It is now 35 years since Deep Purple first came together and today -- 14 musicians, 17 albums, and millions of record sales later -- the group remains a monster. Smoke on the Water is the first book in more than 20 years to tell the story of this remarkable band, from their grandiose inception in 1968 to the release of their latest album in 2003. Drawing from candid interviews with band members, associates, and fans alike, it traces the group through some of the most turbulent times that any band has survived, placing the band's own music in vivid context and illustrating just how profoundly this one group helped change the world.
The Hon. Lucius Kluge - honourable, lucky, clever - might be the only guy in Los Angeles who's still living in the past. Lucky pines for the old days of the New Hollywood, before Star Wars and superheroes blew up the movies for good. He spends his days working for an antiques business, his nights boozing and brooding on his former life as an almost-successful screenwriter. But when his ex-best friend goes AWOL and his elderly boss is assaulted during the theft of a vintage cookie jar, Lucky and his partner Raul are spurred reluctantly into something like action. A satire of sundered friendships and frayed male egos at the Hollywood intersection of art and commerce, Smoke Over Malibu is a soft-boiled mystery, a fish-out-of-water farce, a buddy comedy, an inaction thriller, a hipster indie. It's Raymond Chandler meets Nick Hornby; it's The Big Lebowski meets Lovejoy. It is absolutely, positively not a superhero blockbuster.
This gorgeous book offers a behind-the-scenes view of the most exciting houses built in Malibu since 1894, by John Lautner, Richard Meier, and Frank Gehry, among others, presented decade by decade by legendary architectural photographer Shulman and his colleague Nogai.
The year is 1988. Naval Intelligence Service Vice Admiral Mark J. 'Malibu' Bowman is on the verge of putting a .45 caliber round in his own temple. In a single moment his Gulfstream III has been torn from the sky taking with it the two women who made his life what it is. He is stopped in his intention by the arrival of his replacement. He agrees to take on a mysterious, suicidal assignment in the desolation of Southern Arizona. Once there he becomes embroiled in a project leading to a plot hatched by the President himself to take over the world. Malibu's investigation into the conspiracy leads him to form an alliance with Vierte Reich, the Fourth Reich, with world domination plans of their own. A romantic alliance with a hard core attractive bar owner further complicates his mission. And this is just the beginning. He is joined by Dallas Raines, his former Executive Officer. After 9/11, the conspiracy goes to places that will kill millions. It is up to them to overcome the opposition and stop it.
From the bestselling author of The Sunday List of Dreams and Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral comes a poignant, funny, and uplifting novel of a woman at midlife whose search for happiness within her marriage—and within herself—turns a whole town upside down. After twenty-eight years of marriage to her husband Lucky, Addy Lipton feels anything but happily married. In fact, just thinking of their garage, filled to the brim with Lucky’s useless junk collection, drives Addy dangerously close to plowing her car through it. But when Lucky wins a trip to paradise—aka Costa Rica—Addy has a faint hope they may be able to turn things around. Or maybe they won’t. Either way, Addy never gets the chance to find out. On the morning of their departure, Lucky fractures his back tossing their luggage into his truck. Now, with the man she feels she barely knows anymore parked indefinitely on her couch, Addy can’t see their already shaky relationship surviving much longer. It’s time to make some big changes—and some drastic choices. With the love and support of her devoutly single sister Hell and her workout friends, the Sweat-hers, Addy begins a crusade to revive her dreams—and she takes the women of Parker along for the ride. Soon the men will realize they’ll have to step up to the plate to keep their wives and lovers happy. And Addy will have to decide if the paradise she’s creating in Parker is big enough for two.... Filled with small-town characters and big-time soul searching, this sparkling and inspirational tale will hit you where you live—and show you that just as happiness can get buried beneath the jumble of years, it can be rediscovered…if you look hard enough for it within your heart.
On the morning of her thirtieth birthday, ex-con-turned-paparazza Nina Zero scales the Malibu hillside above the estate of a reclusive film star who hasn't been seen in a decade. Within the next few hours, a mysterious gunman shoots her, a deadly brushfire almost smokes her, an arson investigator accuses her, and a toothless Rottweiler adopts her as his new best friend. Accompanied by the toothless Rott, Zero goes on the hunt, compelled to prove that someone else set fire to the star's estate to keep the cops from jailing her for arson and -- when charred bones are discovered in the ashes -- murder. The killers are equally interested in finding her, and their desperation escalates to a bone-chilling series of violent encounters in which Nina plays hunter one moment and prey the next.
Dinner with vegetarian gangsta-rappers? Temper tantrums over "old school" designer logos? A last minute curling-iron crisis? All in a day's work for 27 year old Grace Daniels, the unwitting guardian to Maddy Malone, Hollywood's next teenage it-girl. Plucked from her Chicago day job as an interior decorator, Grace is thrust into "starsitting" at a local movie shoot when her Aunt Lana begs off sick one day. On the set, Grace meets Maddy, the temperamental if talented young starlet. Somehow navigating the outbursts and mood-swings, Grace manages to endear herself to Maddy and Maddy's only-too-happy-to-be-absent mother. So Grace can hardly refuse when they ask her to go with Maddy to Los Angeles as her adult accompaniment. And neither can Grace's boss, Jake, who thinks it will be a great opportunity for Grace to scout out the interior design market on the west coast. Once in LA, a bewildered Grace tries to keep her Prada-toting charge happy as she shepherds her through photo-shoots, radio interviews, and morning hangovers. When Grace isn't shielding Maddy from her "fans" or helping her dodge calls from her publicist, an exhausted Grace finds herself catering to the every whim of her almost A-lister. As Grace grows more accustomed to Maddy's ways, she begins to understand that despite all the celebrity stuff, Maddy really is just a kid struggling to look cool in front of her friends without getting crushed by the pressures of Hollywood. Inspired by a true story, StarSitter depicts how handling a young celebrity may be more hazardous than glamorous to one's mental health.
