This is a series by arguably the best public speaker in the world. Doug Wead has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people, not only in the western hemisphere but also in Russia and other countries, and has the ability to tell a story within a story, within a story, and never drop a thread. In this series, his David and the Princess is a classic. If the world's woes has you down, this is the series for you.

When the suicides of the People's Temple took place, a stunned country watched on television. No one could fathom the insanity. In this book, Doug Wead works with a survivor from the People's Temple, telling the inside story of Jim Jones and his fanaticism.

I discovered Philip Pullman's trilogy through the movie, "The Golden Compass." And once I picked them up, I couldn't set them down until I finished all three. A young people's trilogy, Pullman deals with ecological disasters, and the abuse of religion. And how love conquers everything. Doesn't that sound boring? It certainly is not. Pullman won all sorts of awards for that series, especially the last book, "The Amber Spyglass."

Here, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes meet up with the blood-thirsty Arab spies from "O Jerusalem", and they turn out to be British nobility. It is another terrific mystery laced with wit, intelligence, a tight sense of place, and elegant language. At one point, a soldier's diary records, "I was clotted with France, stinking of battle." Wish I'd written it.

This is the story of a Vietnam veteran who very nearly destroys himself after the horror of his service, until he finds a way to help the widow of a dead Vietnam compatriot, who has remarried, to an abusive husband. He devotes his life thereafter to the saving of abused children. There are flashbacks to his service in Vietnam, and I am in awe at how a woman who never served there or in any war could have written those tense, gripping, horror-filled scenes.

"O Jerualem" takes place literally in the middle of King's first book in the series, "The Beekeeper's Apprentice." Faced with an implacable and seemingly omniscient foe, Russell and Holmes hie off to a place where they cannot be found--Palestine, right at the end of WWI. They perform some spy work for the King, linked with two Arab "cutthroats" who are also spies for the King. I'll tell you how good this book is. I am on my second copy, and it is threadbare and held together with scotch tape. I'll have to be acquiring another one soon. Laurie King's sense of place is without equal.

The second in Laurie King's series about Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell, a young, brilliant, Jewish scholar and detective in post WWI England. Here, she meets a mystical woman preacher in London, who is using her considerable talents to run a women's shelter and a political organization for women's rights. Mary Russell (or Russell, as Holmes calls her) must ferret out who is killing off the preacher's devotees, and almost loses her own life in the process. This series, told first person by Russell, is packed with subtle religious references that impact on the mystery stories she is telling--like bat qol, the Jewish reference to the feminine nature of God. It sounds heavy, but it isn't...and it is fascinating to watch how an intelligent author weaves religious commentary, mystery, and droll wit with such expertise.

Bored with my "usual" authors, I was poking around the library, looking for something fresh. When I spied the title, "The Beekeeper's Apprentice" on the shelf, I snatched it up. It opened a whole new slice of the library for me. Mary Russell, a 15-year-old orphan, wanders of the English downs and stumbles across the great detective, Sherlock Holmes. She charms him with her blazing intelligence and fierce wit, and he soon begins training her in the arts of detection. This first book focuses on her growth as a detective through various smaller mysteries, leading to an almost omniscient foe. Mary Russell is who I would like to be. She is a Jewish scholar studying theology at Cambridge, who trots off across the world in dangerous adventures. Who could ask for more?

I liked this one even better than The Raising of a President, which was altogether absorbing. All the Presidents' Children digs into the details of the the children's lives. I learned that Maureen Reagan had been a beaten wife, which was astonishing, given her powerful personality. Patsy Jefferson took care of her father to an almost obsessive degree. Margaret Woodrow Wilson was the first American to go to India and live in an ashram. Charlie Taft devoted his entire life to bettering his city and his country, and was one of the founders of the ecumenical Council of Churches--just taking a bit of time here and there to go fishing. But many presidential children died of alcoholism, too. Wead draws parallels in these lives, and his results are fascinating.

Superb, absorbing personal histories of presidential families. Did you know that Abraham Lincoln spent weeks alone in the wilderness with his young sister while his father went to find them a new mother? How they survived at all is mind-boggling.

I first heard Doug Wead speak back in the 1970's, and I was astounded. He is absolutely the best speaker I ever heard. He can speak for over an hour, and it always feels as though it has been five minutes. What a storyteller...and what an inspiration. You won't be disappointed in his work.