Mandy and Tania are sexy but struggling nightclub dancers living in the heart of London's Soho nightlife, and they face a crisis. Will possessive club owner Big Mack find out about Mandy's affair with Gerry and set his sidekicks on them? Will he discover that he is owed money that was borrowed from the club's till, gambled and lost on the club's roulette table and then stolen from the day's take? Will Gerry be discovered hiding in Mandy's bathroom? Will Terry be caught delivering dinner? Will Terry reveal that he is really Gerry and that Gerry is Terry? Will anyone figure out what is going on, and will they all survive until the curtain comes down? The action doesn't slow down from beginning to end in this madcap comedy by the author of Don't Dress for Dinner and Perfect Wedding
In order to succeed in a construction business you have to be able to mark up the price of your jobs to cover overhead expenses and make a decent profit. The problem is how much to mark it up. You don't want to lose jobs because you charge too much, and you don't want to work for free because you've charged too little. If you know how much to mark up you can apply it to your job costs and arrive at the right sales price for your work. This book gives you the background and the calculations necessary to easily figure the markup that is right for your business. Includes a CD-ROM with forms and checklists for your use.
A New York Times bestseller • A New York Times Notable Book “The tale of how Konnikova followed a story about poker players and wound up becoming a story herself will have you riveted, first as you learn about her big winnings, and then as she conveys the lessons she learned both about human nature and herself.” —The Washington Post It's true that Maria Konnikova had never actually played poker before and didn't even know the rules when she approached Erik Seidel, Poker Hall of Fame inductee and winner of tens of millions of dollars in earnings, and convinced him to be her mentor. But she knew her man: a famously thoughtful and broad-minded player, he was intrigued by her pitch that she wasn't interested in making money so much as learning about life. She had faced a stretch of personal bad luck, and her reflections on the role of chance had led her to a giant of game theory, who pointed her to poker as the ultimate master class in learning to distinguish between what can be controlled and what can't. And she certainly brought something to the table, including a Ph.D. in psychology and an acclaimed and growing body of work on human behavior and how to hack it. So Seidel was in, and soon she was down the rabbit hole with him, into the wild, fiercely competitive, overwhelmingly masculine world of high-stakes Texas Hold'em, their initial end point the following year's World Series of Poker. But then something extraordinary happened. Under Seidel's guidance, Konnikova did have many epiphanies about life that derived from her new pursuit, including how to better read, not just her opponents but far more importantly herself; how to identify what tilted her into an emotional state that got in the way of good decisions; and how to get to a place where she could accept luck for what it was, and what it wasn't. But she also began to win. And win. In a little over a year, she began making earnest money from tournaments, ultimately totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. She won a major title, got a sponsor, and got used to being on television, and to headlines like "How one writer's book deal turned her into a professional poker player." She even learned to like Las Vegas. But in the end, Maria Konnikova is a writer and student of human behavior, and ultimately the point was to render her incredible journey into a container for its invaluable lessons. The biggest bluff of all, she learned, is that skill is enough. Bad cards will come our way, but keeping our focus on how we play them and not on the outcome will keep us moving through many a dark patch, until the luck once again breaks our way.
Eminem's bodyguard details the good times, hardships, drug abuse, domestic violence, scandals, sex, near-death experiences, murder, oppression of employees, and bitter betrayal that take place in the hip-hop/rapper's world.
Master the art and science of using shameless propaganda for personal and social good. Influencers have always deployed the power of hype to get what they want. But never in history have people been so susceptible to propaganda and persuasion as they are now. Hype truly runs our world. Imagine if you could generate and leverage hype for positive purposes—like legitimate business success, helping people, or effecting positive change in your community. Michael F. Schein teaches you how. In The Hype Handbook, the notorious marketing guru provides 12 fundamental strategies for creating and leveraging hype for good, including ways to: Attract attention from people that matter Create a community of acolytes to further your cause Create an atmosphere of curiosity and intrigue Sell your message with the skill of master Create a step-by-step “manifesto” Citing the latest research in psychology, sociology and neuroscience, Schein breaks the concept of hype down into a simple set of strategies, skills, and techniques—and illustrates his methods through stories of the world’s most effective hype artists, including American propagandist Edward Bernays, Alice Cooper manager Shep Gordon, celebrity preacher Aimee Semple McPherson, Spartan Race founder Joe De Sena, and digital guru Gary Vaynerchuk. Whatever your temperament, education, budget, background, or natural ability, The Hype Handbook delivers everything you need to apply the most powerful tools of persuasion for personal and business success.
"Set earlier than most of Balzac's Comédie Humaine, the novel covers the years 1803-6, when Napoleon was making himself first Consul and then Emperor. The inclusion of Napoleon himself, as well as figures like Talleyrand and Fouché, makes this a historical novel. But it is also an early example of the detective story, in which the sinister, implacable police agent, Corentin, stalks his way towards vengeance on his aristocratic enemies."--Back cover.
One of the great series in the history of the American detective story gets even better when Spenser is hired by a jilted bride to follow a cheating husband, only to cross paths with a detective hired to tail the two-timing wife. They aren't the most trusting couple in town, but as it turns out, they are the most dangerous.
For thirty years starting in the mid-1970s, the byline of Jim Dooley appeared on riveting investigative stories of organized crime and political corruption that headlined the front page of Honolulu’s morning daily. In Sunny Skies, Shady Characters, James Dooley revisits highlights of his career as a hard-hitting investigative reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser and, in later years, for KITV television and the online Hawaii Reporter. His lively backstories on how he chased these high-profile scandals make fascinating reading, while providing an insider’s look at the business of journalism and the craft of investigative reporting. Dooley’s first assignment as an investigative journalist involved the city housing project of Kukui Plaza, which introduced him to the “pay to play” method of awarding government contracts to obliging consultants. In later stories, he scrutinized bloody struggles over illicit gambling revenue, the murder of a city prosecutor’s son, local syndicate ties to the Teamsters Union, and the dealings of Bishop Estate. His groundbreaking coverage of the forays by yakuza into Hawaii and the continental United States were the first of its kind in American journalism. As Dooley pursued stories from the underside of island society, names of respected public figures and those of violent criminals filled his notebook: entertainer Don Ho, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, Governors George Ariyoshi and Ben Cayetano, Mayor Frank Fasi, and notorious felons Henry Huihui, Nappy Pulawa, and Ronnie Ching. Woven throughout is the name of Big Island rancher Larry Mehau—was he the “godfather of organized crime” in Hawaii as alleged by the FBI, or simply an ex-cop who befriended power brokers in the course of doing business for his security guard firm? The book includes a timeline of Mehau’s activities to allow readers to judge for themselves.
