"Can you blame a publicist for blurring the lines between what's real and what's a dream, when her client is a gorgeous actor?" --Jodi Picoult Sophie is a Hollywood publicist who has a fabulous job, a fabulous boyfriend, and a fabulous life. She even scores her PR firm's most important actor client and every woman's dream--Billy Fox. But will a steamy make-out session in a restaurant alley with her big-name client cost Sophie her job? And does she really want an escape from her life and her loving, if imperfect, relationship with her investment banker boyfriend? The Star Attraction takes us on a wild ride through one woman's daytime soap come to life. "Alison Sweeney's novel is an entertaining, backstage glimpse at those who organize the lives of the Hollywood elite. It's great fun for any reader who secretly sneaks peeks at People magazine in the checkout line at the grocery store, and wonders, What if . . . ?" --Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of Lone Wolf and The Storyteller Publishers Weekly: Actress and reality show host Sweeney (The Mommy Diet) hits it out of the park with her engaging fiction debut about an L.A.-based star publicist who lets her love life get in the way of work Sweeney uses many familiar chick-lit tropes but does it very well and also infuses her story with insider-y Hollywood situations and realistic depictions of relationship woes. It all adds up to a pleasurable read, and a particularly impressive first foray into this genre. Kirkus: A highly entertaining debut from Sweeney, host of The Biggest Loser and star of Days of Our Lives for 20 years. Sweeney's insider knowledge adds authenticity to this laugh-out-loud story of working and romancing in Los Angeles. What makes the book remarkable is not so much the plot but Sophie's reactions to what happens. You just have to love this girl. That sense of humor that can save a person in real life makes this an extremely fun read.

During Hollywood’s “classic era,” from the 1920s to 1950s, roughly twenty major fan magazines were offered each month at American newsstands and abroad. These publications famously fed fan obsessions with celebrities such as Mae West and Elvis Presley. Film studies scholars often regard these magazines with suspicion; perhaps due to their reputation for purveying scandal and gossip, their frequent mingling of gushing tone, and blatant falsehood. Looking at these magazines with fresh regarding eyes and treating them as primary sources, the contributors of this collection provide unique insights into contemporary assumptions about the relationship between fan and star, performer and viewer. In doing so, they reveal the magazines to be a huge and largely untapped resource on a wealth of subjects, including gender roles, appearance and behavior, and national identity. Contributors: Emily Chow-Kambitsch, Alissa Clarke, Jonathan Driskell, Lucy Fischer, Ann-Marie Fleming, Oana-Maria Mazilu, Adrienne L. McLean, Sarah Polley, Geneviève Sellier, Michael Williams

Can you really fall in love with the whole world watching? He's the most famous and most desired man in the world. She's a hard-news journalist trying to keep her job. When Sydney girl Madison Edwards is sent to interview Hollywood heartthrob Jamie Hall, as far as she's concerned it's an embarrassing blot on her credibility. As far as Jamie is concerned, Madison is just one of the thousands of people who want a piece of him. They both turn out to be wrong. When an unimaginable attraction develops between them, they're momentarily blinded. Could it be true love or just the glare of the paparazzi's flashbulbs? Star Attraction is a deliciously seductive story of our times, about celebrity and stardom - and about finding something real and true, even when the whole world is watching. This is a stellar debut by an industry insider who's interviewed celebrities, attended red carpet events and glimpsed behind the velvet ropes.

Star Carr is one of the most famous and important prehistoric sites in Europe. Dating from the early Mesolithic period, over 10,000 years ago, the site has produced a unique range of artefacts and settlement evidence. First excavated in 1949-51 by Professor Grahame Clark of Cambridge University, the site was buried in a deep layer of peat on the edge of prehistoric Lake Flixton. The peat has preserved an incredible collection of organic artefacts, including bone, wood and antler, as well as thousands of flint tools. This has allowed archaeologists to build up a detailed picture of life on the edge of the lake around 9000 BC. New excavations have now revealed the remains of what may be the earliest house ever found in Britain, and have shown that the settlement stretched for several hundred metres along the lake shore. This book tells the story of the discovery of Star Carr, and brings it up-to-date with details of the current excavations. It also discusses other important Mesolithic sites in Britain and Europe and how these are transforming our view of life after the Ice Age.

"In this book, Nancy Witherell and Mary McMackin share easy-to-follow lesson plans that address key reading skills for students in grades 3-5"--

The coining of novel lexical items and the creative manipulation of existing words and expressions is heavily dependent on contextual factors, including the semantic, stylistic, textual and social environments in which they occur. The twelve specialists contributing to this collection aim to illuminate creativity in word formation with respect to functional discourse roles, but also examine 'critical creativity' determined by language policy, as well as diachronic phonetic variation in creatively-coined words. The data, based either on large corpora or smaller hand-collected samples, is drawn from advertising, the daily press, electronic communication, literature, spoken interaction, cartoons, lexical ontologies and style guides. The coining of novel lexical items and the creative manipulation of existing words and expressions is heavily dependent on contextual factors, including the semantic, stylistic, textual and social environments in which they occur. The twelve specialists contributing to this collection aim to illuminate creativity in word formation with respect to functional discourse roles, but also examine 'critical creativity' determined by language policy, as well as diachronic phonetic variation in creatively-coined words. The data, based either on large corpora or smaller hand-collected samples, is drawn from advertising, the daily press, electronic communication, literature, spoken interaction, cartoons, lexical ontologies and style guides. Each study analyses novel formations in relation to their contexts of use and inevitably leads to the crucial question of creativity vs. productivity. By focussing on creative lexical formations at the level of parole, these studies provide insights into morphological theory at the level of langue, and ultimately seek to explain lexical creativity as a function of language use.