Jo Beth Sidden untangles a series of mysteries, and in the process untangles her life in this sixth and final book in Virginia Lanier's series about a woman who raises search-and-rescue bloodhounds in South Georgia. The ailing author has confirmed that this is her last book about the strong-willed and independent southern woman.

Throughout the bloodhound series, Jo Beth Sidden and her team of gentle bloodhounds have rescued lost children, searched for escaped convicts, and uncovered drug operations in and near the Okefenokee Swamp. Her relationships with her employees who raise and train the dogs, her best friend Susan, and the tough and [very hansom] Sheriff Hank Cribbs define her as an independent and caring southern woman who does not give up easily. In the previous book Jo Beth had to kill her abusive ex-husband Bubba in defense of herself, her home, and her dogs; and A Bloodhound to Die For picks up a few months later when she is finally feeling safe again, although she is not welcome to shop in the store owned by Bubba's cousin. The novel's first subplot comes as a wife learns of her husband's infidelity and takes drastic measures, but the reputed affair could have simply been a pernicious rumor. Following those events, Jo Beth learns that a prisoner from her hometown has put her on the prison's visitor list even though Jo Beth has never met the man. Her visit to the jail leads to a crazy confrontation with an unstable felon and his tight, truly south Georgian (I'm from Atlanta) family. She is also called on to search for an elderly woman with senile dementia who has a frightening habit of wandering away from the house that she lives in with her husband. In the midst of these events, Jo Beth's beloved bloodhound Bobby Lee is taken, leading Jo Beth to search the swamp for her dog as well as search herself for an answer to her fear of commitment to Hank.

The conclusion to this book is a sweet ending to the series, as Jo Beth resolves her feelings towards her life and her work and looks forward to the changes that lie ahead.

JoBeth's bloodhound training and breeding business is profitable and busy these days and she is finally free of her abusive ex, but her personal life gets confusing when an inmate of the state prison decides that he is in love with her and is escaping to marry her! It would make a little more sense if she had ever met the man before she visits the prison, but he's fallen in love with her press releases. When she rebuffs him, he threatens Bobby Lee, her favorite hound. Add to this a confusing personal life for both herself and her friends and a murder suicide at the local high school and JoBeth's bloodhounds have alot to sort out.

I have always loved this series and have waited a long time for this one. Since it is the last, I almost hated to get it. I read it in one sitting and it is as good as the others. I guess I'll just have to start from the beginning again.

Georgia may be famous in the former Soviet Union as a land of wine, poets, filmmakers, and beautiful scenery. Some Georgian words seem to have circulated among all the republics of that now-vanished empire---tamada, Kinzmarauli, chacha, khachapuri, and so on, but outside that Soviet world, few people know much at all about Georgia. Certainly English-language books on the country are far and few between. In all my life, I've only ever seen one coffee table book on Georgian art and architecture. I found it in a most unlikely place---a weekly country fair on the forested outskirts of Melbourne, Australia---and I traded an original photograph for it. This is it, THE ARTS OF ANCIENT GEORGIA, published in the 1970s with a foreword by the doyen of Georgian studies in the Anglophone world, David Marshall Lang, and with a large number of most excellent photographs by Rolf Schrade. If you are interested in Georgia or its arts, I believe this book is a must. It is thorough, it is incredibly detailed, and very well-organized. It is a book for professionals, for art historians, or for those wanting an extremely painstaking description of Georgian architectural treasures.

Before you rush right out and buy it, let me add one more thing. I don't know if the original were written in Georgian or Russian, but it was translated into German, and this book is the English translation of that ! If you think that might make for a wooden style, you are right. Reading this text is like swimming with your boots on. Not only that, but the authors had to toe the line of political correctness then prevalent in the USSR. That meant looking at the world through spectacles of social Darwinism and Marxist-Leninist theory. Phrases such as "levels of development", "standards of achievement" and "progress made by the Georgian people...in the development of cultural life in their country" pepper the text---all kinds of terminology that implies a hierarchy of cultures in the world (with Europe no doubt at the top). The endpiece map has no boundaries of any kind on it to avoid stimulating the kind of ethnic nastiness that sprang up after 1991. If you want an example of both wooden language and Soviet vocabulary, here is a quote from p.47 "Certain variations emerge in the historical development of these installations [fortifications] which were determined by the particular features of individual stages in the evolution of the feudal system." If you can hack a lot more of this, you are ready to read THE ARTS OF ANCIENT GEORGIA. Otherwise, look at the pictures and use it as a reference book. You won't be sorry.

P.S. The two authors' names are mixed up on the Amazon.com page.

I have known Robert Craig through his teachings at Georgia Tech, and only this book demonstrates his overwhelming knowledge of Atlanta and it's only and few representative historical architectures. Through this book, many a style mostly art deco and streamlined are defined and throughout the cultural aspects of Atlanta. A Very good resource.

Though this edition lacks several important restaurants that have opened since its publication, Lauterbach's book still provides the most solid, comprehensive review of the best (and worst) af Atlanta dining. Unlike Zagat's guides, this book provides in depth information about each restaurant's atmosphere, what to eat and when to go. I've come to completely trust its advice.

For the reader who loves ghost stories that are well written and informative this is a book you will want to add to your library. Barbara Duffey has put together a nice collection of peach state haunts. She has researched the material and has apparently been to most of the sites. Her writing style is very nice and keeps the reader interested throughout the book. Best of all, at the end of each story she tells you the address of the haunted site and whether or not it is open to the public. Just in case the reader would like to do a little ghost hunting themselves.

Any decent book of southern ghost tales has to include certain stories, and they are all here. Southern Belles mourning for eternity loved ones lost in the war, mistreated slaves, confederate soldiers, and homes that survived Sherman by some quirk of fate. Jefferson Davis even manages a cameo. As a nice little extra there is a story about the ghost of Marion Stembridge and if you don't recognize the name just rent the movie Paris Trout.

The only real drawback to this book is what I would call it's chill rating. The stories are engrossing but they just don't send a chill up your spine and cause you to have trouble sleeping. In Duffey's defense, very few ghost books do accomplish much on the chill scale and while this book won't scare you, it will entertain you.

In the South, barbecue is a great social equalizer. Blacks dine with Whites, overalls sit across from suits. When it comes to excellent barbecue, well then, as one life long barbecue diner said, "it don't make no difference, everybody chew'n down good barbecue is equal". Though dated, "Barbecue on My Mind" is still reliable, very useful and the best true guide we have in Georgia.

So far, of the five barbeque places I visited, using the books listings, one was excellent (The Pig, Waycross, may have the best ribs in Georgia), three were very good and one fair. In the competitive restaurant world 70% of restaurants go out of business in the first three years. However, I gather that most of these "Thirty Best Barbecue" places still exist today because, they not only are outstanding, but have proven themselves over time.

Trey Pope has a wonderful "down home" style of writing that you will enjoy. He calls 'em like he sees 'em. If the building is a "hole in the wall" (many of the best barbecue joints are) then he'll tell ya. He selected from hundreds of barbecue places and got down to these thirty by visiting them and ordering pork barbecue, Brunswick stew and pork ribs.

On the down side the map in this book is a joke... really bad. You have to know Georgia or have a good map to find the place outside of your area, like Zeb's Barbecue in Danielsville, where? But for excellent barbecue some of us die-hard enthusiasts will get the truck, load up the dog and put "the peddle to the metal" and make that drive. Recommended.

"The Best of Georgia's Farms" is much more than the best cookbook I've ever seen -- it's a fun and insightful tour of the very best that Georgia has to offer. Colorful sidebars illustrate Georgia's rise from a sleepy, rural Southern state to the boomtown that has attracted Olympians and everymen alike. Succinctly written biographies give a fresh look at famous Georgians such as former President Jimmy Carter. You'll need two copies! One for your kitchen and one for your coffee table!

Most of these essays, written by the pseudonymous "Bill Arp", concern the Civil War and Reconstruction, and although there is a veneer of humor, they are really works of protest. I read an 1866 edition (sans footnotes or introduction, unfortunately) and I could practically feel the anger spitting off the page. If you want to know how Southerners felt about reconstruction, this is a good book to read. However, I hope the modern editions have footnotes, because "Arp" refers to a great deal of political minutia and current jargon which is incomprehensible even to someone who's been studying the period. For example, he uses the phrase "calm and sereen" (the misspelling is for comic effect) a lot, with heavy irony. Was this phrase used by politicians at the time? The book would be a more valuable source with notes which would explain things like that. In any case, despite being occasionally opaque to the 21st century reader, this is definitely worth a look.

Miles Davis gave us "Birth of the cool" at the time of the 'triumph of American painting', but the connection to 'cool' becomes stretched beyond this timely coincidence. The name of Miles Davis is the greatest presence of black art in a book about visual art not music. The title sounds good, the art inside is arguably among the best of this century, and the discussion within the interviews is engaging - but it is difficult to connect them to "Cool". And the picture of Andy Warhol with Miles Davis doesn't help. Yes, it is "cool" that most of my favorite artists are represented within these covers, but I don't think that was the point. But don't let the awkward title dissuade you. The artists collected for the text do represent the greatness of individuals, not movements or styles, in the 20th century. These individuals represent an emergence of a new "individualist" movement in this century. The author is on to something but it is not yet cool enough to be Jello. Oldsters such as Pollock, O'Keefe, and Newman and the persistent such as Celmins, Katz, and Morley are combined with artists such as Prince, Taaffe, Williams and Wool who were born years after Miles' cool album was cut. But they all belong together because of their uniqueness, specific individual focus and inquisitiveness. Each is at the head of individual directions that may become movements some day. Their work is beautiful and thoughtful, and in some cases a spiced with a bit of mischief. Cool? Hot? Within the interviews, even the artists themselves cannot come to an agreement about that. But the book is cool because it does contain words and images from 15 of the hottest individual contributors to the latest directions art has taken in the 20th century.

I found this book to be very informative - it gave me the insight to understand problems that STILL exist in this poor (and destined to stay poor) county. It is a sad commentary on human relations and the abuses of power and influence. I believe John McCowan was a hate monger that did much to divide and destroy the county. When given opportunities to recognize common intrests and bring people together for a common good - He chose to divide and isolate them (I believe for his own benefit). Unfortunately, that mentality seems still to be alive and well in the local government. Mr McCowan squandered a great opportunity to improve conditions for everyone because...he could not let go of the past. If we are to survive in this world - we have no choice but to be "good neighbors" and recognize our differences. We are all different (Thank GOD) BUT we are all the same ! If the answers to human survival were a technoloical, finincial or scientific solution they could be more easily resolved. However, the REAL solution to our problems is much more difficult and complex. The solution is within you and me. I don't know about you but...That's scares me! I enjoyed the book.