Stardom Kills


Book Description

First in the series to wet your appetite is Stardom Kills. A flowing page-turner intertwined with a plot mix of engrossing characters: Hollywood's Elite, Celebrities, Media Hounds and Shady Mortals-will all keep you enthralled and guessing. Henry Tyler and his wife Barbara, who reside in La Jolla, CA since Henry's retirement, are back in L.A. vacationing with their son and daughter-in-law at the famous Beverly Hills Hotel. Famous guests in the hotel include Pop Diva Alicia Hill, who is relaxing while promoting her newest smash album. On Alicia's big night of jubilation sponsored by her record company, cameras are flashing, applause is plentiful and the party is in full swing until evil intervenes. Henry is nearby and hears a shrilling scream drawing him to the catastrophe. Alicia Hill has collapsed to her death. While LAPD's finest detectives labor the perplexing homicide, Henry is powerless at getting the cold-blooded homicide out of his mind and does some snooping and analytical investigating on his own. With little to go on, the challenging chase is on. Is an 'Ulterior motive" involved, or was there an 'Ax to grind?" Hang on, it will be a wild ride.




Restless Souls


Book Description

Restless Souls is the true, bone-chilling chronicle of the Manson Family murders and its aftermath, from the point of view of the victims’ families. When actress Sharon Tate and four others were brutally murdered by Charles Manson and his followers, the world was shocked. More than forty years later, the gruesome barbarity of the “Manson Family” still fascinates and horrifies. This true crime memoir by Alisa Statman, a 20-year Tate family friend, and Brie Tate, the daughter of Sharon Tate’s niece, includes interviews with the Tate family, accounts from personal letters, tape recordings, home movies, and private diaries. Complete with color photographs and personal insights, Restless Souls is the most revealing, riveting, and emotionally raw account of the gruesome slayings, the hunt and capture of the killers, and the behind-the-scenes drama of their trials, as well as a touching view of the torment that the victims families’ have endured for years after such tragedy.




The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano


Book Description

The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano: Flowering Blood is a detailed aesthetic, Deleuzian, and phenomenological exploration of Japan’s finest currently-working film director, performer, and celebrity. The volume uniquely explores Kitano’s oeuvre through the tropes of stillness and movement, becoming animal, melancholy and loss, intensity, schizophrenia, and radical alterity; and through the aesthetic temperatures of color, light, camera movement, performance and urban and oceanic space. In this highly original monograph, all of Kitano’s films are given due consideration, including A Scene at the Sea (1991), Sonatine (1993), Dolls (2002), and Outrage (2010).




The Films of Jess Franco


Book Description

The Films of Jess Franco seeks to address the scholarly neglect of this legendary cult director and to broaden the conversation around the director's work in ways that will be of interest to fans and academics alike.




The Cover Wife


Book Description

From the award-winning author of Safe Houses—an "intelligent, tense and sharply written espionage thriller” (Wall Street Journal) about a CIA agent and a young expat who find themselves caught up in a dangerous world, whose secrets, if revealed, could have disastrous repercussions for them both. When CIA agent Claire Saylor is told that she’ll be going undercover in Hamburg to pose as the wife of an academic who has published a controversial interpretation of the Quran’s promise to martyrs, she assumes the job is a punishment for past unorthodox behavior. But when she discovers her team leader is Paul Bridger, another Agency maverick, she realizes there may be more to this mission than meets the eye—and not just for professional reasons. Meanwhile, across town in Hamburg, Mahmoud, a recent Moroccan émigré, begins to fall under the sway of a group of radicals at his local mosque. The deeper he’s drawn into the group, the greater the danger he faces, and he is soon torn between his obligations to them and his feelings toward a beautiful Westernized Muslim woman. As Claire learns the truth about her mission, and Mahmoud grows closer to the radicals, the danger between them builds and spells disaster far beyond the CIA.




Bob Dylan


Book Description

Bob Dylan’s contribution to popular music is immeasurable. Venerated as rock’s one true genius, Dylan is considered responsible for introducing a new range of topics and new lyrical complexity into popular music. Without Bob Dylan, rock critic Dave Marsh once claimed, there would be no popular music as we understand it today. As such an exalted figure, Dylan has been the subject of countless books and intricate scholarship considering various dimensions of both the man and his music. This book places new emphasis on Dylan as a rock star. Whatever else Dylan is, he is a star – iconic, charismatic, legendary, enigmatic. No one else in popular music has maintained such star status for so long a period of time. Showing how theories of stardom can help us understand both Bob Dylan and the history of rock music, Lee Marshall provides new insight into how Dylan’s songs acquire meaning and affects his relationship with his fans, his critics and the recording industry. Marshall discusses Dylan’s emergence as a star in the folk revival (the “spokesman for a generation”) and the formative role that Dylan plays in creating a new type of music – rock – and a new type of star. Bringing the book right up to date, he also sheds new light on how Dylan’s later career has been shaped by his earlier star image and how Dylan repeatedly tried to throw off the limitations and responsibilities of his stardom. The book concludes by considering the revival of Dylan over the past ten years and how Dylan’s stardom has developed in a way that contains, but is not overshadowed by, his achievements in the 1960s.




Book of the Subgenius


Book Description

Either a hilarious parody of a religious text or an informative collection of totally real stories from a definitely real church that could be the foundation-stone of the promised kingdom of peace and harmony—the decision is yours to make. What is the Church of SubGenius? Who is J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, and what kind of truths does he know? What is "Slack" and why do you need it? Will aliens truly descend upon our planet, and can you survive its destruction by becoming a member? Does The Book of SubGenius answer any of these questions? There are no straightfoward answers—you just have to read it yourself.




PJ Harvey and Music Video Performance


Book Description

PJ Harvey’s performances are premised on the core contention that she is somehow causing ’trouble’. Just how this trouble can be theorised within the context of the music video and what it means for a development of the ways we might conceptualise ’disruption’ and think about music video lies at the heart of this book. Abigail Gardner mixes feminist theory and critical models from film and video scholarship as a rich means of interrogating Harvey’s work and redefining her disruptive strategies. The book presents a rethinking of the masquerade that allies it to cultural memory, precipitated by Gardner’s claim that Harvey’s performances are conversations with the past, specifically with visualised memories of archetypes of femininity. Harvey’s masquerades emerge from her conversations and renegotiations with both national and transatlantic musical, visual and lyrical heritages. It is the first academic book to present analysis of Harvey’s music videos and opens up fresh avenues into exploring what is at stake in the video work of one of Britain’s premier singer-songwriters. It extends the discussion on music video to consider how to make sense of the rapidly developing digital environment in which it now sits. The interdisciplinary nature of the book should attract readers from a range of subject areas including popular music studies, cultural studies, media and communication studies, and gender studies.




Summary of Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard's Killing the Legends


Book Description

Get the Summary of Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard's Killing the Legends in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. "Killing the Legends" chronicles the lives and careers of three iconic figures: Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Muhammad Ali. The book delves into Elvis's film career, including his on-screen chemistry with Ann-Margret in "Viva Las Vegas," his secret romance with her, and his relationship with Priscilla Beaulieu. It also explores the influence of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, on his career decisions and personal life. The narrative follows Elvis's marriage to Priscilla, his health decline, and his eventual death.




Escape to Death


Book Description

One dead girl. One broken hero. A sorceress and a serial killer. One massive conspiracy. Who will prevail? A transgender teen goes missing, but Charlie Starker, LA's most respected and feared private investigator thinks the girl may have been murdered by a sorceress disguised as America's favorite daytime television hostess. As Hollywood descends into homicidal madness, Starker bravely stares down the demons swarming around him. But, will he ever be able to face those raging within. When a mad scientist unleashes his monstrous creations upon an unsuspecting world, one broken hero must answer the call of duty, or die trying!