The Book Of Scandal

Originally published by in New York by Pocket Books, 2008.

"You can't judge a book by its cover. To look at her, one would never think suburbanite homemaker Jane Jeffry would be interested in murder and mayhem. But after all the corpses she's come across - and killers she's unmasked - she's practically an expert on the subject. Which is why, with best buddy Shelley Nowack in tow, Jane's booking down to a nearby mystery writers' convention to mingle with the brightest lights of literary crime ... and maybe drum up some interest in her own recently completed manuscript." "They're all there: editors, agents, publishing bigwigs, and famous authors like Jane and Shelley's personal fave, Felicity Roane. Even Jane's longtime honey, Detective Mel VanDyne, is a scheduled guest speaker. Of course there are bound to be some bad apples in the bunch: macho-malicious literary critic-cum-snake Zac Zebra, for example, and loudmouth Vernetta Strausmann, who self-published her despicable whodunit and successfully hawked it on the Internet." "However, what would a mystery convention be without a mystery? So one is graciously supplied when a famous ego-squashing editor keels over at the speaker's podium, undone by an anonymous poisoner. And when a much-hated book-bashing journalist is himself bashed quite nastily in the parking lot, it seems fairly certain that at least one real-life murder is stalking the proceedings. But who is he/she/them? The dirt-dishing, pseudonymous Internet gossip monger "Ms. Mystery," who's lurking around there somewhere? The local bookseller who dearly loves "Modern Golden Age" women writers? The avid reader who seems to know a bit too much about the personal lives of the famous attendees?" "Jane and Shelley are on the case, ready to snoop, eavesdrop, and gossip their way to a solution. But the killer they seek is no open book ... and may turn out to be harder - and deadlier - to read than they initially imagined."--BOOK JACKET.

"First published in 2019 by Bookouture, an imprint of StoryFire Ltd."--Copyright page.

The Great Post Office Scandal is the extraordinary story behind the recent ITV drama series Mr Bates vs The Post Office. This gripping page-turner recounts how thousands of subpostmasters were accused of theft and false accounting on the back of evidence from Horizon, the flawed computer system designed by Fujitsu, and how a group of them, led by Alan Bates, took their fight to the High Court. Their eventual victory in court vindicated their claims about the defects of the software and exposed the heavy handed attempts by the Post Office to suppress them. The book also chronicles how successive senior managers, business leaders, lawyers, civil servants and Government ministers, at best failed to expose the injustice or, even worse, sought to cover it up, resulting in one of the largest miscarriages of justice in UK history. The author, Nick Wallis, is a journalist and broadcaster who has been reporting on the scandal for over ten years and who acted as script consultant on Mr Bates vs The Post Office, the ITV drama that brought the affair into the national consciousness. As the public inquiry reaches its climax, and senior figures such as Paula Vennells come to be questioned, The Great Post Office Scandal reveals the full scale of what happened and will leave you enraged at how so many of our trusted institutions allowed the saga to go on for nearly a quarter of a century, shattering the lives of thousands of innocent people.

A young computer specialist new to the quiet Amish community of Appleseed Creek is shocked when an outbreak of crimes against these pious people soon escalates to murder

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal ("A deliciously perverse, laugh-out-loud-funny novel." --Vogue) is a major motion picture from Fox Searchlight starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary life until Sheba Hart, the new art teacher at St. George's, befriends her. But even as their relationship develops, so too does another: Sheba has begun an illicit affair with an underage male student. When the scandal turns into a media circus, Barbara decides to write an account in her friend's defense--and ends up revealing not only Sheba's secrets, but also her own.

A Facebook scandal goes viral after prom in this comedic, edgy novel from the author of Bittersweet and Twenty Boy Summer. Lucy’s learned some important lessons from tabloid darling Jayla Heart’s all-too-public blunders: avoid the spotlight, don’t feed the Internet trolls, and keep your secrets secret. The policy has served Lucy well all through high school, so when her best friend, Ellie, gets sick before prom and begs her to step in as Cole’s date, she accepts with a smile, silencing about ten different reservations. Like the one where she’d rather stay home shredding online zombies. And especially the one where she’s been secretly in love with Cole since the dawn of time. When Cole surprises her at the after-party with a kiss under the stars, it’s everything Lucy has ever dreamed of…and the biggest BFF deal breaker ever. But before they get the chance to ’fess up to Ellie, Lucy’s own Facebook profile mysteriously explodes with compromising photos of her and Cole, along with tons of other students’ party indiscretions. Tagged. Liked. And furiously viral. By Monday morning, Lucy’s been branded a slut, a backstabber, and a narc mired in a tabloid-worthy scandal. Lucy’s been battling undead masses online long enough to know that there’s only one way to survive a disaster of this magnitude: Stand up and fight. There’s just one snag—Cole. Turns out Lucy’s not the only one who’s been harboring unrequited love…

“The articles and columns in The Scandal of the Century demonstrate that his forthright, lightly ironical voice just seemed to be there, right from the start . . . He’s among those rare great fiction writers whose ancillary work is almost always worth finding . . . He had a way of connecting the souls in all his writing, fiction and nonfiction, to the melancholy static of the universe.” --Dwight Garner, The New York Times From one of the titans of twentieth-century literature, collected here for the first time: a selection of his journalism from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s--work that he considered even more important to his legacy than his universally acclaimed works of fiction. "I don't want to be remembered for One Hundred Years of Solitude or for the Nobel Prize but rather for my journalism," Gabriel García Márquez said in the final years of his life. And while some of his journalistic writings have been made available over the years, this is the first volume to gather a representative selection from across the first four decades of his career--years during which he worked as a full-time, often muckraking, and controversial journalist, even as he penned the fiction that would bring him the Nobel Prize in 1982. Here are the first pieces he wrote while working for newspapers in the coastal Colombian cities of Cartagena and Barranquilla . . . his longer, more fictionlike reportage from Paris and Rome . . . his monthly columns for Spain's El País. And while all the work points in style, wit, depth, and passion to his fiction, these fifty pieces are, more than anything, a revelation of the writer working at the profession he believed to be "the best in the world."

2012 Florida Book Awards, Silver Medal for Florida Non-Fiction "FANTASTIC. If I did not know most of the main players I would have thought the author had a vivid and twisted imagination."--Paul Martin Brown, author of Wild Orchids of Florida "A fascinating true story of obsession, greed, and lust for the unobtainable. Reminds me a great deal of The Maltese Falcon. This rare flower is definitely the stuff that dreams are made of."--Ace Atkins, author of Devil's Garden and Infamous "Pittman has captured the extreme competition, unique characters, and general insanity that often typify the orchid world. The Scent of Scandal exemplifies how passion and profit can overrule common sense and the law."--Scott Steward, former associate editor, North American Native Orchid Journal After its Peruvian discovery in 2002, Phragmipedium kovachii became the rarest and most sought-after orchid in the world. Prices soared to $10,000 on the black market. Then one showed up at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, where every year more than 100,000 people visit. They come for the lush landscape on Sarasota Bay and for Selby's vast orchid collection, one of the most magnificent in the world. The collision between Selby's scientists and the smugglers of Phrag. Kovachii, a rare ladyslipper orchid hailed as the most significant and beautiful new species discovered in a century, led to search warrants, a grand jury investigation, and criminal charges. It made headlines around the country, cost the gardens hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, and led to tremendous internal turmoil. Investigative journalist Craig Pittman unravels this tangled web to shine a spotlight on flaws in the international treaties governing trade in endangered wildlife--which may protect individual plants and animals in shipping but do little to halt the destruction of whole colonies in the wild. The Scent of Scandal unspools like a riveting mystery novel, stranger than anything in Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief or the film Adaptation. Pittman shows how some people can become so obsessed--with beauty, with profit, with fame--that they will ignore everything, even the law.

A Woman With A Secret Victoria Ashton has intelligence and ambition--qualities of little value to most marriage-minded gentlemen of the ton. Her own father has no idea of Victoria's hidden life as an anonymous trader in London's stock market. But her hopes of independence are shattered when her father's enemy, Blake Mallorey, assumes Charles Ashton's debts and presents Victoria with a stark choice: live with him as his mistress for one year, or condemn her family to bankruptcy. A Gentleman With Resolve For years Blake has dreamed of justice, and his scheme becomes all the sweeter when he sees the beauty that Victoria has become. Scoundrel he may be, but Blake will not force anyone into his bed. He intends to entice Victoria, one wicked kiss at a time. But with a woman as spirited and sensual as Victoria, seduction works both ways--and a plan rooted in revenge can blossom into a scandalous passion. . .