This novel is about Mercedes Vasconcelos, a young Mexican woman convinced that the road to a better life for her and her growing family passes through the United States.

Set in the early 20th century, Mercedes is used to poverty while growing up in Mexico. Armed with a name and address, she takes a boat to New Orleans, to make a better life for herself. Around this time, she has a child out of wedlock, and is told, in effect, don’t come home.

Life is hard in 1930s New Orleans, but Mercedes becomes a housekeeper at a local rooming house, and she manages (sometimes just barely). She meets Manuela Maldonado, an older woman from the same part of Mexico. Manuela is a strong, proud woman who becomes a sort-of substitute mother to Mercedes.

When the housekeeping job ends, Mercedes and Manuela cook various food items, like tamales, and sell them door-to-door. Mercedes marries Jesus, who changes his name to Jesse, and has several sons. One of them is born with severe digestive problems, and doesn’t live very long.

The family is sent back to Mexico. Letters from Manuela assure Mercedes and Jesus that their three boys will have no problem returning to New Orleans, and can stay with her (they were born in America). Through a bureaucratic snafu, Mercedes and Jesus are not allowed to join them. The reason is the concern that Mercedes and Jesus will immediately go on welfare, despite the total lack of evidence that the two ever used welfare in the past. After months and months of separation, a very pregnant Mercedes enlists a coyote to take her across the Rio Grande River.

This story of the Mexican immigrant experience is a quiet tale from a native of New Orleans, but a really good tale and is well worth reading.

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Candide unhesitatingly accepts a mission from his Commander in Chief, Buzz Twofer II, to sneak into the country of Ragistan, to find and eliminate Moolah al-Razir, the architect of this awful attack on the people of Plunder. Candide sees many dead civilians, and unintentionally causes some civilian deaths. He is captured by Moolah, and, attempting to escape, runs into Delilah Jihad, part of Moolah’s harem (and a Shrinkistanian and Zionian double agent). They escape into the hills between Ragistan and Pockistan, where Delilah tells Ernest that the war is all about oil, and, for instance, why a person would become a suicide bomber.

Returning to Plunder, Candide is immediately accused of treason, for allegedly spilling classified information to Jihad, and for expressing doubts about his mission. Given a chance to redeem himself, Candide flies into the country of Qroc, to eliminate Madahm Badassi, who has tons and tons of weapons of mass destruction that he is just itching to use on Plunderian forces. Candide sees and hears more things in Qroc that lead him to believe that Plunder is not the land of truth and virtue that he was taught from childhood. Failing to carry out his mission, Candide gets a one-way trip to Guantanamo, where he is tortured, and gets a "trial," where he faces about a dozen different death sentences, for his sexual relationship with Jihad, for doubting his mission, and for failing to save his commanding officer’s life quickly enough.

As you might have guessed, this is a satire of the "war on terror," and as such, it does an absolutely wonderful job. This book doesn’t just reach the level of Wow, it leaves Wow in the dust. It is extremely highly recommended.

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Amy Magee, and her husband, Joe, are well-known archaeologists and Mayan experts living in rural California. In the nearby woods, a buried Mayan pyramid is being uncovered. It will become the centerpiece of the new Mayan capital city. As Bringer of the Sixth World, Amy’s task is to travel around the world, leaving packets of seeds in certain places at certain times. One day, she might hand a packet to a street musician in Florence, and the next day, she might leave a packet in the mouth of a stuffed tiger in a shop in Thailand. Along the way, Amy comes into possession of many pieces of jade, which she must fashion into a mask.

There are two separate groups vying for the position of King of the Maya. Will Rodriguez, one of the good guys, has to undergo a trial, including ice, bees, grasshoppers and fire, while wearing the jade mask, in a certain cave at a certain time. The bad guys kidnap a little boy named Carlos, who has an important part in everything, and take him to Guatemala. Candis, his mother, enlists the help of Leo Martinelli, Joe’s cousin, and a government intelligence agent, to rescue him and get him to the trial on time. Candis and Joe run into each other in a supermarket parking lot, which was not supposed to happen, and Joe has been obsessed with her ever since.

This is intended more as a thriller than as an accurate portrayal of Mayan culture. Even if this book just gives a peak through the keyhole at Mayan culture, it works (also as a thriller), and is worth reading (but read part one first).

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Jemma7729 (everyone’s name is a group of letters and numbers) is someone who does not act "appropriately." When she is five years old, Jemma gets into a fight with a boy at school. Jemma is the one who must publicly apologize to the whole school. Females are not allowed to show aggression, or express an opinion. While her mother is away for a few days, Jemma’s father takes her Outside (there is nothing wrong with the air) and shows her the stars on a clear night. For Jemma, there is no going back.

At ten years old, everyone must go through Choosing Day, where they must choose what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Jemma has few available options, the least awful of which is Woman Who Marries. She is very uninterested in spending the rest of her life pleasing her husband, arranging flowers and being an AGNA spy (like her mother). Jemma refuses to choose, and is immediately hauled to "rehab" (prison), where, after a year of harsh techniques to break her spirit, bordering on torture, she escapes to the outside world. Jemma is eleven years old.

Jemma quickly learns to live on her own and spends her time sabotaging the factories that make the chemicals to keep women "altered" (docile and compliant). After a couple of years, the "underground" catches up to Jemma, and convinces her to join them. She spends the next several years traveling to this small town or that isolated hamlet, letting the people know that they are not alone. Meantime, AGNA has described Jemma as some sort of horrible terrorist who likes killing innocent people, which is totally untrue.

This near future, one person against the system, story, might seem a little basic, but the author does a fine job with it. It’s interesting, plausible and it’s well worth reading.

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The first question to be answered is: Why? If your self-image is in bad shape, cosmetic surgery can make a huge difference in your personal life (and your sex life). If your "problem" is deeper, like clinical depression or Body Dysmorphic Disorder, a mental health professional will help a lot more than a plastic surgeon.

Do not choose your surgeon based on his (usually it is a man) TV ads, or because he is a member of your church. Go to more than one surgeon; feeling comfortable with him is most important. After he agrees to do the surgery, disclose all medical problems or conditions you may have, no matter how small, and all medications you are taking. The doctor and anesthesiologist need to know in advance. Do some research on Doctor X. Is he Board Certified in your surgery? Has he done a number of them? Is his facility properly accredited?

Friends and family members may have very different reactions to the thought of cosmetic surgery. Do not be surprised, or hurt, at reactions ranging from Whatever to Are You Insane?

When it comes time for the surgery, be prepared. Clear your calendar for a couple of weeks. Stock up on soft foods. Have someone stay with you for the first couple of days after the surgery, armed with many packages of frozen peas (for the swelling). People recover from surgery at different speeds, so don’t panic if you are recovering "too slowly." Last but not least, you chose Doctor X for this surgery, so trust that he and his staff know what they are doing.

This book is full of comments from regular women who had surgery, for a variety of reasons, along with the author’s own cosmetic surgery story. It has many checklists and questionnaires, to help the reader decide if this is such a good idea. It also has a list of questions to ask a cosmetic surgeon. Plastic surgery is not for everyone, but for those who are considering it, this book is very highly recommended. It will help answer any and all questions.

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There are a couple of stories about growing up in post-World War II Brooklyn. In one of those stories, a couple of kids want to set up an after-school shoeshine stand, to bring in a few dollars. The father of one of the boys totally forbids such a thing. Until the son is old enough to get a job, the father believes, the only thing on his mind should be education.

The main character of another story chops the hands of former Argentine dictator Juan Peron right off his corpse, and steals them. What is it like to have a body that is half normal, and half disabled by cerebral palsy? The title of another story is "Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Father was a Nazi." During a trip to the beach at Coney Island, a father teaches his young son to swim by taking him into deep water (for the son), bodily throwing him into deeper water, then forcing the son to find his own way back to shore.

As you may have guessed, these are not happy, optimistic stories, but they are very good stories. These are short, almost psychological case studies of troubled people. The author is a psychotherapist and social worker, so he knows what he is talking about. This book is easy to read, and very much worth checking out.

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There are many ways to measure a person’s financial condition, but the benchmark is a FICO (Fair, Isaac and Co.) score. Those with a higher score can expect lower interest rates. However, those with a lower FICO score should plan on much higher interest rates, leading to higher bills each month, making their financial hole deeper and deeper. It will take months, even years, of diligent effort to raise your FICO score, but it is possible, and a really good idea.

Get rid of all but one or two cards. After you pay off one card, cancel it and destroy it. Read your credit card bill, not just the amount owed. Call your credit card issuer, and ask about a payment plan or lower interest rate. Get a free copy of your credit report from one of the major credit agencies, and read it. If there are any errors on the report (there is a good chance that there are errors), start writing and calling the appropriate persons. Document everything, and expect it to take lots of time.

For those with bad money problems, start with two simple steps. Make a budget and stick with it, and pay down your debts (even a small payment is better than no payment). Be very wary of the companies that promise to get you out of debt trouble; they may just make your problems worse.

The information in this book may seem like common knowledge, but considering the skyrocketing level of credit card debt, and the rising numbers of people living off their credit cards, it certainly bears repeating. This book does a fine job of showing, in plain English, just how credit works.

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The narrator, an experienced investor, is asked, by another experienced investor, to talk to the people behind the stock, to get the "inside story." He talks to the CEO, a major stock speculator, and to the brokerage firm handling the Initial Public Offering, or IPO. He finds that Wall Street shows a very different side to insiders than it does to average investors.

By the time Taser was available to the general public, the big investors had already made their money. Still, it became a "must have" stock. The price jumped from $50 to nearly $400 per share, and analysts speculated that the price could reach $1000 per share, so people were ready to hold it for a long time. Hindsight is always crystal clear, so what investors should have done, but few investors did, was to buy at, for instance, $100 per share. When the price reached a specific level, say, $130 per share, sell and don’t look back. Even a small profit on Wall Street is better than nothing. The worst off were the late buyers, those people who bought Taser near or at its high, when the stock had only one direction in which to go.

Some investors engage in short selling, which is betting that a stock’s price will drop. For those people, while on its way down, Taser had an unfortunate tendency to bounce. It would go down for a while, then suddenly rise by 10 or 20 points. The price would go down some more, then suddenly rise by another 10 or 20 points, driving those short sellers nuts. Unless an investor is patient, and really understands the market, which few investors do, even with such an opportunity as Taser International, few investors made any money.

Obviously, this is a really specialized book. For those who are, or want to be, involved in the stock market, this book is well worth reading.

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Five years later, Hayden is happily married to Colleen (a waitress on the ship from Russia to Alaska) and living in rural British Columbia. Leroy shows up one day, with one of his henchmen, demanding to know where Hayden is. Colleen says nothing, so she is drugged, kidnapped and taken to an isolated cabin. In a videotape sent to Hayden, Leroy makes it very clear that unless he gets his share of the $64 million, very soon, Colleen will be going back to Russia, on a one-way trip into the Russian sex trade. Acting as nonchalant as possible, Hayden asks around in the nearby town, and is able to narrow down their location. Armed with several weapons, Hayden undertakes a trek of several days through deep snow to reach them.

On the positive side, this is an interesting story set in a part of the world, Alaska and Western Canada, not known as a thriller setting. On the negative side, if there are to be future printings of this book, it really needs a trip, or another trip, to a proofreader or copyeditor. This book belongs in that large gray area of Pretty Good or Worth Reading.

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Bobby Garfundephelt buys a sprawling, multi-building farm, with the intention of turning part of it into a bed and breakfast. Included with the farm is a chicken coop, full of loud, stupid and filthy chickens. Janice, his wife, likes the chickens, and has to repeatedly remind Bobby to feed them. In a moment of frustration, one night, Bobby sets fire to the coop, with the chickens inside. Janice leaves him. Stuck somewhere between life and death, the zombie chickens go on the attack. Led by an evil undead Rooster, bigger than the average rooster, they chase Bobby throughout the labyrinthine rooms of the farmhouse. The house has been altered and added to so many times over the past 200 years, that it has gained a rudimentary intelligence, and assists in Bobby’s torment.

Arnold is a young boy with a unique ability. Remember the famous movie line, "I see dead people?" Arnold could say, "I see dead chickens." After years of seeing a blue light coming from everyone, and being attacked by undead chickens, Arnold’s parents ship him to a secret monastery in France. Their specialty is chicken exorcisms. On his deathbed, the present leader of the order transfers the being, or presence, living inside him to Arnold, making him the new leader. Many years later, Arnold, now called Armand, arrives at the farmhouse, to do battle with these undead zombie chickens. Amid everything else, Armand has to deal with a chicken spirit that takes over Bobby, so that, one minute, he is cowering in fear in the corner of a basement, and the next minute, he is trying to kill Armand.

If nothing else, this is a very different sort of novel, and it’s a very good novel. It’s nice and strange, and the author does a fine job with it.

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For many years, a central component of American business involved the concepts of Commitment and Loyalty. It was a time when a person could expect to spend their entire working career at one company. As long as the employee was willing to give the company the best years of their life, and not even think about going to another company that may be a better fit for the employee (keep dissenting opinions to yourself), the company will be there to take care of the employee. If you haven’t already learned, the hard way, that such a way of thinking no longer exists, you will.

The most important thing, in today’s world, is to learn to be adaptable, which involves several things. First of all, take personal responsibility for your own financial welfare; no one else will do it for you. Come up with your own personal vision; something more than simply "employment at my previous salary level." Technical competence and reputation are pretty self-explanatory. The last is collaborative competence. It doesn’t just involve how well you get along with others at work, but how well you bring value to the workplace. In the myriad of small and large interactions that make up the workplace, how willing are people to interact with you? If you can become something like the "go to" person, upper management will think long and hard before giving you a pink slip.

This book doesn’t try to lay blame for globalization, or look at "hot" industries in the coming years, but tries to show a new way of thinking so that a person in any industry can make themselves indispensable at work. It succeeds really well, and is very much worth reading.

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In Thailand, a lonely traveling salesman meets a mysterious woman who deals with sales and contracts of a very different sort. A very insecure man suspects that his wife is fooling around, so he takes matters into his own hands, though not in the expected way. A young woman tells the authorities why she did not splatter her mother’s blood all over their suburban kitchen. The mother was the sort of person who seemed to revel in emotional victimhood.

Set in the late 19th century, another story is about the fate of a missing British diamond hunter in deepest, darkest Africa. A woman steals a priceless artifact from a local museum, and leaves two men dead. She is about to take a one-way plane trip to someplace where she will never be found, and live off the worth of the artifact. That is, until the spirits of the dead men pay her a visit, and make her pay for what she did. The book ends with the end of humanity.

This is a very short book, barely 80 pages, so this is a short review. These are very interesting and well done stories, but they are not hopeful and optimistic stories. This is very much worth checking out.

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Throughout its history, Iran has had leaders who honestly cared about the people, as well as leaders who only cared about lining their own pockets. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when the last Shah was overthrown (another leader who cared more about the size of his bank accounts than about the people), and despite the existence of an elected Parliament, Iran has been run by hardliners.

Iran’s official reason for moving toward nuclear power is that, one day, its huge oil and gas reserves will run out, so they should start looking at other forms of energy, sooner rather than later. They also don’t have much in the way of refining capacity, so imports are needed. Iran accuses the West of nuclear hypocrisy. Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and they can’t have nuclear power, but Israel and India, which have not signed the NPT, gets lots of nuclear help from America. Why? Granted, some actions and statements from the Iranian government have not helped the situation. Both America and Iran have plenty of reason to be very suspicious of the other’s words and actions. Time will tell.

This is not meant to be a scholarly, comprehensive look at Iran, but a quick, factual read full of information that won’t be found in the American news media. It works very well, and is very much recommended.

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