A Facebook scandal goes viral after prom in this comedic, edgy novel from the author of Bittersweet and Twenty Boy Summer. Lucy’s learned some important lessons from tabloid darling Jayla Heart’s all-too-public blunders: avoid the spotlight, don’t feed the Internet trolls, and keep your secrets secret. The policy has served Lucy well all through high school, so when her best friend, Ellie, gets sick before prom and begs her to step in as Cole’s date, she accepts with a smile, silencing about ten different reservations. Like the one where she’d rather stay home shredding online zombies. And especially the one where she’s been secretly in love with Cole since the dawn of time. When Cole surprises her at the after-party with a kiss under the stars, it’s everything Lucy has ever dreamed of…and the biggest BFF deal breaker ever. But before they get the chance to ’fess up to Ellie, Lucy’s own Facebook profile mysteriously explodes with compromising photos of her and Cole, along with tons of other students’ party indiscretions. Tagged. Liked. And furiously viral. By Monday morning, Lucy’s been branded a slut, a backstabber, and a narc mired in a tabloid-worthy scandal. Lucy’s been battling undead masses online long enough to know that there’s only one way to survive a disaster of this magnitude: Stand up and fight. There’s just one snag—Cole. Turns out Lucy’s not the only one who’s been harboring unrequited love…
It's no wonder Angela Rivers feels satisfied—maybe a little too satisfied—with her life. Married to handsome congressman Will, with a successful career as an investigative reporter turned talk-show host, Angela has everything under control. Then a tape surfaces of Will having sex with an underage girl. Suddenly, Will is in jail, Angela is broke and jobless, and their marriage is over. Humiliated to be in the middle of a media firestorm after turning the spotlight on others for so long, Angela flees California for Chicago. There, with the support of her friend Regina, she begins to get her career back on track. Dating is the furthest thing from her mind—until she meets marathon coach Jesse, who's also piecing his life together after a breakup. In spite of their wariness, and the problems caused by Jesse's teenage daughter, the attraction blossoms. And when Will returns, vengeful after losing everything, Angela must find a way to defend her good name, her reputation and the unexpected love that has come to mean so much.…
Humphrey Bogart said of Confidential: “Everybody reads it but they say the cook brought it into the house” . . . Tom Wolfe called it “the most scandalous scandal magazine in the history of the world” . . . Time defined it as “a cheesecake of innuendo, detraction, and plain smut . . . dig up one sensational ‘fact,’ embroider it for 1,500 to 2,000 words. If the subject thinks of suing, he may quickly realize that the fact is true, even if the embroidery is not.” Here is the never-before-told tale of Confidential magazine, America’s first tabloid, which forever changed our notion of privacy, our image of ourselves, and the practice of journalism in America. The magazine came out every two months, was printed on pulp paper, and cost a quarter. Its pages were filled with racy stories, sex scandals, and political exposés. It offered advice about the dangers of cigarettes and advocated various medical remedies. Its circulation, at the height of its popularity, was three million. It was first published in 1952 and took the country by storm. Readers loved its lurid red-and-yellow covers; its sensational stories filled with innuendo and titillating details; its articles that went far beyond most movie magazines, like Photoplay and Modern Screen, and told the real stories such trade publications as Variety and the Hollywood Reporter couldn’t, since they, and the movie magazines, were financially dependent on—or controlled by—the Hollywood studios. In Confidential’s pages, homespun America was revealed as it really was: our most sacrosanct movie stars and heroes were exposed as wife beaters (Bing Crosby), homosexuals (Rock Hudson and Liberace), neglectful mothers (Rita Hayworth), sex obsessives (June Allyson, the cutie with the page boy and Peter Pan collar), mistresses of the rich and dangerous (Kim Novak, lover of Ramfis Trujillo, playboy son of the Dominican Republic dictator). Confidential’s alliterative headlines told of tawny temptresses (black women passing for white), pinko partisans (liberals), lisping lads (homosexuals) . . . and promised its readers what the newspapers wouldn’t reveal: “The Real Reason for Marilyn Monroe’s Divorce” . . . How “James Dean Knew He Had a Date with Death” . . . The magazine’s style, success, and methods ultimately gave birth to the National Enquirer, Star, People, E!, Access Hollywood, and TMZ . . . We see the two men at the magazine’s center: its founder and owner, Robert Harrison, a Lithuanian Jew from New York’s Lower East Side who wrote for The New York Graphic and published a string of girlie magazines, including Titter, Wink, and Flirt (Bogart called the magazine’s founder and owner the King of Leer) . . . and Confidential ’s most important editor: Howard Rushmore, small-town boy from a Wyoming homestead; passionate ideologue; former member of the Communist Party who wrote for the Daily Worker, renounced his party affiliation, and became a virulent Red-hunter; close pal of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and expert witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, naming the names of actors and writers Rushmore claimed had been Communists and fellow travelers. Henry Scott writes the story of two men, who out of their radically different pasts and conflicting obsessions, combined to make the magazine the perfect confluence of explosive ingredients that reflected the America of its time, as the country struggled to reconcile Hollywood’s blissful fantasy of American life with the daunting nightmare of the nuclear age . . .
Dante D'Arezzo is the last person famous songwriter Justina Perry wants to see at her best friend's wedding. The wickedly sexy Italian is ruthless to the core. He broke her heart once; she won't surrender to his insatiable desire again. But if Dante wants a big scandal...that's what he'll get! Justina's pregnancy hits the front page and Dante knows he's the father. He'll make her pay for trying to keep his child from him. His 'Miss Independent' is about to become completely dependent...on him! This Italian will claim his heir and – if he wants her – a wife!
We all relish a good scandal - the larger the figure (governor, judge) and more shocking the particulars (nappies, cigars) - the better. But why do people feel compelled to act out their tangled psychodramas on the national stage, and why do we so enjoy watching them, hurling our condemnations while savouring every lurid detail?With 'pointed daggers of prose' (The New Yorker), Laura Kipnis examines contemporary downfall sagas to lay bare the American psyche: what we desire, what we punish, and what we disavow. She delivers virtuoso analyses of four paradigmatic cases: a lovelorn astronaut, an unhinged judge, a venomous whistleblower, and an over-imaginative memoirist. The motifs are classic - revenge, betrayal, ambition, madness - though the pitfalls are ones we all negotiate daily. After all, every one of us is a potential scandal in the making: failed self-knowledge and colossal self-deception - the necessary ingredients - are our collective plight. In How to Cause a Scandal, bad behaviour is the entry point for a brilliant cultural romp as well as an anti-civics lesson. 'Shove your rules', says scandal, and no doubt every upright citizen, deep within, cheers the transgression-as long as it's someone else's head on the block.
Theodore Boone returns in this sixth adventure from international and worldwide bestseller John Grisham! Thirteen-year-old Theodore Boone knows every judge, police officer, and court clerk in Strattenburg. He has even helped bring a fugitive to justice. But even a future star lawyer like Theo has to deal with statewide standardized testing. When an anonymous tip leads the school board to investigate a suspicious increase in scores at another local middle school, Theo finds himself thrust in the middle of a cheating scandal. With insider knowledge and his future on the line, Theo must follow his keen instincts to do what’s right in the newest case for clever kid lawyer Theo Boone. "Not since Nancy Drew has a nosy, crime-obsessed kid been so hard to resist."—The New York Times "Smartly written."—USA Today "Edge-of-your-seat drama, sophisticated plotting, and plenty of spunk."—Chicago Sun-Times "Classic Grisham."—The Los Angeles Times
The twelfth novel in Mercedes Lackey's magical Elemental Masters series reimagines Sherlock Holmes in a richly-detailed alternate 20th-century England Christmas is a very special time of year. It is special for Psychic Nan Killian and Medium Sarah Lyon-White and their ward Suki, who are determined to celebrate it properly. It is special for their friends, Doctor John Watson, and his wife Mary, both Elemental Masters, who have found great delight in the season seeing it through young Suki’s eyes. It is also special to others...for very different reasons. For Christmas Eve is also hallowed to dark forces, powers older than mankind, powers that come awake on this long, cold night. Powers best left alone. Powers that could shake the foundations of London and beyond. It begins slowly. Women disappearing in the dark of night, women only missed by those of their own kind. The whispers only begin when they start to reappear—because when they do, they are no longer sane. And when Nan and Sarah and the Watsons are called on to examine these victims, they discover that it was no ordinary horror of the streets that drove them mad. But then, the shadows reach for other victims—girls of good, even exalted families, who vanish from concerts, lectures, and evening balls. And it will take the combined forces of Magic, Psychic Powers, and the world's greatest detective to stop the darkness before it can conquer all.
A shy heiress and a well-known rake face a scandal-forced marriage that might be true love in the latest irresistible romance from the national bestselling author of Marry in Haste. Shy young heiress, Lady Lily Rutherford, is in no hurry to marry. She dreams of true love and a real courtship. But when disaster strikes, she finds herself facing a scandal-forced marriage to her rescuer, Edward Galbraith, a well known rake. Despite his reputation Lily is drawn to the handsome Galbraith. In the gamble of her life, she agrees to marry him, hoping to turn a convenient marriage into a love match. As heir to a title, Galbraith knows he must wed, so a convenient marriage suits him perfectly. But there is a darkness in his past, and secrets he refuses to share with his tender-hearted young bride. All Lily's efforts to get close to him fall on stony ground, and in desperation she retreats to his childhood home--the place he's avoided for nearly a decade. Must Lily reconcile herself to a marriage without love? Or will Galbraith realize that this warm-hearted, loving girl is the key to healing the wounds of his past--and his heart?
No one is quite who they seem to be in the twisty, soapy, gasp-inducing world of the Debutantes by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, #1 bestselling author of The Inheritance Games. Think of the White Gloves like the Junior League— by way of Skull and Bones. Reluctant debutante Sawyer Taft joined Southern high society for one reason and one reason alone: to identify and locate her biological father. But the answers Sawyer found during her debutante year only left her with more questions and one potentially life-ruining secret. When her cousin Lily ropes her into pledging a mysterious, elite, and all-female secret society called the White Gloves, Sawyer soon discovers that someone in the group's ranks may have the answers she's looking for. Things are looking up . . . until Sawyer and the White Gloves make a disturbing discovery near the family's summer home—and uncover a twisted secret, decades in the making. ** Check out Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s bestselling The Naturals and Inheritance Games series!!
This is the compelling story of how one of Japan's biggest motorcycle manufacturers stole a Nazi rocket scientist's engine secrets from behind the Iron Curtain to conquer the world. In 1961, with the Cold War at its height, East German motorcycle manufacturer MZ was using World War II rocket technology to win Grands Prix, only for rider Ernst Degner to defect and sell the secrets to Suzuki, while his wife and children were drugged and smuggled through the Berlin Wall. The following year Suzuki and Degner made history by winning the world title. Branded a traitor by the communists, Degner suffered horrific injuries in a fiery racing accident and died in mysterious circumstances.
