Blackmail, Nazism, Mafia, blackmail, revenge, cults, missing booty - this book has it all. In March 2009, Swiss 'businessman' and alleged gigolo Helg Sgarbi was sentenced to 6 years in prison for trying to extort 7 million euros from his ex-lover Susanne Klatten, one of the richest and most powerful women in the world, and heiress to the Germany BMW fortune. But the real story is so much more than just a sordid blackmail attempt of one media-shy wealthy woman. This is a complicated and intriguing tale.
An American heiress married for her dowryWhen Victoria fell in love with the Earl of Pembroke, she never imagined he'd heartlessly wed, bed, and abandon her in the countryside. After he suddenly returns, determined to prove to her he's a changed man, she's not about to forgive him, trust him, or succumb to his scorching kisses.A future duke trapped by obligationWill has devoted his life to enraging his loathsome father by creating one scandal after the next. Duty forces him back to the wife he resents, but he isn't prepared for the raw desire she makes him feel. Seducing her will hardly be a tedious task. Guarding his heart, however, is another matter entirely.A marriage of convenience no moreWhat begins in deception and necessity turns into an attraction neither can deny. Can their newfound passion keep them together forever, or will the truth tear them apart?
Indexes the Times, Sunday times and magazine, Times literary supplement, Times educational supplement, Times educational supplement Scotland, and the Times higher education supplement.
The author believes that the religious arena has turned into a market place hence anyone can buy God and religious institutions can also canvass for membership to increase their sales. He expresses his dismay at most religions of the world and their levels of hypocrisy, particularly within the Pentecostal Christian community that is fragmenting into untold numbers and has turned into a tool of fraud and deceit; selling God, selling salvation, selling false dreams and false hopes; deploying stage- managed miracles as catch tools' and also as tools of mind slavery. He is not comfortable with suicide bombers within the Islamic community who erroneously claim that such extreme level of ugliness will lead them into heaven'. He says that the ways religious institutions are conducting themselves lately; we no longer know who created who; whether God created Man or Man created him for a purpose. According to the Christian Bible, Christ did say "do unto others as you will have them do unto you; love one another" hence the Author begs to know whether "others and one another" according to Christ mean all races and religious faiths since those golden rules are not being applied by those who told us about Christ. In the name of Capitalism and Materialism, Man has almost turned into a base animal hence making this earth look like a jungle where no rules apply and where conscience and love no more have a place. We live in times when Man create diseases and create their cures. The author believes that since most people especially Africans believe in the Bible information and Bible stories, and the Bible has it that the Pharaohs of Africa did enslave the Israelites in the past, then colonialism and slavery may be human nature and a form of revenge which one must also strive to resist. Colonialism seems to be a form of ugliness just like Apartheid, forceful dominance, slavery and other forms of Man's oppressions and inhumanity against fellow Man which happens from time to time in human history which humanity must also fight to outlive. The author disagrees with the notion that God chooses some people to rule over others, hence he believes that people choose themselves. According to the Christian Bible, Christ did say to his disciples that, greater things shall they do in his name, hence it is time that the so called Christian anointed men of God who are performing miracles only on church stages also walk on water for all to see. Unfortunately, the continent of Africa where it is said that civilization began, has more churches than factories yet the continent has failed to develop.
“This thoroughly absorbing narrative dazzles with the most profound investigation and research. Focus is an enthralling and riveting read.” —Tim Gunn “Smart, well-researched…engaging…canny” (New York Times Book Review), Focus is a “fast-paced—and clearly insider—look at the rarefied, sexy world of fashion photography” (Lauren Weisberger, author of The Devil Wears Prada). New York Times bestselling author Michael Gross brings to life the wild genius, egos, passions, and antics of the men (and a few women) behind the camera, probing the lives, hang-ups, and artistic triumphs of more than a dozen of fashion photography’s greatest visionaries, including Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Bill King, Helmut Newton, Gilles Bensimon, Bruce Weber, Steven Meisel, and Bob and Terry Richardson. Tracing the highs and lows of fashion photography from the late 1940s to today, Focus takes you behind the scenes to reveal the revolutionary creative processes and fraught private passions of these visionary magicians, “delving deep into the fascinating rivalries” (The Daily News) between photographers, fashion editors, and publishers like Condé Nast and Hearst. Weaving together candid interviews, never-before-told insider anecdotes and insights born of his three decades of front-row and backstage reporting on modern fashion, Focus is “simply unrivaled…a sensation….Gross is a modern-day Vasari, giving us The Lives of the Artists in no small measure” (CraveOnline).
The film noir male is an infinitely watchable being, exhibiting a wide range of emotions, behaviors, and motivations. Some of the characters from the film noir era are extremely violent, such as Neville Brand’s Chester in D.O.A. (1950), whose sole pleasure in life seems to come from inflicting pain on others. Other noirs feature flawed authority figures, such as Kirk Douglas’s Jim McLeod in Detective Story (1951), controlled by a rigid moral code that costs him his marriage and ultimately his life. Others present ruthless crime bosses, hapless males whose lives are turned upside down because of their ceaseless longing for a woman, and even courageous men on the right side of the law. The private and public lives of more than ninety actors who starred in the films noirs of the 1940s and 1950s are presented here. Some of the actors, such as Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Mitchum, Raymond Burr, Fred MacMurray, Jack Palance and Mickey Rooney, enjoyed great renown, while others, like Gene Lockhart, Moroni Olsen and Harold Vermilyea, were less familiar, particularly to modern audiences. An appendix focuses on the actors who were least known but frequently seen in minor roles.
Full story of the Falconio murder inquiry. On a cold July night in 2001 a panic-stricken woman dashed out of the desert scrub, bringing to a halt a huge outback roadtrain. The story that Joanne Lees told, of her abduction and boyfriend's apparent murder, has held the world's attention ever since. Award winning journalist, Richard Shears, covered the story from the first days right up until the verdict was handed down at the end of an eight week trial. After 40 years of covering wars, disasters and crimes for London's Daily Mail, Shears says the Falconio affair is one of the most curious he remembers.
25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road: an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
This book provides a comprehensive and lively introduction to the major trends in film scoring from the silent era to the present day, focussing not only on dominant Hollywood practices but also offering an international perspective by including case studies of the national cinemas of the UK, France, India, Italy, Japan and the early Soviet Union. The book balances wide-ranging overviews of film genres, modes of production and critical reception with detailed non-technical descriptions of the interaction between image track and soundtrack in representative individual films. In addition to the central focus on narrative cinema, separate sections are also devoted to music in documentary and animated films, film musicals and the uses of popular and classical music in the cinema. The author analyses the varying technological and aesthetic issues that have shaped the history of film music, and concludes with an account of the modern film composer's working practices.
