Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of The Game

Kate Blackwell is the symbol of success, the beautiful woman who parlayed her inheritance into an international conglomerate. Winner of a unique position among the wealthy and world-renowned, she's also a survivor as indomitable as her father, who returned from the edge of death to wrench a fortune in diamonds from the hard South African soil. Now, celebrating her ninetieth birthday, Kate surveys the family she has manipulated, dominated, and loved: the fair and the grotesque, the mad and the mild, the good and the evil - her winnings in life. Is she the master of the game?

Everybody know that novelty bands have a hard time growing up, but the Presidents of the United States of America made a large leap toward that during their re-formation of 2000, with Freaked Out and Small demonstrating a decrease in their stylized silliness mellowed into something more genuine. It wasn't that the band rocked less, but their humor seemed less forced, a development that continued on 2004's Love Everybody. Evolution continues to be the name of the game on their 2008 follow-up These Are the Good Times People, as the group replaces departing guitarist (and founding member) Dave Dederer with Andrew McKeag, while they bring Seattle underground mainstay Kurt Bloch in as producer, all elements that help make These Are the Good Times People perhaps their most eclectic album to date.