Sometimes solving a crime takes a hard guy who's not afraid to work outside the law, and PI Nick Valentine swerves through the underbelly of St. Louis looking for answers. With every law he breaks, every drink he takes, and every Oxycontin he snorts, Valentine lurches closer to finding the truth. Or floating facedown in the Missouri River. Brutally funny, wild, this no-holds- barred crime novel reads like Elmore Leonard on meth. Crazy and addictive, you'll want more.
Sometimes solving a crime takes a hard guy who's not afraid to work outside the law, and PI Nick Valentine swerves through the underbelly of St. Louis looking for answers. With every law he breaks, every drink he takes, and every Oxycontin he snorts, Valentine lurches closer to finding the truth. Or floating facedown in the Missouri River.Brutally funny, wild, this no-holds- barred crime novel reads like Elmore Leonard on meth. Crazy and addictive, you'll want more.
That's how Vanity Fair described the record business turmoil of the 1990s, which moved the Warner Music Group -- the world's number one record company -- from the entertainment pages to the front pages. Suddenly, decades of riotous fun and booming business went splat. Top music executives got evicted from their offices, some escorted by company guards. Why? The answers are in Exploding -- the most insightful and delightful book about the record business ever written. In the rock explosion of the Sixties and Seventies, Warner Bros., Atlantic, and Elektra Records dominated the business as the Warner Music Group. But by the Nineties, the success of WMG was shaken by egos and corporate politics that left the company struggling for identity in a dramatically changing industry. This is the story of that long, strange trip. Your host is the ultimate insider: Stan Cornyn, a key creative force behind the Warner Music Group's stunning rise. During more than thirty years at the company, Cornyn went through what the news media could never uncover. In a freewheeling, vastly entertaining narrative, Cornyn takes us behind the scenes, seats us in the conference rooms, and shows us the interactions between the stars and the suits -- using the same irreverent wit that produced the marketing campaigns that helped put Warner on the map. Exploding is populated by music stars like Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Lil' Kim, Dr. Dre, the Grateful Dead, Queen, Madonna, Ice-T, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, Neil Young, Alice Cooper, and dozens more, even the legendary supergroup Scorpio. (Never heard of Scorpio? You'll find out why.) And it introduces you to the most colorful businesspeople ever: hyperintense record sellers who shave their heads; throw doves off a roof; send pig heads through the mail; provide the money, meds, and mammaries -- anything -- to get their records on the air. Here is the music business as you've never seen it: at its wildest, in its wackiest fifty years, bursting with hits and cash, until, by the end, it's just plain Exploding.
“Rough and ready suspense, encompassing a wide array of characters from the sour side of life” from the author of Frank Sinatra in a Blender (Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone). In Gasconade County, Missouri—once called the meth capital of the world—Deputy Sheriff Dale Banks discovers $52,000 hidden in the broken-down trailer that Jerry Dean Skaggs uses for cooking crystal. And he takes it. Banks knows what he did was wrong, but he did it for all the right reasons. At least, he thinks so. But for every wrong, there is a consequence. Jerry Dean can’t afford to lose that $52,000—he owes it to his partners and to a crooked cop. He also can’t afford to disappoint the crazed and fearsome Reverend Butch Pogue, who is expecting Jerry Dean to deliver the chemicals the reverend needs for his next batch of meth. To avoid the holy man’s wrath, Jerry Dean sets in motion a series of events that will threaten Banks’s family, his life, and everything he thinks he knows about the world.
From the author of the popular cult classics Frank Sinatra in a Blender and A Swollen Red Sun comes a riveting novel of redemption and suspense that asks the question: just how far are you willing to go for love? Would you give up everything you’ve ever known? Risk your freedom? Risk your life? When newly divorced Sage arrives in Bali, his only plan is to drink on the beach until his money runs out and then return home to start over. So he’s caught by surprise when he falls in love with the country and its people, particularly the attractive and considerate Ratri. Soon Sage can no longer see himself living anywhere else, even as his funds dwindle and his visa’s expiration date nears. Increasingly desperate to stay with Ratri, Sage finds himself being recruited by a drug-smuggling ring—in a country where drug trafficking is punishable by death. The promised pay-out would be enough to set Sage and Ratri up for life, but only if Sage isn’t caught. Will Sage go home and risk the life he envisions with Ratri, or risk everything to stay and make that life possible? Both lyrical and suspenseful, intimate and ambitious, END OF THE OCEAN is an unforgettable look at a brutal business in one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Nominated for the Anthony Award for Best First Novel Ash McKenna is a blunt instrument. Find someone, scare someone, carry something; point him at the job, he gets it done. He generally accepts money upon completion, though a bottle of whiskey works, too--he's comfortable working on a barter system. It's not the career he dreamed about (archeologist) but it keeps him comfortable in his ever-changing East Village neighborhood. That's until Chell, the woman he loves, leaves him a voicemail looking for help--a voicemail he gets two hours after her body is found. Ash hunts for her killer with the grace of a wrecking ball, running afoul of a drag queen crime lord and stumbling into a hard-boiled role playing game that might be connected to a hipster turf war. Along the way, he's forced to face the memories of his tumultuous relationship with Chell, his unresolved anger over his father’s death, and the consequences of his own violent tendencies. NEW YORKED takes you deep into the seedy underbelly of New York with an unforgettable literary voice steeped in the classic noir tradition, and a glimpse at a city disappearing right before our very eyes.
“Diners and readers alike will be struck by the accessibility of classic dishes . . . but it’s the family recipes that are the real jewels here.” —Publishers Weekly Foreword by Ben Stiller Patsy’s Restaurant, so famous for its classic Neapolitan Italian food that Frank Sinatra used to fly his favorite dishes from its kitchen to his gigs, has had three chefs since it was founded in 1944: Patsy, his son Joe, and his grandson Sal Scognamillo. The three passed down family recipes, invented great new twists on beloved classics, and emphasized giving their diners—many of them celebrities—exactly what they wanted to eat. Patsy’s Italian Family Cookbook features recipes we really want to eat—and can easily make at home, including: Meatballs! Pasta with Lentils Penne alla Vodka with Shrimp Pork Scaloppine alla Vodka Chicken Pizzaola Chicken Liver Cacciatore Bass Puttanesca Stuffed Veal Chop Patsy’s Famous Onion Relish Stuffed Zeppole Tiramisu Lemon Ricotta Cheesecake A big, warm, beautiful Italian cookbook with full color throughout, Patsy’s Italian Family Cookbook is a great book for those who know the restaurant, and the nationally distributed sauce and pasta line, but also for those who love classic Italian. “Sal is one of New York’s most familiar restaurant chefs and his food is beloved by many. I have had the good fortune to have Sal on my show where he cooked his tasty clams oreganata and baccala salad, demonstrating why Patsy’s is one of New York’s favorite eateries. I look forward to trying all of the recipes in his new book.” —Martha Stewart
Throughout his career, Derrick Parker worked on some of the biggest criminal cases in rap history, from the shooting at Club New York, where Derrick personally escorted Jennifer Lopez to police headquarters, to the first shooting of Tupac Shakur. Always straddling the fence between "po-po" and NYPD outsider, Derrick threatened police tradition to try to get the cases solved. He was the first detective to interview an informant offering a detailed account of Biggie Smalls's murder. He protected one of the only surviving eyewitnesses to the Jam Master Jay murder and knows the identity of the killers as well as the motivation behind the shooting. Notorious C.O.P. reveals hip-hop crimes that never made the paper—like the robbing of Foxy Brown and the first Hot 97 shooting—and answers some lingering questions about murders that have remained unsolved. The book that both the NYPD and the hip-hop community don't want you to read, Notorious C.O.P. is the first insider look at the real links between crime and hip-hop and the inefficiencies that have left some of the most widely publicized murders in entertainment history unsolved.
The intimate story of one of the great American bands of our time, creators of the controversial masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot When alt-country heroes-turned-rock-iconoclasts Wilco handed in their fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, to the band’s label, Reprise, a division of Warner Brothers, fans looked forward to the release of another challenging, genre-bending departure from their previous work. The band aimed to build on previous sales and critical acclaim with its boldest and most ambitious album yet, but was instead urged by skittish Reprise execs to make the record more “radio friendly.” When Wilco wouldn’t give, they found themselves without a label. Instead, they used the Internet to introduce the album to their fans, and eventually sold the record to Nonesuch, another division of Warner. Wilco was vindicated when the album debuted at No. 13 on the Billboard charts and posted the band’s strongest sales to date. Wilco: Learning How to Die traces the band’s story to its deepest origins in Southern Illinois, where Jeff Tweedy began growing into one of the best songwriters of his generation. As we witness how his music grew from its punk and alt-country origins, some of the key issues and questions in our culture are addressed: How is music of substance created while the gulf between art and commerce widens in the corporate consolidation era? How does the music industry make or break a hit? How do working musicians reconcile the rewards of artistic risk with the toll it exacts on their personal life? This book was written with the cooperation of Wilco band members past and present. It is also fully up to date, covering the latest changes in personnel and the imminent release of the band’s fifth album, A Ghost Is Born, sure to be one of the most talked-about albums of 2004.
Though his strange and premature death became one of Hollywood Babylon's weirdest chapters, this King of the Crooners' and 'Valentino of Radio' had a voice that spoke to a world still drifting in the malaise following the First World War. Taking a devoted and personal look into this crooner's art and life, this biography derives much of its information from Columbo's otherwise long-lost personal effects, including original movie transcripts, love letters to and from Carole Lombard and other movie actresses, and the singer's daily diaries.'
