly well developed.I did find Mawson's hypothesis of a neural network being able to bring people out of comas to be interesting.However, like everything else, it was poorly executed.

I would not recommend this book, but it certainly was not awful either.I can't say how much I paid for it, but it was low enough where I have absolutely no guilt about paying to read it.My advice is to check the bargain bin of your local book store (like I did) for this and if you got cash to throw away, go ahead.

I loved it
I loved this book. I couldn't put it down. I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen.

A Touching Family Novel
I read The Lazarus Child by Robert Mawson. It is a fiction novel about the strength and love of a family. I had mixed feelings about the book, but I enjoyed it for the most part.
I liked the overall story and the plot. I enjoyed the ending. I would say more about why, but that would give it away. All of the characters were well developed and I think the author wrote them all well.
There were only two things that I didn't like about this book. One of them was that the author goes overboard with the descriptions. He went into such detail in some places that I skipped ahead to the next paragraph. The other thing that I didn't like about the book was that it jumped around.Within a chapter the plot would move from Frankie's hospital room to Dr. Elizabeth Chase's childhood, and then to Jack's office. It was hard for me to keep up with the plot and what had happened in the previous chapter. It was especially hard if I put the book down for more than a day. It would have been a lot easier to keep up if I had the time and the patience to sit down and read the book in one sitting.
Despite the two low points of the book I would have to say that the overall story and the concept of the book outweighed the low points. I would also have to say that I would recommend this book to anyone who is in need of a good book to read, but to be prepared and have your thinking cap on.

It was ok until the end.
I was on the edge of my seat through the whole book, waiting to see how it ended.I waded my way through the dream chapters to see what happend at the end.The end was terrible, you are built up for a big climax thatnever comes and leaves you with so many unanswered questions.How far doesFrankie come back?What happend to Ben, Lizzie, Janet...... ... Read more

Amazon.com
When Linda Fairstein describes the route Alexandra Cooper takes from the district attorney's office to NYPD headquarters, you know she's walked that way many times herself. "I took the shortcut over to One Police Plaza, cutting behind the Metropolitan Correctional Center and alongside the staggeringly expensive new federal courthouse, which made our digs, complete with oversized rodents and roaches that obviously thrived on Combat, look like judicial facilities in some third world country."

Like her fictional counterpart, Fairstein is a Manhattan assistant district attorney in charge of a sex-crimes unit. As she did in Final Jeopardy and Likely to Die, Fairstein mires her somewhat unlikely heroine (a beautiful 35-year-old blond with an Ivy League education, a house in Martha's Vineyard, and an affection for betting on quiz shows at cop bars) in a wealth of procedural detail. The "cold hit" of the title, for example, refers to a computer match between DNA samples from a recent rape case with evidence from an older crime.

With her trusty cop sidekicks Mike Chapman (who eats everything in sight and drops wisecracks like they're crumbs) and Mercer Wallace (who is a big fellow and can take a bullet meant for Alex without flinching), Cooper is working on two major cases--a serial rapist who has suddenly decided to come out of hiding and a couple of murders linked to the nasty underground world of fine-art sales. But she also has time to give her fellow sex-crime prosecutors advice on how to handle everything from a man shooting video up women's skirts at a Star Trek convention to a guy who takes his love for racehorses well past the legal limits. Once again, Fairstein has produced a story whose entertainment value is very high. --Dick AdlerBook Description
Alexandra Cooper has seen many murder victims, but few more disturbing than the silk-clad body of a woman pulled from the waters at Manhattan's northern tip. Alex races against the clock and hopes for a "cold hit" -- a DNA match that would reveal the identity of the murderer by linking the crime to someone already in the police database. But as the case pulls her into the exclusive world of East side auction houses, Alex discovers she may be marked as an expendable commodity in a chilling and deadly scheme...

Download Description
Illuminating and inspiring, Cold Hit takes us from the paint-chipped offices of cops and D.A.s to the elegant restaurants of Alex's privileged Upper East Side life. The contrast is striking, but it's all part of the extraordinary world that author Linda Fairstein has brought so vividly to life in this magnificent novel of suspense. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (30)

Not Bad
This is the first book by Ms. Fairstein that I've read.It was enjoyable.I especially enjoyed the art history in the books.I'm not into art that much so it was fascinating to me.It was something different for me.I did however like the mystery itself.Author had some good plot twists in there.I liked the characters interplay with each other and how you could see their bonds.I think I made the mistake of reading the third book first however.They speak of other cases which I'm assuming are in the first books.I plan on picking those up soon.It's not early Cornwell or Sandford but I would still highly recommend this book to others looking for a murder mystery.

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton would be ever so proud!
If you enjoyed Paul Clifford, you'll love this.Here's the first sentence for you: "Itwas a dark and stormy night;the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals,when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets(for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops,and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggledagainst the darkness." Linda Fairstein has taken the master's style and run with it.
Not in my recent reading have I seen a book so in need of slash and burn editing.It is said that smarter people write longer sentences, but this book bludgeons you with excess words on every page.

Not an Enjoyable Read
Linda Fairstein's 3rd novel in the Alexandra Cooper mystery series, "Cold Hit," follows Alex and her team as they track the killer of a victim who washed ashore in Northern Manhatten, strapped to a ladder. Her connections to the flashy art world add plenty of glitz and suspects for Alex, Mike Chapman, and Mercer Wallace to investigate before the killer strikes again.

I used to read alot of Patricia Cornwell and I had to stop because I realized I was reading the same novel over and over again. Now, you can say that of pretty much any mystery author, I realize. Most of them do a really good job of masking it though. I am hoping that Fairstein is able to do the same. Cornwell's character Kay Scarpetta is not likeable and always is attacked by the vicious killer. Fairstein's Cooper is likeable, but the reader sorta has to work at it and she is always attacked by the vicious killer. Authors need to realize that readers catch on to these sort of canned plots. We're not stupid, dearest authors, really we're not.

I did find the plot of "Cold Hit" to be a bit tedious. Fairstein can be overly wordy sometimes. 50 pages could easily be shaved off of each of her books and they wouldn't be any different.

Cold Hit....A Hit With Me
This was the first in the Alexandra Cooper series I read and I really enjoyed it so I will be adding the rest of the series to my TBR pile.The characters are appealing, the story extremely well written and Linda Fairstein really knows her stuff! The story involved the art word and the Gardener Museum heist and being an Art History major I found it all exceedingly fascinating. A joy to read and it really should be in your must read pile!

Alex Cooper keeps going like the Energizer Bunny
This lady goes from strength to strength. Once again we see Alexandra Cooper, the Assistant District Attorney for the Sex Crimes Unit of Manhattan. Only this time she finds herself with a body being pulled out of the river, but the woman is expensively dressed and tied to a ladder, with no identification.

It is not the easiest of cases, we find all kinds of skullduggery in the genteel art world, with forgery and faked provenance and Alex gets a bit too close to the murderer in this one, only narrowly escaping being shot, although unfortunately Mercer Wallace is hit, which is all rather too real.

I never imagined Art Galleries to inspire the kind of passions that abound in this book, I know that money will drive people to extremes and this is well illustrated here, but this really is the ugly side to beautiful artworks.

Nevertheless, as a subject for murder, it is a gripping plot. I know that sidekicks are not as immune as central characters, but Mercer and Mike are too central to be the victim of homicidal lunatics, but here we see that they can have a little scare, just to remind us that it is a terrible place for the good guys. ... Read more

Book Description

Delaney Westcott is a beautiful career woman in a man's world. Owner and chief asset of a personal security business -- where she guards the rich and famous from the unwanted attention of friends and enemies -- she can take care of herself. Except for the one time she didn't: when she fell headlong for handsome cowboy Jared McCallister, a man she couldn't have.

Customer Reviews (7)

I was enjoying it for a short time
Hard to understand why every guy was interested in her.

Not a lot of character development. I was enjoying the storyline until the middle of the book totally bogged down. Not sure where the author was going. By the end of the book I couldn't have cared less what happened to anybody.

Not Bad....
Overall, the story was good but what was missing was more character development and relationship background between Delaney and the one she ends up with. The story's end was too abrupt and and epilogue would have been nice.

Another great Janet Dailey Book!
I never saw it coming - this is a great mystery and romance, and I figured out the romance but the murder mystery? Never would have dreamed it!Love Janet Dailey's work and you'll love this book.Lovely romantic ending!

Janet Dailey rediscovered after so many problems
Since my youth, I know the existence of Janet Dailey, but I never wanted to try her books. And some years ago, when I heard about the plagiarism she made on Nora Roberts books (and Nora's one of my favorites), I wasdisgusted.

But the worlds keep moving, and then,ILLUSIONS came to my hands and I started to read it. And believe me, Iloved this book. I couldn't believe that it was plagiarism, and later Iknew it wasn't. Janet has a very nice sense of humor, she made up adorablecharacters on this book and a very nice plot that kept me reading duringthe whole night. It's the kind of book that sometimes it's not sointeresting but that is never boring. I loved this book and I'd highlyrecommend itfor fans of this genre. Janet is a very good writer.

Interesting
This book started out with a cast of interesting characters, however, early on you could figure out who Delaney would end up with.Jared, Lucas, and Riley all interested in Delaney, lots of side characters that werequirky (her dad, Toby, Susan, Delaney's staff, Rina, the lawyer).It was afun summer read, went quickly, and had a plot instead of girl meets guy whoshe doesn't like but who likes her, etc., etc. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from U.S. Catholic, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2004. The length of the article is 1247 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Labor of love: a job that makes you feel like kicking up your heels is something special. TV's award-winning drama The West Wing reminds us how good work can be.(culture in context)(Television Program Review)
Author: Patrick McCormick
Publication: U.S. Catholic (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2004
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 69Issue: 1Page: 42(3)

Article Type: Television Program Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more