A sometimes wild, sometimes poignant romp through the lives of Scotswomen, Scottish Girls About Town revels in the universal hilarity and strife of being a girl! They're looking for something moor. In Jenny Colgan's "The Fringes," a hapless heroine heads to the Edinburgh "Fringe" -- a massive theatrical and musical festival -- for a night of her own disastrous drama. Isla Dewar offers up "In the Garden of Mrs. Pink," one woman's look back at her girlhood and the life lessons she learned from an eccentric neighbor. In Muriel Gray's "School-Gate Mums," a single mother with killer instincts settles the score with one of the mothers at her son's school. Whether they're racing their flatmates in a weight-loss contest, reconnecting with long-lost friends, or grappling with the men in their lives, these daughters of Scotland prove that no one can top their audacious spirit and Highland charm.

    From Jean Shepherd’s original radio broadcasts to Bob Clark’s 1983 sleeper hit film and beyond, A Christmas Story has become a beloved Yuletide tradition over the last three decades. In conjunction with the 30th anniversary of its theatrical release, this is the untold story of the making of the film, and what happened afterwards. Ralphie Parker’s quest for a Red Ryder air rifle didn’t end with the movie’s release; the tale inspired massive VHS sales, a Broadway production, and a mountain of merchandise. Complete with rare and previously unreleased photographs, now fans of the movie and film buffs alike can learn all they didn’t know about the timeless classic.

    We know it, and we accept it. It’s the price we pay for living in Apple, Massachusetts. Our town carves up and spits out a few seeds each year. We all approach autumn with dread because nobody wants to be a seed. Now, there's another body in the woods and we are the unfortunate ones to find it—me, Newie and Annie. The discovery of a murdered girl propped up against a tree on the path between the high school and the middle school, plunges Jackson Gill and his friends into the center of a decades old blight that has cursed the town of Apple for almost sixty years. As the next forty-eight hours unfold, the underbelly of their lives and their town are exposed. Family ties are tested and the truth of what is really happening begins to bubble to the surface. Death swirls tightly around Jackson and his friends as they traverse the narrow tightrope between adolescence and adulthood. Caught up in the maelstrom of murder, they can’t help but dance ever closer to the horror that has plagued their lives for so long. After all, they have no choice. They live in Bloody Bloody Apple.

    One wanted to call it "The Empire Strikes Back" but it was generally felt that might intimidate the smaller nations.'Queen of sixteen sovereign nations, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. She's one of the world's most well-known and powerful leaders and has reigned for 60 years. But what does she really think?'One does enjoy the Eurovision Song Contest. Lovely to be reminded how much more civilized the British are than our European neighbours. Royal Eurovision Fancy Dress Party to celebrate. Unfortunately Camilla misread the invitation as 'Euro-tunnel Fancy Dress Party' and came as a train.'Taking in the momentous events of 2012, including the Jubilee celebrations and preparations for the London Olympics, these diaries reveal the seldom-seen workings of state and reveal how an octogenarian is quietly ruling the world and still has time for a gin.

    Making him die of a heart attack a week after the wedding was hardly any trouble at all. Now she has money, social status, everything she has cunningly schemed to get since she was a poor little girl. Everything except the Brookline mansion and the multi-million dollar trust fund left to the three children. But what wicked stepmother couldn't get rid of three children? Jonathan, too smart for his own good and suspicious about his father's death, has to be the first to go. Then there's pretty, spoiled Verity, hooked on cocaine and perpetually drunk - who'd ask any questions if she died suddenly? And clever Cassandra, just out of college and beginning a career as a literary editor, will simply have to get over being dead. Wicked Stepmother (1983) is the second of the camp classics written by Michael McDowell (co-author of Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas) in collaboration with Dennis Schuetz. Five of McDowell's classic horror novels are also available from Valancourt.

    Linda Burfield Hazzard. It was supposed to be a holiday for the two sisters. But within a month of arriving at what the locals called Starvation Heights, the women were emaciated shadows of their former selves, waiting for death. They were not the first victims of Linda Hazzard, a quack doctor of extraordinary evil and greed who would stop at nothing short of murder to achieve her ambitions. As their jewelry disappeared and forged bank drafts began transferring their wealth to Hazzard’s accounts, Dora Williamson sent a last desperate plea to a friend in Australia, begging her to save them from the brutal treatments and lonely isolation of Starvation Heights.In this true story—a haunting saga of medical murder set in an era of steamships and gaslights—Gregg Olsen reveals one of the most unusual and disturbing criminal cases in American history.

    But the ghoulish nature of his art—as well as extensive evidence—points to another name, one that’s left its bloody mark on the pages of history: Jack the Ripper. Cornwell has collected never-before-seen archival material—including a rare mortuary photo, personal correspondence and a will with a mysterious autopsy clause—and applied cutting-edge forensic science to open an old crime to new scrutiny.Incorporating material from Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed, this new edition has been revised and expanded to include eight new chapters, detailed maps and hundreds of images that bring the sinister case to life.

    Rise over the city on the London Eye, uncover the past at Kensingtons museums, and explore Soho, Greenwich and the Tower all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of London and begin your journey now!Inside Lonely Planets Pocket London: Full-colour maps and images throughoutHighlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interestsInsider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spotsEssential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, pricesHonest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sightseeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks missFree, convenient pull-out map (included in print version), plus over 20 colour neighbourhood mapsUser-friendly layout with helpful icons, and organised by neighbourhood to help you pick the best spots to spend your timeCovers Westminster, Covent Garden, Bloomsbury, the City, the South Bank, Kensington, Regents Park, Camden, Greenwich, and moreThe Perfect Choice: Lonely Planets Pocket London is our colourful, easy to use, handy guide that literally fits in your pocket, providing on-the-go assistance for those seeking the best sights and experiences on a short visit or weekend break.Looking for more extensive coverage? Check out Lonely Planets in-depth England or Great Britain guides.About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the worlds number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, weve printed over 145 million guidebooks and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. Youll also find our content online, and in mobile apps, video, 14 languages, nine international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more.Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other. New York TimesLonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world. Fairfax Media (Australia)*Source: Nielsen BookScan: Australia, UK, USA, 5/2016-4/2017

    . .Early in life Belle Sorensen discovers the world is made only for men. They own everything: jobs, property, wives. But Belle understands what few others do: where women are concerned, men are weak.A woman unhampered by scruples can take from them what she wants. And so Belle sets out to prove to the world that a woman can be just as ruthless, black-hearted and single-minded as any man.Starting with her long suffering husband Mads, Belle embarks on a killing spree the like of which has never been seen before nor since.And through it all her kind, older sister Nellie can only watch in horror as Belle's schemes to enrich herself and cut down the male population come to a glorious, dreadful fruition . . .Based on the true story of Belle Sorensen whose murderous rampage began in Chicago in 1900, Triflers Need Not Apply is a novelistic tour de force exploring one woman's determination to pay men back for all they have taken.

    He’s climbed all the way to head of production at newly merged Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and is determined to transform Leo the Lion into an icon of the most successful studio in town.The harder he works, the higher he soars. But at what cost? The more he achieves, the closer he risks flying into oblivion. A frail and faulty heart shudders inside this chest that blazes with ambition. Thalberg knows that his charmed life at the top of the Hollywood heap is a dangerous tightrope walk: each day—each breath, even—could be his last. Shooting for success means risking his health, friendships, everything. Yet, against all odds, the man no one thought would survive into adulthood almost single-handedly ushers in a new era of filmmaking.This is Hollywood at its most daring and opulent—the Sunset Strip, premieres at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, stars like Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford—and Irving is at the center of it all.From the author of the Hollywood’s Garden of Allah novels comes a mesmerizing true-life story of the man behind Golden Age mythmaking: Irving Thalberg, the prince of Tinseltown.Martin Turnbull's Hollywood’s Garden of Allah novels have been optioned for the screen by film & television producer, Tabrez Noorani.

    The following winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave. The seven months in between had seen a massive search for the missing girl, involving Japanese policemen; British private detectives; Australian dowsers; and Lucie's desperate, but bitterly divided, parents. As the case unfolded, it drew the attention of prime ministers and sado-masochists, ambassadors and con-men, and reporters from across the world. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult, or snatched by human traffickers? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet? And what did her work, as a "hostess" in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo, really involve?Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, followed the case since Lucie's disappearance. Over the course of a decade, he traveled to four continents to interview those caught up in the story, fought off a legal attack in the Japanese courts, and worked undercover as a bartender in a Roppongi strip club. He talked exhaustively with Lucie's friends and family and won unique access to the Japanese detectives who investigated the case. And he delved into the mind and background of the man accused of the crime--Joji Obara, described by the judge as "unprecedented and extremely evil." With the finesse of a novelist, he reveals the astonishing truth about Lucie and her fate. People Who Eat Darkness is, by turns, a non-fiction thriller, a courtroom drama, and the biography of both a victim and a killer. It is the story of a young woman who fell prey to unspeakable evil, and of a loving family torn apart by grief. And it is a fascinating insight into one of the world's most baffling and mysterious societies, a light shone into dark corners of Japan that the rest of the world has never glimpsed before.

    For centuries, royal families have feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns, and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal family’s spoons, tried on their underpants and tested their chamber pots.Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications, and filthy living conditions. Women wore makeup made with mercury and lead. Men rubbed turds on their bald spots. Physicians prescribed mercury enemas, arsenic skin cream, drinks of lead filings, and potions of human fat and skull, fresh from the executioner. The most gorgeous palaces were little better than filthy latrines. Gazing at gorgeous portraits of centuries past, we don’t see what lies beneath the royal robes and the stench of unwashed bodies; the lice feasting on private parts; and worms nesting in the intestines.In The Royal Art of Poison, Eleanor Herman combines her unique access to royal archives with cutting-edge forensic discoveries to tell the true story of Europe’s glittering palaces: one of medical bafflement, poisonous cosmetics, ever-present excrement, festering natural illness, and, sometimes, murder.

    Her crime—the gruesome murders of dozens of female servants, mostly young girls tortured to death for displeasing their ruthless mistress. Her opponents painted her as a bloodthirsty škrata—a witch—a portrayal that would expand to grotesque proportions through the centuries.In this riveting dramatization of Erzsébet Báthory’s life, the countess tells her story in her own words, writing to her only son—a final reckoning from his mother in an attempt to reveal the truth behind her downfall. Countess Báthory describes her upbringing in one of the most powerful noble houses in Hungary, recounting in loving detail her devotion to her parents and siblings as well as the heartbreak of losing her father at a young age. She soon discovers the price of being a woman in sixteenth-century Hungary as her mother arranges her marriage to Ferenc Nádasdy, a union made with the cold calculation of a financial transaction. Young Erzsébet knows she has no choice but to accept this marriage even as she laments its loveless nature and ultimately turns to the illicit affections of another man. Seemingly resigned to a marriage of convenience and a life of surreptitious pleasure, the countess surprises even herself as she ignites a marital spark with Ferenc through the most unromantic of acts: the violent punishment of an insolent female servant. The event shows Ferenc that his wife is no trophy but a strong, determined woman more than capable of managing their vast estates during Ferenc’s extensive military campaigns against the Turks. Her naked assertion of power accomplishes what her famed beauty could not: capturing the love of her husband. The countess embraces this new role of loving wife and mother, doing everything she can to expand her husband’s power and secure her family’s future. But a darker side surfaces as Countess Báthory’s demand for virtue, obedience, and, above all, respect from her servants takes a sinister turn. What emerges is not only a disturbing, unflinching portrait of the deeds that gave Báthory the moniker “Blood Countess,” but an intimate look at the woman who became a monster.

    The "New York Times" bestselling authors of "Hello, Cupcake!" take geniusity to the next level, with bigger, bolder, better creations for every occasion

    Ann Rule's shocking and powerful account of the destructive forces that drove Diane Downs, a beautiful young mother, to shoot her three young children in cold blood.