The Bizarre Truth


Book Description

Andrew Zimmern, the host of The Travel Channel’s hit series Bizarre Foods, has an extraordinarily well-earned reputation for traveling far and wide to seek out and sample anything and everything that’s consumed as food globally, from cow vein stew in Bolivia and giant flying ants in Uganda to raw camel kidneys in Ethiopia, putrefied shark in blood pudding in Iceland and Wolfgang Puck's Hunan style rooster balls in Los Angeles. For Zimmern, local cuisine—bizarre, gross or downright stomach turning as it may be to us—is not simply what’s served at mealtime. It is a primary avenue to discovering what is most authentic—the bizarre truth—about cultures everywhere. Having eaten his way around the world over the course of four seasons of Bizarre Foods, Zimmern has now launched Bizarre Worlds, a new series on the Travel Channel, and this, his first book, a chronicle of his journeys as he not only tastes the “taboo treats” of the world, but delves deep into the cultures and lifestyles of far-flung locales and seeks the most prized of the modern traveler’s goals: The Authentic Experience. Written in the smart, often hilarious voice he uses to narrate his TV shows, Zimmern uses his adventures in “culinary anthropology” to illustrate such themes as: why visiting local markets can reveal more about destinations than museums; the importance of going to “the last stop on the subway”—the most remote area of a place where its essence is most often revealed; the need to seek out and catalog “the last bottle of coca-cola in the desert,” i.e. disappearing foods and cultures; the profound differences between dining and eating; and the pleasures of snout to tail, local, fresh and organic food. Zimmern takes readers into the back of a souk in Morocco where locals are eating a whole roasted lamb; along with a conch fisherman in Tobago, who may be the last of his kind; to Mississippi, where he dines on raccoon and possum. There, he writes, "People said, 'That's roadkill!' ‘No it's not,’ I said. ‘It's a cultural story.’” Whether it’s a session with an Incan witch doctor in Ecuador who blows fire on him, spits on him, thrashes him with poisonous branches and beats him with a live guinea pig or drinking blood in Uganda and cow urine tonic in India or eating roasted bats on an uninhabited island in Samoa, Zimmern cheerfully celebrates the undiscovered destinations and weird wonders still remaining in our increasingly globalized world.




Dead Strange


Book Description

From Loch Ness to Bigfoot, this book gives essential background information on the events and the people involved, discusses the impact of particular myths and beliefs, and provides updates on the latest investigations being undertaken in an attempt to find answers to these baffling phenomena.




Bad Choices Make Good Stories: The Strange True Story of the First Influencer


Book Description

Special Anniversary Omnibus: Get all three books for the price of one! _____ Part 1: Going to New York _____ The strange true story of the first influencer. Oliver, a hacker living in Germany, meets Donna online. She's an American girl living in New York. After chatting and talking on the phone for months, he finally decides to surprise her with a visit. But he soon finds out that things are not what they appeared to be, and that this visit will change his life forever. “Nobody has ever killed themselves over a broken arm. But every day, thousands of people kill themselves because of a broken heart. Why? Because emotional pain hurts much worse than physical pain.” -Oliver Markus Malloy, Bad Choices Make Good Stories “Don't ever think you're better than a drug addict, because your brain works the same as theirs. You have the same circuits. And drugs would affect your brain in the same way it affects theirs. The same thought process that makes them screw up over and over again would make you screw up over and over as well, if you were in their shoes. You probably already are doing it, just not with heroin or crack, but with food or cigarettes, or something else you shouldn't be doing.” -Oliver Markus Malloy, Bad Choices Make Good Stories "A must read. One of those rare books that sucks you in from the first to the last page." ★★★★★ - Amazon Review _____ Part 2: The Heroin Scene in Fort Myers _____ America has a heroin problem. Oliver moves from New York to Florida. Battling with depression, he gets sucked into the seedy underworld of Fort Myers, where he encounters a number of female drug addicts. He empathizes with them because of his own traumatic past. Oliver feels compelled to try to help them escape the addict lifestyle, but learns the hard way that he is in way over his head. "A truly fascinating and unexpected look at the darker side of addiction." ★★★★★ - A. Allyson, Goodreads _____ Part 3: Finding Happiness in Los Angeles _____ If you're a fan of Dave Chappelle or John Oliver, you'll love this book. After writing a book about his bizarre adventures in America's underbelly, Oliver finally finds love among his readers on Goodreads. "I think it will become a standard for people who are dealing with loved ones struggling with addictions." ★★★★★ - B. Bridges, Amazon Review Dear Reader, You're a little late to the party. Where the hell have you been? This is already the third and final part of the trilogy, and you're only joining us now? Tsk tsk tsk. Let me get you up to speed on what you've missed so far: In book one, Going to New York, you missed the utterly fascinating, nay spellbinding saga of me growing up in Germany and later emigrating to New York. I was a brooding, troubled teenage hacker. Wow! Good stuff! It's almost like my life was the perfect kind of crazy to make a really awesome book! Anyway, being a teenage hacker came in handy later in life. I went from rags to riches thanks to my keen understanding of technology and how to use the web to my advantage. In New York I was married to Donna, a girl I had met online. She was an agoraphobic, prone to temper tantrums. And fun was had by all, which led to a divorce 16 years later. That's where the story gets really interesting. I began dating. It didn't go well. I was no good at it. OK, truth be told, I was really bad at it. Apparently I had terrible taste in women. A heroin-addicted hooker named Alice broke my heart and robbed me of my will to live. Doesn't sound very fun, does it? But it's a fun read, I promise. Dark, but fun. Mesmerizing even! Brokenhearted, I moved from New York to Florida. That's where the first book ends. The second book you missed (I'm not mad at you. I'm just disappointed.) is called The Heroin Scene in Fort Myers, which is a very fitting title, believe me. Sometimes I'm a slow learner, so I dated my way through the heroin scene in Florida, and I couldn't figure out for years why I wasn't finding any wife material. But oh how I tried. And tried. In all the wrong places. Pretty sad. I'm not proud of it. After years of sad pathetic sex with heroin addicts I was a wreck. My younger self wouldn't have even recognized me. Lucy and Veronica had turned me into a broken, humiliated shell of a man. My heart had been ripped out of my chest so many times, it was a miracle I hadn't killed myself yet. (Seriously, it's a fun read. I promise!) At the end of the book I had it up to here with heroin addicts. I told myself never again would I let myself be sucked in by the sweet lies of manipulative, fake love. The name of the final chapter was NO MO HO. No more whores. I needed to change my life before my life was going to kill me. I hopped on a plane, back to my native Germany, to lick my wounds and heal before returning to America. That's where the second book ended. And now, for our third and final act...




The Bizarre Truth


Book Description

Andrew Zimmern, the host of The Travel Channel’s hit series Bizarre Foods, has an extraordinarily well-earned reputation for traveling far and wide to seek out and sample anything and everything that’s consumed as food globally, from cow vein stew in Bolivia and giant flying ants in Uganda to raw camel kidneys in Ethiopia, putrefied shark in blood pudding in Iceland and Wolfgang Puck's Hunan style rooster balls in Los Angeles. For Zimmern, local cuisine—bizarre, gross or downright stomach turning as it may be to us—is not simply what’s served at mealtime. It is a primary avenue to discovering what is most authentic—the bizarre truth—about cultures everywhere. Having eaten his way around the world over the course of four seasons of Bizarre Foods, Zimmern has now launched Bizarre Worlds, a new series on the Travel Channel, and this, his first book, a chronicle of his journeys as he not only tastes the “taboo treats” of the world, but delves deep into the cultures and lifestyles of far-flung locales and seeks the most prized of the modern traveler’s goals: The Authentic Experience. Written in the smart, often hilarious voice he uses to narrate his TV shows, Zimmern uses his adventures in “culinary anthropology” to illustrate such themes as: why visiting local markets can reveal more about destinations than museums; the importance of going to “the last stop on the subway”—the most remote area of a place where its essence is most often revealed; the need to seek out and catalog “the last bottle of coca-cola in the desert,” i.e. disappearing foods and cultures; the profound differences between dining and eating; and the pleasures of snout to tail, local, fresh and organic food. Zimmern takes readers into the back of a souk in Morocco where locals are eating a whole roasted lamb; along with a conch fisherman in Tobago, who may be the last of his kind; to Mississippi, where he dines on raccoon and possum. There, he writes, "People said, 'That's roadkill!' ‘No it's not,’ I said. ‘It's a cultural story.’” Whether it’s a session with an Incan witch doctor in Ecuador who blows fire on him, spits on him, thrashes him with poisonous branches and beats him with a live guinea pig or drinking blood in Uganda and cow urine tonic in India or eating roasted bats on an uninhabited island in Samoa, Zimmern cheerfully celebrates the undiscovered destinations and weird wonders still remaining in our increasingly globalized world.




Strange Truth


Book Description

From the critically acclaimed author of Honor Girl, comes a “sassy, sultry whodunit” (School Library Journal) set in an Atlanta boarding school that’s infused with subversive humor and featuring a cast of bizarre and unforgettable characters. It’s better to know the truth. At least sometimes. Halfway through Friday night’s football game, beautiful cheerleader Brittany Montague—dressed as the giant Winship Wildcat mascot—hurls herself off a bridge into Atlanta’s surging Chattahoochee River. Just like that, she’s gone. Eight days later, Benny Flax and Virginia Leeds will be the only ones who know why. Their search for the truth reveals a web of depravity hiding in plain sight at their picture perfect school. When love becomes obsession, how far will someone go to make their twisted fantasies a reality? And who has the power to stop them? A twisty, turny mystery loaded with the perfect punch of satire and heart.




The Book of Bizarre Truths


Book Description

How late is fashionably late?




Strange But True


Book Description

Presents over one hundred thirty short stories of actual events and includes mysterious tales of ghosts and alien encounters, time travel and out-of-body experiences, psychic warnings and miraculous healings, and guardian angels.




Samuel Pepys and the Strange Wrecking of the Gloucester


Book Description

In 1682, Charles II invited his scandalous younger brother, James, Duke of York, to return from exile and take his rightful place as heir to the throne. To celebrate, the future king set sail in a fleet of eight ships destined for Edinburgh, where he would reunite with his young pregnant wife. Yet disaster struck en route, somewhere off the Norfolk coast. The royal frigate in which he sailed, the Gloucester, sank, causing some two hundred sailors and courtiers to perish. The diarist Samuel Pepys had been asked to sail with James but refused the invitation, preferring to travel in one of the other ships. Why? What did he know that others did not? Nigel Pickford's compelling account of the catastrophe draws on a richness of historical material including letters, diaries and ships' logs, revealing for the first time the full drama and tragic consequences of a shipwreck that shook Restoration Britain.




Bizarre History


Book Description

This is history served up high-octane, with all of the fun and none of the boredom. It's not about memorizing lists of dates or names, or remembering which general won what battle. Instead, BIZARRE HISTORY merrily digs up the scandals, the strangeness, and the scintillating details that illuminate personalities, events, and real life. Think of it not as a textbook, but as history?s juicy unauthorized biography--a historical document in which relevance never gets in the way of a good read. There are humorous quotes from famous figures such as Mark Twain and Napoleon ("History is a myth that men agree to believe"), as well as witty commentary about leaders of the past. After all, while you're probably familiar with William the Conquerer, have you heard of Charles the Simple, ruler of France and son of Louis the Stammerer? What about the emperor who entered Rome in a chariot drawn by 50 naked slaves?and invented the first whoopee cushion, too? But you can find lots of wildness closer to home: George Washington wrote love letters to a married woman; "Old Hickory" Andrew Jackson had been in at least seven duels before becoming president; and Benjamin Franklin fathered an illegitimate child. Paranoia also plagued a few of our presidents: the only thing Franklin Roosevelt had to fear was the number 13: he wouldn't invite 13 guests to a dinner party or travel on the 13th. And both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan had encounters with UFOs! The fun facts span the globe, covering the crazy acts of Caligula in the Roman Empire; the "Dog Shogun" in 17th century Japan; the "Pork and Beans" war between the US and Canada; and even details about fashion, medicine, sports, and the real Dracula. It's a wild journey that no one could resist!




Weird Arizona


Book Description

Each fun and intriguing volume offers more than 250 illustrated pages of places where tourists usually don't venture, including oddball curiosities, local legends, crazy characters, and peculiar roadside attractions.