We have a very secret ritual around here. It's called a fake burial.Fake burial, as the name implies, was a fake funeral.The old man at home was ill and wanted to find the patient's old clothes and make a dummy of him. It's called Regeneration.After the "Regeneration" was done, the old man's next of kin would carry it on his back and bury it on the mountain. This process was called burial sickness.That day, it was my turn to carry the "Regeneration". As a result, something strange happened.
This book examines a broad range of infamous scams, cons, swindles, and hoaxes throughout American history—and considers why human gullibility continues in an age of easy access to information. Covering American cons and hoaxes past and present, including the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, the controversy over "subliminal messaging" (do bands, filmmakers, and advertisers really put secret messages in their works?), the panic about "satanic" daycare operators in the 1980s, and recent Internet scams, this book provides a fascinating, fact-based look at infamous frauds across the centuries. Offering an engaging mix of history, sociology, and psychology, author Nate Hendley gives readers an appreciation of how prominent scams, cons, "confidence men," and hoaxes have impacted American society, past and present. Each entry details the scheme or hoax and the pertinent con artist/schemer involved, examining the sociological, cultural, political, and/or economic effect of the scams. Each topic is accompanied by a short bibliography of further reading selections. As the old saying goes, "There is a sucker born every minute"—and there has always been a keen-eyed swindler to take advantage of the situation. The Big Con: Great Hoaxes, Frauds, Grifts, and Swindles in American History explores this sordid underbelly of American civilization and invites readers to revel in the felonious experience.
On the publicity tour for the 2010 film Get Low, the first question from the audience was always "What's the true story that inspired this film?" After more than a decade of research, Get Low writer Scott Seeke answers that question with Uncle Bush's Live Funeral. This book tells the incredible true story of Felix "Bush" Breazeale, a feared hermit who attracted ten thousand strangers to the funeral he held while still alive in 1938. Seeke had begun researching Get Low as an outsider, a New Yorker married into a skeptical East Tennessee family. By the time Get Low arrived in theaters ten years later, he had earned their trust. They opened doors that allowed him to finally learn why Bush had his funeral while he was still alive, and why so many people came. He found the moving story of a man trapped by his culture and past, desperate to rewrite his life's story before it was too late. Uncle Bush's Live Funeral shows that any outcast can find acceptance, and any label can be overcome, all masterfully told by Get Low writer Scott Seeke.
Losing has never been easy for a Maddox, but death always wins. Eleven years to the day after eloping with Abby in Vegas, Special Agent Travis Maddox delivers his own brand of vigilante justice to mob boss Benny Carlisi. Vegas's oldest and most violent crime family is now preparing for vengeance, and the entire Maddox family is a target. The secret Thomas and Travis have kept for a decade will be revealed to the rest of the family, and for the first time the Maddoxes will be at odds. While none of them are strangers to loss, the family has grown, and the risk is higher than ever. With brothers against brothers and wives taking sides, each member will make a choice—let the fear tear them apart, or make them stronger.
When Chenille Bowing was just four years old, her father, Arthur, a chief judge in Denver, Colorado, was believed to have killed his identical twin brother, Austin, in a hunting accident. From that day forward, Arthur wasn't the same man. He treated his wife and children with indifference; he became rude, arrogant, and overbearing. It would be years before the family discovered the real truth. The situation becomes more dire years later when Chenille announces that she and her longtime boyfriend, Matt Rustin, are expecting a child. Arthur despises Matt and refuses to accept the relationship. When the baby is born, Arthur executes the unbelievable. He tells Chenille her baby died at birth and whisks her off to Austria to complete her physician training. Arthur deceives Matt by faking Chenille's death and leaving Matt to raise the child alone. Nine years later, Chenille, a successful neurosurgeon in France, mourns the loss of Matt and her baby each day. But fate intervenes when Chenille meets Ernesto Pallante, who has ties with Cosa Nostra. These men use their worldwide associations to unveil the misdeeds the family has endured. They use their power to deliver their own brand of justice.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “This will be one of your favorite books of all time. Through her intensely vulnerable, honest, and hilarious reflections, Chelsea shows us more than just her insides. She shows us ourselves.”—Amy Schumer Don’t miss Chelsea Handler’s new Netflix stand-up special, Revolution, now streaming! In the wake of President Donald Trump’s election, feeling that her country—her life—has become unrecognizable, Chelsea Handler has an awakening. Fed up with the privileged bubble she’s lived in, she decides it’s time to make some changes. She embarks on a year of self-sufficiency and goes into therapy, prepared to do the heavy lifting required to make sense of a childhood that ended abruptly with the death of her brother. She meets her match in an earnest, nerdy shrink who dissects her anger and gets her to confront her fear of intimacy. Out in the world, she channels her outrage into social action and finds her voice as an advocate for change. With the love and support of an eccentric cast of friends, assistants, family members (alive and dead), and a pair of emotionally withholding rescue dogs, Chelsea digs deep into the trauma that shaped her inimitable worldview and unearths some glittering truths that light up the road ahead. Thrillingly honest and insightful, Chelsea Handler’s darkly comic memoir is also a clever and sly work of inspiration that gets us to ask ourselves what really matters in our own lives.
Enter Shadow Falls: After Dark and meet a vampire named Della, who's about to discover what her own story is meant to be. . . . Della had the perfect life-the family, a boyfriend, and a bright future-until she was turned, and abandoned by everyone she loves. She takes refuge at Shadow Falls, a camp for teens with paranormal powers. It's where she and her best friends, Kylie and Miranda, heal their heartbreak with laughter, and where Della is training to be a paranormal investigator-and she refuses to be distracted. That means there's no time for romance with Steve, a gorgeous shapeshifter whose kisses melt her heart. When a new vampire named Chase shows up at camp, Della's world is thrown into even more chaos. Arrogant and annoyingly sexy, Chase is a mystery . . . and the only mystery Della likes is one she can solve. She can't solve Chase, at least not while she's dealing with ghostly hauntings, vampire gangs and a web of family secrets. Can she prove herself as an investigator and keep her life-and her heart-intact? From bestselling author C. C. Hunter comes Reborn, the first book in a new series set once more in the world of Shadow Falls.
To unravel the mysteries of his majesty's faithful secret agent, Alyosha Wald Lasowski uses the best techniques of current decoding. From gender studies to postcolonial thought, from popular culture to geopolitics, the author lays bare the mysteries encodedin the twenty-five Bond films. Lasowski even goes so far as to invent the “philoscopic approach,” which lays bare what seems invisible on the screen. From Doctor No in 1962 to No Time to Die in 2021, The Five Secrets of James Bond brings an unusual approach that shows the most famous secret agent in a different light. Alyosha Wald Lasowski is a university professor and teaches political philosophy at Sciences-Po, Lille, in the Master's program "Philosophy, Politics, Economics.” A specialist on André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre and Edouard Glissant, he also writes on music (Le jeu des ritournelles, Gallimard, 2017), painting (Dialogue with Alain Badiou on Art and Pierre Soulages, Cercle d'art, 2019) and cinema. His personal reflections explore the aesthetics of rhythm and the thought of tempo. Author of fifteen books, he is also a journalist and is a columnist on France-Culture, for the program Avis critique. He writes for L'Express in the section, "Ideas."
The Volterian alien, Gorond Taflerk, and earthling, Tamara Farnsworth, have now been married for three years. But as they try to celebrate their anniversary, the Earth is attacked by an invading alien force, who call themselves the Planetarians. The attacking commander is determined to enslave the entire human race and Gorond Taflerk may be Earth’s only hope. The Planetarians have neutralized the weapons from every nation, but Gorond has been working with the U.S. military on a secret Solar Defense System that is still operational. Will this be enough to stop the invaders or will Gorond need to hope for assistance from his home planet, Volter? Gorond’s task becomes more difficult once the Planetarians learn that a Volterian is on Earth. Can Gorond Taflerk overcome the odds, keep his new family safe, and save the planet he has grown to love?
