"A Tribute to the Life of Liz Marks" Publisher: bookemon.com

After many years as an actress/singer in NYC, Liz Marks brought her professional attitude to her hometown, Richmond, Virginia.
Born into the business, her commitment to the industry brought her from performing to casting. ("I couldn‚t see performing in spandex after 40".)
Since 1987 Liz has been providing producers and directors with the best talent the Mid-Atlantic Region has to offer.
Surrounded by history and great locations, Liz chooses to stay with her family in Virginia and work on the "shows" and commercials that come to town.

Emmy® Nominated for Outstanding Casting in a Movie for her work on HBO Film's "Iron Jawed Angel

Liz Marks Memorial Award for Ongoing Contribution to Richmond Area Theater
Award to: Liz Marks ( Richmond Va Theater)

"A Wicker Rocker"

By Sheila Talley
Teresa Bettino, Mechanicsville resident, is happy to announce her second book of poems, entitled “A Wicker Rocker.” Bettino invites the reader to sit back, and reminisce over past times and memories. Some of the poems are as soothing to read as the title implies. The book’s titled poem is picturesque and entices the reader to go further.Other poems in the collection bring the reader to his feet to either cheer or disagree with the author on her frank prose about the often-harsh world of the welfare worker. Her descriptions, obviously from the heart, give a realistic picture of a social worker’s day.
Born and raised in New Jersey, Bettino began a career in social work as a VISTA volunteer in Richmond. She and husband, Don and son, Joseph live on a mini-farm with the animal members of her family, horses, cats, birds and a dog.  She is an animal activist, whose poem “America’s Pit Bull” expresses loudly and in no uncertain terms, Bettino’s opinion on animal mistreatment. Bettino has written two children’s books about horses, “Degan and Me and “Sugarbabe and Thunder.” “The Ten Commandments of a Welfare Worker,” is a satirical book and “The Cats of Hanover Juvenile Correction Center,” is a humorous story of the different personalities of several feral cats.  “Unique Shadows,” was Bettino’s first collection of poetry to be published.For more information, please contact the author at tbettino@msn.com or pick up any of her books at Coffee Lane on Bell Creek Road, near Meadowbridge Road in Mechanicsville.  Bettino gives a portion of the sales of her books to animal rescue.

“The Pale Horse”

Charles Todd; Wm. Morrow ($23.95)
Although Charles Todd’s elegant, emotionally penetrating series is set in the immediate aftermath of World War I, these novels transcend any specific era.
Every generation, every family, every soldier who has fought in a war or is still fighting one can relate to the depths of feelings that swirl around Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge: guilt over his actions on the battlefield, a pervading sense of loss and empathy for the emotionally fragile — of which he is one.
Although Ian is an effective and insightful investigator, he also is an outcast; suffering from shell shock has made him a near recluse. In “A Pale Horse,” Ian’s investigation brings him into the world of people even more of an outcast than he.
In the ruin of an abbey in Yorkshire, an unidentified body has been found wearing a gas mask that so many soldiers wore on the battlefield. Ian traces the dead man to an odd little housing development that’s in the shadow of a white horse cut into the chalk hillside in prehistoric times. Here the minuscule cottages were built to house leprosy victims. Each resident might as well be a leper as each has withdrawn from the world, hiding terrible secrets.
Ian links a guilty scientist and his estranged family to the atrocities of WWI. As Ian knows too well, forgiving oneself for surviving can be a near impossible feat.
Todd, the pseudonym for a mother-and-son writing team, excels in this 10th novel in the series. “The Pale Horse” drips with atmosphere of the era and the landscape, with a keen attention to realistic characters. In a superior series already distinguished for its superior plots, “The Pale Horse” is exceptional.

“Anything For A Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns”

Joseph Cummins; Quirk Books ($16.95)
For students of political history, up-and-coming politicians or anyone watching the current election manipulations, “Anything For a Vote” will strike a chord.
Joseph Cummins tells in an easy-to-read style the history of presidential races with all the slander, mud-slinging, character assassination and vote-stealing from 1789 up to the present.
Early on, Cummins comments, “For anyone who loves the democratic process, it’s reassuring to see how immediately and full-heartedly politicians in early America launched malicious attacks through handbills, pamphlets and articles in various party journals.” In the modern day, this would the equivalent of the warring blogosphere.
Anyone who believes that the founders of the United States were the cardboard characters taught in boring American history courses should read how Alexander Hamilton tried to persuade electors not to vote for John Adams during the first election. They were in competition for the vice presidency since neither had a chance of winning over the undisputed leader, and two-time winner, George Washington.
Politics became personal very fast. In the 1828 election, a Republican pamphlet said Democrat Andrew Jackson was “a gambler, a cock fighter, a slave trader and the husband of a really fat wife,” an insult for which he never forgave his opponents.
The Democrats struck back in 1844 calling Whig (to become the Republicans a decade later) candidate Henry Clay on his “supposed baggage train of gambling, dueling, womanizing and ‘By the Eternal!’ swearing.” Clay lost.
Coming up to the modern era, in 1972, voters received letters, “written on (Edmund) Muskie campaign stationary, stating (falsely) that Hubert Humphrey had been arrested for drunk driving in 1967.” Both lost to Richard Nixon.
The Internet brought a new aspect to campaigning. In 2004, actress Jane Fonda, disliked for her ’60s Vietnam War stance, was added to a 1971 photograph with (then-presidential candidate) John Kerry and the bogus picture circulated widely — and anonymously.
Everyone should remember that U.S. presidential politics has always been a dirty business, and “Anything for a Vote” makes that entertainingly obvious. Hopefully, Cummins will update this book to include the dirty tricks of the upcoming 2008 election.