Bridget Harrison - Tabloid Love (Bantam, £6.99)
Bridget Harrison is fit, funny and feisty - unfortunately, she is in a city where those qualities are not admired by men.
Few people would have the guts to give up a good job, a fun social life and a lover they hoped to marry to move to almost the other side of the world.
Harrison did just that. She was 29 when decided to live out her fantasy as a reporter on the New York Post. She knew very few people in the country and had never actually worked as a reporter but that didn't deter her. One of her first outings was to a Pimps, Players, Playboys and Prostitutes party in Brooklyn where she copped off with a fellow guest despite her long-term boyfriend back in London. When Angus, the boyfriend, arrived for a visit, Harrison knew the magic had gone and soon she was alone, trying to snag a boyfriend in a city when there are half a million more eligible women than men.
She went on dozens of dates in her search for Mr Perfect with hilarious results. One told her that she could look good if only she would make the effort. Another told her he only dated women who smoked pot and liked dogs. A third handed her a breath mint. Harrison lay in bed with a fourth who insisted on ringing his friend so he could hear a British accent. Unsurprisingly, Harrison made her excuses and left.
On top of her reporting duties, Harrison was asked to write a dating column about her miserable love life for the paper's Sunday edition. Then she fell for her boss, Jack, and eventually they began an affair which she relayed in gory detail in her column, changing his name but the subterfuge fooled absolutely no one at work. At last, Harrison had found her man only to blow it through her own insecurities. Telling millions of readers the intimate details didn't help either.
Although there are tabloid tales: a restaurateur who had his head chopped off by one of his waiters, 9/11, and the sad story of an old man left widowed when his wife went out for a pizza on Christmas Eve and was killed in a hit and run accident, Tabloid Love is at its best and at its funniest when Harrison recalls her (many) dating disasters and complete inability to understand American men - or should that be men in general?
Thunderstruck - Erik Larson (Doubleday, £17.99)
One was an inventor, the other a north London dentist who murdered his showgirl wife and fled with his mistress. It would seem that little connected Marconi and Dr Crippen, except that Crippen was the first murderer to be caught by wireless telegraphy, the invention of Marconi. From this basic premise, author Larson weaves an unexpected but gripping tale. It's the story of two Edwardians and their passions - one for his invention, the other for his young girlfriend - but it is also the fascinating social history of a long gone age. The case is linked to another great murder - the man who caught Crippen was Walter Dew, who had been a detective on the unsolved Jack the Ripper murders.
Chart Throb - Ben Elton (Bantam, £17.99)
The blurb says: "Ben Elton, author of Popcorn and Dead Famous returns to blistering comic satire with a savagely hilarious deconstruction of the world of modern television talent shows". Up to a point Lord Copper. The novel is based around a "talent show" which isn't a real talent show because the makers fix it for the contestants who make good television.
There are three judges: Calvin Simms, who owns the show and appears on the American version; Rodney Root, the boyband manager and Beryl Blenheim, the earth mother with an irritating squeaky voice and a dysfunctional family. Now, what are the differences between that and The X Factor? Simon Cowell appears on the American version; Louis Walsh is a boyband manager; and Sharon Osbourne is the mother of an extremely dysfunctional family.
In the book Beryl throws and guess what - on television Osbourne throws water.
The host is Keely who is blonde and bubbly and on television Kate Thornton is blonde and bubbly.
There are some changes in the book: Beryl is a transsexual which obviously Osbourne isn't. Rodney Root sleeps with a female contestant which Walsh obviously didn't.
It is an entertaining read but "a savagely hilarious deconstruction of the world of modern television talent shows" it isn't.
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