BARNES & NOBLE | Lost by Gregory Maguire, HarperCollins Publishers | NOOK Book (eBook), Paperback, Hardcover, Audiobook

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Lost (eBook) Pub. Date: 3/17/2009 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
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Lost Pub. Date: 9/28/2010 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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Lost (1 ED) Pub. Date: 10/1/1901 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
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Lost (MP3 - Unabridged) Pub. Date: 11/6/2007 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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Lost (CD - Unabridged, 10 Cds, 11 Hours 30 Minutes) Pub. Date: 11/6/2007 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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Overview

Winifred Rudge, a writer struggling to get beyond the runaway success of her mass-market astrology book, travels to London to jump-start her new novel about a woman who is being haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ripper. Upon her arrival, she finds that her step-cousin and old friend John Comestor has disappeared, and a ghostly presence seems to have taken over his home. Is the spirit Winnie's great-great-grandfather, who, family legend claims, was Charles Dickens's childhood inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge? Could it be the ghostly remains of Jack the Ripper? Or a phantasm derived from a more arcane and insidious origin? Winnie begins to investigate and finds herself the unwilling audience for a drama of specters and shades—some from her family's peculiar history and some from her own unvanquished past.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Maguire's brilliantly imaginative tale of a novelist haunted by the unsettled spirits of Jack the Ripper, Ebenezer Scrooge and her very own past is brought to life by narrator Jenny Sterlin. An experienced children's fiction narrator, Sterlin brings an air of the fantastic and otherworldly to this supernatural tale. With her classically trained British accent the story becomes a fairy tale of sorts. Sterlin's superb reading guides listeners through the gloomy atmosphere of Maguire's London. With a large cast of murky and mysterious Londoners to voice, Sterlin provides a variety of grainy dialects and accents that help define each individually. Sterlin knows how to get and hold one's attention, and her sharp and often menacing tone demands the audience's consideration at every crucial and thrilling plot twist. Playing this audiobook with the lights down low on a blustery winter night is sure to spark the imaginations of listeners of all ages. A Harper paperback (Reviews, Sept. 10, 2001). (Nov.)

VOYA

Author of interpretations of the Cinderella story in Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (Regan Books, 1999) and the Wizard of Oz in Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (HarperCollins, 1996), Maguire takes elements of Jack the Ripper, A Christmas Carol, and Peter Pan, and touches of Alice in Wonderland and Dracula to deftly create a modern ghost story that readily allows the reader to suspend any disbelief of a ghost locked up in the wall of a London apartment. This long-ago residence of Ozias Rudge, the supposed real Ebenezer Scrooge who told his ghost story to young Dickens, is an appropriate setting for a modern tale of suspense and supernatural horror. When Winnie, a disillusioned middle-aged writer, releases the ghost of Gervasa, a young, condemned thirteenth-century French woman grieving for her unborn child, the story becomes deliciously suspenseful. The reader wants to discover what happened to the infant and whether Gervasa convinces Winnie to relinquish her body. After all, in Gervasa's opinion, Winnie really is not alive anyway. Maguire convincingly wraps up the tale, allowing Winnie a chance at another life and the ghost a chance to enter the afterlife, knowing her infant survived her death by burning. With almost three hundred Amazon.com reader reviews for Wicked certainly indicating a wide readership, Maguire's Lost will delight his followers as well as expand his readership. Reading this book might even cause young adults to explore the many classics Maguire refers to, which most certainly will delight high school English teachers. VOYA CODES: 5Q 4P S A/YA (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Senior High,defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult and Young Adult). 2001, Regan/HarperCollins, 339p, $26. Ages 15 to Adult. Reviewer: Ruth E. Cox SOURCE: VOYA, February 2002 (Vol. 24, No.6)

More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews

Library Journal

Children's novelist Winifred Rudge flies from her Boston-area home to London to pay a visit to her distant cousin and old friend John. Instead of receiving his guest open-armed, John is nowhere to be found. His office staff is evasive in fielding Winnie's calls, and Mac and Jenkins, a pair of superstitious home remodelers hired by John to work on the kitchen in his absence, begin behaving strangely, as eerie symbols appear on the wall and inexplicable noises issue from the walled-up chimney space. That Winnie is not alone in her victimization by an otherworldly spirit is a good sign she's not having a breakdown. Maguire, who already has two best sellers to his credit (e.g., Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister) makes the supernatural chillingly real. Setting the story in Winnie and John's ancestral home and filling the neighboring house with John's intimidating new inamorata, Allegra, makes us root for the self-destructive Winnie, a most unlikely heroine. An essential purchase and a substantial Halloween treat. Margee Smith, Grace A. Dow Memorial Lib., Midland, MI Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780061960574
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 9/28/2010
Pages: 338
Sales rank: 334,571
Product dimensions: 5.90 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire is the bestselling author of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister; Lost; Mirror, Mirror; and the Wicked Years series, including Wicked, Son of a Witch, and A Lion Among Men. Wicked, now a beloved classic, is the basis for the blockbuster Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of the same name. Maguire has lectured on art, literature, and culture both at home and abroad. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

Biography

Raised in a family of writers (his father was a journalist and his stepmother a poet), Gregory Maguire grew up with a great love of books, especially fairy tales and fantasy fiction. He composed his own stories from an early age and released his first book for children, The Lightning Time, in 1978, just two years after graduating from the State University of New York at Albany.

Several other children's book followed, but major recognition eluded Maguire. Then, in 1995, he published his first adult novel. A bold, revisionist view of Frank L. Baum's classic Oz stories, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West places one of literature's most reviled characters at the center of a dark dystopian fantasy and raises provocative questions about the very nature of good and evil. Purists criticized Maguire for tampering with a beloved juvenile classic, but the book received generally good reviews (John Updike, writing in The New Yorker, proclaimed it "an amazing novel.") and the enthusiasm of readers catapulted it to the top of the bestseller charts. (Maguire's currency increased even further when the book was turned into the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Wicked in 2003.)

In the wake of his breakthrough novel, Maguire has made something of a specialty out of turning classic children's tales on their heads. He retold the legends of Cinderella and Snow White in Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999) and Mirror, Mirror (2003); he raised the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge in Lost (2001); and, in 2005, he returned to Oz for Son of a Witch, the long-awaited sequel to Wicked. He has reviewed fantasy fiction for the Sunday New York Times Book Review and has contributed his own articles, essays, and stories to publications like Ploughshares, The Boston Review, the Christian Science Monitor, and The Horn Book Magazine.

In addition, Maguire has never lost his interest in -- or enthusiasm for -- children's literature. He is the author of The Hamlet Chronicles, a bestselling seven-book series of high-camp mystery-adventures with silly count-down titles like Seven Spiders Spinning and Three Rotten Eggs. He has taught at the Center for the Study of Children's Literature at Simmons College and is a founding member of Children's Literature New England (CLNE), a nonprofit organization that focuses attention on the significance of literature in the lives of children.

Good To Know

In our interview, Maguire shared some fun facts with us about his life:

"While I pride myself on trying to be creative in all areas of my life, I have occasionally gone overboard, like the time I decided to bring to a party a salad that I constructed, on a huge rattan platter, to look like a miniature scale model of the Gardens of Babylon. I built terraces with chunks of Monterey jack, had a forest of broccoli florets and a lagoon of Seven Seas salad dressing spooned into a half a honeydew melon. I made reed patches out of scallion tips and walkways out of sesame seeds lined with raisin borders. Driving to the party, I had to brake to avoid a taxi, and by the time the police flagged me down for poor driving skills I was nearly weeping. ‘But Officer, I have a quickly decomposing Hanging Gardens of Babylon to deliver....' Everything had slopped and fallen over and it looked like a tray of vegetable garbage."

"My first job was scooping ice cream at Friendly's in Albany, New York. I hated the work, most of my colleagues, and the uniform, and I more or less lost my taste for ice cream permanently."

"If I hadn't been a writer, I would have tried to be one of the following: An artist (watercolors), a singer/songwriter like Paul Simon (taller but not very much more), an architect (domestic), a teacher. Actually, in one way or another I have done all of the above, but learned pretty quickly that my skills needed more honing for me to charge for my services, and I'd always rather write fiction than hone skills."

"I steal a bit from one of my favorite writers to say, simply, that I enjoy, most of all, old friends and new places. I love to travel. Having small children at home now impedes my efforts a great deal, but I have managed in my time to get to Asia, Africa, most of Europe, and Central America. My wish list of places not yet visited includes India, Denmark, Brazil, and New Zealand, and my wish for friends not yet made includes, in a sense, readers who are about to discover my work, either now or even when I'm no longer among the living. In a sense, in anticipation, I value those friends in a special way."

1. Hometown:
  
  Boston, Massachusetts
1. Date of Birth:
  
  June 9, 1954
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Albany, New York
1. Education:
  
  B.A., SUNY at Albany, 1976; M.A., Simmons College, 1978; Ph.D., Tufts University, 1990
2. Website:
  
  http://www.gregorymaguire.com

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Somebody Else in the Vehicle

said the attorney-type into his cell phone. He wiped the wet from his face. "There must be. It's in the carpool lane." He listened, squinting, and motioned to Winnie: Stop. Don't open the car door yet. Already, other drivers were slowing down to rubberneck. "Where are we, Braintree, Quincy? On 93 north, anyway, a half mile beyond the junction with 128. Yes, I know enough not to move anyone, but I'm telling you, you'll have a hell of a time getting an ambulance through, what with rush hour -- there'll be a backup a mile long before you know it."

He listened again. Then, "Right. I'll look. Two or more, maybe."

Returning from a few quiet days on Cape Cod, Winifred Rudge had missed her turnoff west and gotten stuck on the JFK toward Boston. Woolgathering, nail biting, something. Focus was a problem. Late for her appointment, she'd considered the odds: in this weather, what were her chances of being ticketed for violating the diamond lane's two-riders-or-more rule? Limited. She'd risked it. So she'd been at the right place on the downgrade to see the whole thing, despite the poor visibility. She'd watched the top third of a white pine snap in the high winds. Even from a half mile away, she'd noticed how the wood flesh had sprung out in diagonal striations, like nougat against rain-blackened bark. The crown of the tree twisted, then tilted. The wind had caught under the tree's parasol limbs and carried it across three lanes of slow-moving traffic, flinging it onto the hood and the roof of a northbound Subaruin the carpool lane. The driver of the Subaru, four cars ahead of Winnie, had braked too hard and hydroplaned left against the Jersey barriers. The evasive action hadn't helped.

Winnie had managed to tamp her brakes and avoid adding to the collection of crumpled fenders and popped hoods. She had been the first out in the rain, the first to start poking through dark rafts of pine needles. Mr. Useful Cell Phone was next, having emerged from some vehicle behind her. He carried a ridiculous out-blown umbrella, and when he got off the phone with the 911 operator he hooked the umbrella handle around a good-size tree limb and tried to yank it away.

"They said don't touch the passengers," he yelled through the rain.

Afraid her voice would betray her panic, she didn't even like to answer, but to reassure him she managed to say, "I know that much." The smell of pine boughs, sap on her, hands, water on her face. What was she scared of finding in that dark vehicle? But the prime virtue of weather is immediacy, and the wind tore away the spicy Christmas scent. In its place, a vegetable stink of cheap spilled gasoline. "We may have to get them out, do you smell that?" she shouted, and redoubled her efforts. They could use help; where were the other commuters? Just sitting in their cars, listening to hear themselves mentioned on the WGBH traffic report?

"Cars don't blow up like in the movies," he said, motioning her to take a position farther along the tree trunk. "Put your back against it and push; I'll pull. One. Two. Three." Thanks mostly to gravity they managed to dislodge the thing a foot or so, enough to reveal the windshield. It was still holding, though crazed into opacity with the impact. The driver, a fiftyish sack of a woman, was slanted against a net bag of volleyballs in the passenger seat. She didn't look lucky. The car had slammed up against the concrete barrier so tightly that both doors on the driver's side were blocked.

"Isn't there someone else?" said Winnie. "Didn't you say?"

"You know, I think that is gasoline. Maybe we better stand off."

Winnie made her way along the passenger side of the car, through branches double-jointed with rubbery muscle. The rear door was locked and the front door was locked. She peered through pine needles, around sports equipment. "There's a booster seat in the back," she yelled. "Break the window, can you?"

The umbrella handle wasn't strong enough. Winnie had nothing useful in her purse or her overnight bag. The cold rain made gluey boils on the windows. It was impossible to see in. "No car could catch on fire in a storm like this," she said. "Is that smoke, or just burned rubber from the brake pads?" But then another driver appeared, carrying a crowbar. "Smash the window," she told him.

"Hurry," said Cell Phone Man. "Do they automatically send fire engines, do you think?"

"Do it," she said. The newcomer, an older man in a Red Sox cap faded to pink, obliged. The window shattered, spraying glassy baby teeth. As she clawed for the recessed lock in the rear door, Winnie heard the mother begin to whimper. The door creaked open and more metal scraped. Winnie lurched and sloped herself in. The child strapped into the booster seat was too large for it. Her legs were thrown up in ungainly angles. "Maybe we can unlatch the whole contraption and drag it out," said Winnie, mostly to herself; she knew her voice wouldn't carry in the wind. She leaned over the child in the car's dark interior, into a hollow against which pine branches bunched on three sides. She fumbled for the buckle of the seat belt beneath the molded plastic frame of the booster. Then she gave up and pulled out, and slammed the door.

"I'll get it," said Red Sox Fan, massing up.

"They said leave everybody where they were," said Cell Phone, "you could snap a spine and do permanent damage."

"No spine in her," said Winnie. "It's a life-size..."

Customer Reviews

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Anonymous

Posted February 17, 2010

A Really Cool Book Cover and That's Where the Good Part Ends

I wanted to give this book one star each for character, plot, etc. but the program would not allow me to give less than two stars. If you want to stare at a cool-looking book cover, pick this one up. If you want to read something interesting, don't bother opening it. Yawn!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted April 4, 2012

Harejeap.:

Eat these. Pushes herbs to hareleap. Helps 2 kits come. Newki and Littlekit. Both are gray. Both are blue eyed.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted February 29, 2012

Worth Skimming

Certainly not the best novel written by Maguire. The story line is somewhat intriguing but in the end, it leaves something to be desired. A disappointing read, indeed, for a die-hard fan.
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Anonymous

Posted February 19, 2012

Ashstar to Coalpelt

"Yup you are. Everything is open except for leader and medicine cat apprentice."
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Geology_Frog

Posted June 23, 2010

more from this reviewer

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I got lost in this book

I am a huge fan of Gregory Maguire books to begin with. Lost was actually my first book by him, and it is far from the last. The first chapter was a bit rough for me to read through. It took until Chapter 2 and 3 before I really got hooked. But once I did, I couldn't put this book down. I absolutely loved it, and I really like his style of writing. I highly recommend this as a summer read, just stick out the first chapter, it's well worth it for the mystery lover in us all!
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venusekt

Posted October 27, 2009

more from this reviewer

Bottom of the heap...

Maguire is one of my favorite authors, but this book is a dud. I usually expect the weird and wacky with his books, but in this one there was too much weird without purpose or connection. It pales in comparison to "Confessions" and the Wicked series. Skip it.
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Theater_D

Posted October 27, 2009

I Also Recommend:

??

Strangely disjointed, I found this Maguire book to be sub-standard. I greatly enjoyed Wicked and Son of a Witch, but this novel was clunky, hard to follow, and not well fleshed out. it almost seemed like this was a dream the author had, and the more he wrote the more you asked yourself...what is going on? Disappointed, but not turned off of his other efforts. I WILL read Stepsister and Lion.
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Anonymous

Posted August 8, 2009

Lost was disappointing

I wouldn't say this book was tragic, but it was disappointing and I don't think I'll pick up another book by this author.
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weaselgizzard

Posted June 21, 2009

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GOOD!!! Long chapters though.

It was awesome!!!! But the chapters are so LONG!! It's written in staves, and there are only five of them. Plus, from the middle of stave 3 to the middle of stave 4, there was a long period where nothing happened. But, other than that, it was really good. I love how the main character is an author, and the story she's writing is just her life under the name of her middle name, Wendy, with her previous married surname, Pritzke. Plus it was very informative. I learned that J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, invented the name Wendy for the character in the book and the people started using it. I would write more, but House M. D. is on and i have to go.
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songcatchers

Posted October 25, 2008

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fun mystery

I really enjoyed the mystery of this story. There are actually two mysteries evolving as we read. There is the mystery of the ghost in the chimney and also the mystery of what happened between Winnie and John. It was so much fun traveling to London with Winnie and seeing the mystifying events unfold. The parallel story of Winnie and John made Winnie seem more human. It reveals she's sort of a broken heroine with her internal problems as well as the external problem of the ghost in the chimney. The characters are unique and loveable in their own ways from the crazy old cat lady to the gay reader of tea leaves. I won't soon forget this book or it's colorful cast!
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Anonymous

Posted August 24, 2007

Mehh...

I'm a long-time fan of Maguire. When I was younger I read his great kid's books (Seven Spiders Spinning, Six Haunted Hairdos, etc.) and even took the time to read his latest kid's book despite being rather outside the age range- and enjoyed it immensely! And of course I made the jump to Wicked, Son of a Witch, Mirror Mirror etc. a while ago and loved those too, for completely different reasons and totally the same reasons too. So I approached Lost thinking 'cool author, cool premise, cool book.' Then I actually get into the book, and, well... insert bad 'Lost' pun here. The beginning was interesting, and I know the writing technique and prose was great, a masterpiece of style- but it just didn't work here, didn't interest me, didn't help the narrative. Winnie quickly became naggy, and then developed into an irritating, unlikable character, as were most of the others in the cast. The pace seemed off, the dialogue was ridiculous, and the last half of the book just felt muddled. Perhaps the marketing is to blame for misleading potential readers, or perhaps Maguire just had a bad spell. This doesn't mean I don't still love everything else he's written- he's a GREAT writer, the world needs his genius- but here, it seems misspent. Better luck next time, GM! (If a disgruntled reader should wish for books in the same vein that are actually fun to read, look just below this review.)
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Anonymous

Posted January 21, 2007

disappointing

I absolutely loved Gregory Maguire's 'Wicked' and 'Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister', so i thought that when i bought this book i was going to love it as well. I was wrong. This book is terrible. It jumped all over the place. I didn't even get halfway through it and i had to put it down. Save your money for GOOD books!
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Anonymous

Posted July 17, 2006

a dissapointment

I am a huge fan of Gregory Maguire but Lost was dissapointing. Think of this if you look at all the other Gregory Maguire books and then look at Lost. Lost looked like it was written by another author. All I can say is Gregory Maguire why did you write this?
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Anonymous

Posted March 27, 2006

Confusing and a bit boring

I read Wicked and Confessions of an ugly step sister and enjoyed them both. But Lost did not fit the description that was on the cover. It leads you to believe you are going to read a book with modern ties to Scrooge and Jack the Ripper, when in truth it only quickly blows past these ideas every now and again. Most of the story is about a woman who went through a bad event in her life and blaimes everyone and anything for it. It is a hard read that is disjointed and follows no real path in any direction. Others said it came together in the last 15 pages but I would disagree and say it never came together for me and the last two pages left me thinking...'are you serious, this is how he ends it!' I wouldn't recommend this book.
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Anonymous

Posted May 16, 2006

Was Maguire truly responsible for this rubbish?

I am a huge fan of Gregory Maguire but I was sorely disappointed with Lost. It was hard to follow and was not written in the whimsical sense like Wicked and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. It was dark,sinister, and highly confusing.I couldn't even finish the book. I tried again and again to get into Lost but to no avail.All I can ask is, Gregory what were you thinking?
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Anonymous

Posted February 22, 2006

What was he thinking?

I absolutely loved Wicked despite his rambling and overly wordy show. Enjoyed Confession of an Ugly Stepsister even more, but this book is horrid! I read 1-2 books a week, and it took me three days to get through 60 pages... I am returning the book today. Seriously not his best... not even close. I agree with other reviewers it is all over the place and generally just awful!
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Anonymous

Posted January 3, 2006

Needed A Lot More Work Before Publication

This book was no where near publication. It is all over the place. As a book editor, I was amazed that this even made it to print. The whole thing comes together in the last 15 pages. Unfortunately, the previous 250 pages don't set up the end. Truly a bad book.
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Anonymous

Posted December 11, 2005

Not what I expected

I loved 'Wicked' -- the genre was very interesting to me: taking a fantasy land, recreating it so that it stayed true to the original story, but was written with a more realistic feel, as though 'Wizard of Oz' was just a myth that evolved about a true story from this land's past. Fascinating and well written. Having read that I was really looking forward to more. Now I am a Scrooge fan. You give me any version of 'A Christmas Carol' -- classic, modern, even done with Mr. Magoo -- and I love it. A ghost story, a tear-jerker, a happy ending, etc. LOVE it. So I was really looking forward to this book. I was extremely disappointed. It was a good enough book, enteresting I'm sure, but read with the expectation of some form of a tale about Ebenezer or his cohorts, it just didn't fit the bill. It was about some (kind of annoying) woman who decides to live in England for research on a new book. It's a little Bridget-Jones-ish in that it is about a month or so in the life of this woman. Oh, and by the way she lives in a creepy house where she hears noises that give her the willies and make her think of Jack the Ripper and Scrooge. It was a story anyone could have written as if one man wrote 'Wicked' and another wrote 'Lost' they just weren't the same genre at all. So if you really enjoyed 'Wicked' because it was more of a fantasy about a character you love, perhaps 'Lost' isn't for you. Though knowing that ahead of time, you might enjoy it on its own. Really, he hasn't done it again SINCE 'Wicked', as far as I'm concerned (I couldn't even get past the first few chapters of the Snow White book it was so slow-paced and uninteresting). I did enjoy 'Confessions...' but like I said, it was no 'Wicked'. I'm almost afraid to read the 'Wicked' sequel since his books seem to be getting farther and farther away from his original creativity with the land of Oz.
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Anonymous

Posted June 27, 2005

If I send my book to the author, will he send me my $14.95?

I have read Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Wicked and Mirror, Mirror - this was no where near the league of the former. Cofessions was unique and surprising. Wicked was simply fabulous - one of my top ten. Mirror, Mirror (I read before Lost) seemed a downward trend. And, Lost, was not worth the paper it was written on. It began with so many adjectives describing EVERYTHING that the writing was distracting. Once I got past that the story labored on with miniscule events being drawn out and rediscovered by every character. Speaking of characters there seemed quite a few really useless ones. The few characters I liked (the workers) were the ones whose parts were unneccessaryily large. Every main character in this book was unlikable. There were simply too many with too few good qualities. They were all self-indulgent wastes of time. Not people I would like to meet or spend time reading about. A little over half way through the book things (finally) get a little interesting. However, once that happens nothing is fully explained. Much of the 'ghosts' history and purpose is left too obscure. And, the end of the book seems like Maguire was tired of his own story and wanted to wrap it up. Once, completed I thought perhaps I missed something? So, I read through the discussion questions to see if they might focus my thoughts or highlight what the author thought I should have found enlightening. Saddly, they were just as vague and useless as the majority of the book. It did shed light on some of the subplots, like usage of other literary sources. However, Maguire should have stuck with the Dickens backstory because the Jack the Ripper one seemed forced and never really 'gelled' with the story. Perhaps Maguire tried to hard, maybe he was tired from writing his complicated books, perhaps this was just a bad one. Hopefully, his next one out will be a return to the likes of his well written and edited turns, like Wicked and Confessions.
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Anonymous

Posted May 26, 2005

Frustrated

I loved The Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister...and I think I would like Wicked much better if I'd read it AFTER I'd seen the play (which by the way is the best ever to hit Broadway). While Maguire is an excellent writer, don't waste your time reading this one--it's confusing and not very compelling.
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If I send my book to the author, will he send me my $14.95?

Frustrated