Dead Famous

Author: Ben Elton
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448167523
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
"Wry, fast and fiendishly clever" (The Times) One house. Ten contestants. Thirty cameras. Forty microphones. Yet again the public gorges its voyeuristic appetite as another group of unknown and unremarkable people submit themselves to the brutal exposure of the televised real-life soap opera, House Arrest. Everybody knows the rules: total strangers are forced to live together while the rest of the country watches them do it. Who will crack first? Who will have sex with whom? Who will the public love and who will they hate? All the usual questions. And then, suddenly, there are some new ones. Who is the murderer? How did he or she manage to kill under the constant gaze of the thirty television cameras? Why did they do it? And who will be next?

The Book of the Dead

Author: John Mitchinson
Publisher: Crown Pub
ISBN: 0307716406
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Book Description
A whimsical treasury of biographical profiles of famous and lesser-known individuals now dead includes hundreds of entries that reveal embarrassing-but-true details typically omitted by official biographers. Co-authored by the award-winning producer of Blackadder and the writer of QI.

How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead

Author: Ariel Gore
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307393801
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Book Description
This may come as a shock, but brilliant writing and clever wordplay do not a published author make. True, you’ll actually have to write if you want to be a writer, but ultimately literary success is about much more than putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys). Before you snap your pencil in half with frustration, please consider the advice writer, teacher, and self-made lit star Ariel Gore offers in this useful guide to realizing your literary dreams. If you find yourself writing when you should be sleeping and scribbling notes on odd pieces of paper at every stoplight, you might as well enjoy the fruits of your labor. How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead is an irreverent yet practical guide that combines solid writing advice with guerrilla marketing and promotion techniques guaranteed to launch you into print—and into the limelight. You’ll learn how to: • Reimagine yourself as a buzz-worthy artist and entrepreneur• Get your work and your name out in the world where other people can read it• Be an anthology slut and a brazen self-promoter• Apply real-world advice and experience from lit stars like Dave Barry, Susie Bright, and Dave Eggers to your own careerCheaper than an M.F.A. but just as informative, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead is your catapult to lit stardom. Just don’t forget to thank Ariel Gore for her inspiring, hands-on plan in the acknowledgments page of your first novel!

A Million Years in a Day

Author: Greg Jenner
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 125008945X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
Who invented beds? When did we start cleaning our teeth? How old are wine and beer? Which came first: the toilet seat or toilet paper? What was the first clock? Every day, from the moment our alarm clock wakes us in the morning until our head hits our pillow at night, we all take part in rituals that are millennia old. Structured around one ordinary day, A Million Years in a Day reveals the astonishing origins and development of the daily practices we take for granted. In this gloriously entertaining romp through human history, Greg Jenner explores the gradual—and often unexpected—evolution of our daily routines. This is not a story of wars, politics, or great events. Instead, Jenner has scoured Roman rubbish bins, Egyptian tombs, and Victorian sewers to bring us the most intriguing, surprising, and sometimes downright silly historical nuggets from our past. Drawn from across the world, spanning a million years of humanity, this book is a smorgasbord of historical delights. It is a history of all those things you always wondered about—and many you have never considered. It is the story of your life, one million years in the making.

Dead Famous

Author: Greg Jenner
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 0297869817
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Book Description
'Fizzes with clever vignettes and juicy tidbits... [a] joyous romp of a book.' Guardian 'A fascinating, rollicking book in search of why, where and how fame strikes. Sit back and enjoy the ride.' Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads '[An] engaging and well-researched book... Jenner brings his material to vivid life' Observer Celebrity, with its neon glow and selfie pout, strikes us as hypermodern. But the famous and infamous have been thrilling, titillating, and outraging us for much longer than we might realise. Whether it was the scandalous Lord Byron, whose poetry sent female fans into an erotic frenzy; or the cheetah-owning, coffin-sleeping, one-legged French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who launched a violent feud with her former best friend; or Edmund Kean, the dazzling Shakespearean actor whose monstrous ego and terrible alcoholism saw him nearly murdered by his own audience - the list of stars whose careers burned bright before the Age of Television is extensive and thrillingly varied. In this ambitious history, that spans the Bronze Age to the coming of Hollywood's Golden Age, Greg Jenner assembles a vibrant cast of over 125 actors, singers, dancers, sportspeople, freaks, demigods, ruffians, and more, in search of celebrity's historical roots. He reveals why celebrity burst into life in the early eighteenth century, how it differs to ancient ideas of fame, the techniques through which it was acquired, how it was maintained, the effect it had on public tastes, and the psychological burden stardom could place on those in the glaring limelight. DEAD FAMOUS is a surprising, funny, and fascinating exploration of both a bygone age and how we came to inhabit our modern, fame obsessed society.

Dead Famous

Author: Larry Buttrose
Publisher: New Holland Australia(AU)
ISBN: 9781741105643
Category : Celebrities
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Deaths of the famous and famous deathsThis book explores the surprising and often startling details of the deaths of famous people throughout history, as far back as Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, right down to celebrity tragic Anna Nicole Smith.

How They Croaked

Author: Georgia Bragg
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1547614536
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
This award-winning book for reluctant readers is a fascinating collection of remarkable deaths--and not for the faint of heart. Over the course of history, men and women have lived and died. In fact, getting sick and dying can be a big, ugly mess--especially before the modern medical care that we all enjoy today. From King Tut's ancient autopsy to Albert Einstein's great brain escape, How They Croaked contains all the gory details of the awful ends of nineteen awfully famous people. Don't miss the companion, How They Choked!

Dead Famous

Author: Carol O'Connell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440679452
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
Jurors on a controversial trial are being killed off one by one, and only Detective Kathleen Mallory can figure out why. But the FBI has told her to lay off and leave it to the Feds. That's never stopped Mallory before.

Newton and His Falling Apple

Author: Kjartan Poskitt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781407123998
Category : Physicists
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Everybody's heard of Isaac Newtown. He is horribly famous for discovering gravity, being clever and getting hit on the head with an apple. But not everyone knows that Isaac came from the bottom of the class at school, poked sticks in his eye and nearly blinded himself, and nearly got himself executed. Everything you ever wanted to know about the man with the apple.

Famous Dead Canadians 2

Author: Joanne Stanbridge
Publisher: Scholastic Canada
ISBN: 9780439957298
Category : Canada
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Book Description
An upbeat approach to who's who in Canadian history... even when they're dead. In the hilarious sequel to the first book in the series, fifteen (yes, dead) Canadians are featured-explorers, inventors, politicians, and more. Readers will get a fresh and funny take on Canada's own spy, William Stephenson; mapmaker David Thompson; artist Emily Carr; and twelve other Canadians. The perfect book for all the readers who loved Famous Dead Canadians (a Silver Birch Honour Book), and First Folks and Vile Voyageurs.