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Fresh Heir is a Literary Fiction.

Jamie Shoop is a twelve-year-old prodigy.  He has the remarkable and uncanny gift of remembering everything he has ever read.  Jamie's father, Doug, is obsessed with making sure that all the right people know about his highly gifted son.

When Jamie is accepted into a prestigious summer program for the gifted which is located in San Francisco, Doug plans a cross-country trip for himself, his children, Jamie and five-year-old Frizzy and an educational consultant, Ashley, who appears to have very unconventional ways of educating Jamie.

Along the journey, Doug curses at the traffic, he suffers from road rage, and quizzes Jamie out of a specially created binder with all kinds of Americana trivia for Jamie to sharpen his skills upon.  Doug plans on taking them to landmarks and famous areas to further strengthen Jamie's education and visit relatives whom they haven't seen in a very long time.

As the group travel across country, they each become to know themselves a little bit more and understand the way life is meant to be.  Before the journey is complete, Doug and Jamie must decide if everything they have come to learn is worth the sacrifice.

I thought this was an entertaining read and relished the hilarity found within the pages.  The wit is sometimes dry but often leaves the reader chuckling as you follow the group across America.

I loved Doug, with all his hang ups and insecurities and thought his confusion worked with the plot.  I loved the dysfunctional family setting and how the situations resolved himself.  I could not believe his antics with Grandpa and it left me giggling in spite of the situation, though I saw it coming, I was delighted with the outcome nonetheless.

I liked the interaction with Jamie and the other people in his life.  He was a great brother and son and believed his actions were to benefit those around him without thinking of his own benefits.  I loved his wisdom of his surroundings and the people in his life and his interaction with his grandfather was perfect.

I truly enjoyed the ending and was glad to see that everything works out the way it should.  I think this would make a hilarious, comedic movie and often pictured the scenes in such a manner.

I would give Fresh Heir a four out of five stars.  If I had anything bad to say about it, it would be that the cover truly doesn't do the book any justice.

SYNOPSIS:
Jamie is a twelve-year-old who has been labeled highly gifted. Good news, right? Except with it comes a cross-county car trip…with his ultra-obsessed dad…his annoying little sister…and a wacky educational consultant his dad has hired. Jamie could suggest better ways to spend his summer, and to live his life, if only someone would listen. But his dad, Doug, can’t hear above the loud voices demanding nothing but the best for his son. Doug will do anything to give Jamie the leg up he needs to compete in a vicious world and get into an Ivy League school. Michael Reilly’s hysterical road-trip in search of achievement is a wide-eyed satire about the pressures of modern parenthood. As they set out on the trip to San Francisco, where Jamie will attend a summer program for gifted youth, Doug’s enthusiasm and hyperkinetic desire to enrich Jamie at every turn leads to hilarious complications and enlightening predicaments. A riotous portrayal of a father desperate to have the promise of his youth fulfilled through the life of his son, Doug’s

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From Combat Zone to Love at Home is a happy face token system to help teach your children about responsibility. 

Do you have a problem with getting your children to clean up after themselves??  Do you have problems with their attitude and behaviour?  Then this is a book you will want to check out for yourselves.

This book is designed to incorporate a token system in order for your child to excel.  You find out something your child wishes to save up for and then you implement the token system.  For every good deed or chore they do, they are rewarded with tokens, the same goes if they do something wrong, they will lose the tokens they have built up.

The program is built on spiritual and scriptural basis and helps you to incorporate these thoughts and actions into your child's development.  You will find everything you need between these pages that will help you to help your child become a helpful and loving child and remove the frustration of their tantrums.

I found the whole system very easy to understand except for the token part, I didn't realize that one had to already have tokens, okay, so I'm not always that bright.  I thought the book was very well designed, it came in a combat covered binder and a highlighter pen to make notes, and well, it was so nicely put together, I thought that the tokens were included and kept looking for them, halfway through the book, I realized I am to use my own.

There is one of the exercises that my children just would not do and that's the one where they are tied together by an invisible rope and the child that was dissed is now the Commando and the sibling that did the dissing has to follow their every command is now the GI Joe, the GI Joe even has to stand outside the bathroom waiting for their brother/sister.  The Commando gets to direct everything the two of them do until the offending child has sufficiently and believable apologized for their actions.  The Commando also gets to decide how many tokens are to be removed.  No matter what, I just couldn't get my two to follow those directions, even with the threat of losing their tokens.

I did find one thing annoying, the book kept referring to a CD which was not included and I felt a little bewildered at times.  As well, I am not a fan of the war theme, using terms like Commando, G.I. Joe, prison camps, counter-terrorism as an example.  Such thoughts portrays a negative message to me, I understand what the author was trying to convey, but I'm just not a fan of WAR, of any kind and our media is more than filled with it, so I've had to change the theme for my family, I just wasn't comfortable using the terms described within the pages.  The message is still the same, its just the terms that were changed.  Like Commando became the CEO and GI Joe's became drones...my kids are not used to hearing War terms, so for them, this worked out perfectly!!

My son is determined to earn enough tokens to buy himself a handheld DS, he knows he has a long way to go to achieve his goal and thus far, we haven't been called to the school once for his attitude, he has a problem with listening to authority and by this time last year, we were already visiting the school.  He's bringing home A's and keeping his pace.  His only downfall is where is sister is concerned, she is thirteen months older and he feels he should be the older sibling, so they are constantly bickering and fighting, I have, as of yet, found a viable solution, but I will!!

I would g

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The Final Victim is a supernatural horror thriller.

One man was at the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up paying for it with his life.  However, before he dies he vows to get revenge on the man who violently took his life.

The Temple Bethel of Breakers View Island has commissioned to have a victim from the Treblinka concentration came delivered to them to commiserate a shrine dedicated to Holocaust victims.

Rudy Singleton has been dispatched to pick up a casket from the airport and deliver it to the Temple, however, before that happens, Rudy and the casket go missing.

Deputy Archie Hay is the first person on the case and begins to follow the leads that are laid before him.  He finds the situation strange and when Rudy turns up in jail acting crazy and ranting in German, things only get stranger.

Karl Licht is a local businessman who has criminal skeletons in his closet and its time for him to pay his "dues".  When he turns up murdered, everyone in town is at their wits end as to what could drain his blood completely and leave no other visible clues behind.

When it comes to light that a Dybbuk, a Jewish vampire, is on the loose, the reality of the situation is hard to believe and for some, it may cost them their lives.

I have to say I had a real problem with the group of them running around flashing shawls or 'Arba Kanforth's' as they are traditionally known at the vampires and surviving.  These shawls, which are Jewish holy talismans for good luck are worn under one's clothes.  I'm guessing they are equivalent to the Christian crucifix you would hear about in most contemporary vampire-ish stories.  Now, while I don't have anything against the use of a shawl in place of the cross, I found it unbelievable that it worked to aid the group in their troubles.  With the cross, one had to believe in the faith that it represented, however, it seems, anyone can wave a shawl at a Jewish vampire and escape their possessive charms.

I found the fact that there were no chapters annoying at times when you read at the bottom of one page some information that didn't feel like there was closure with, to turn the page and begin another with another group of characters.  I would've liked to have seen some differentiation between the characters to keep the flow readable.

I did find many of the characters likeable and Archie Hays was my favourite.  I enjoyed his willing to listen to even the most absurd of ideas.  There was mild to moderate expletives and the graphic nature of the novel is mild.

I would give this book a two out of five stars because the story had many holes in its plot, the Dybbuk wasn't explained properly enough and the ending was too neat and polished.  I thought the cover on the book was fantastic and I believe that this book has measure but it didn't work for me.