A seventeen-year-old South African girl who claims that the Virgin Mary has visited her twenty times, sat on her bed and given her healing powers is now writing a book about her experiences. Francesca Zackey remains defiant, even though the Church has officially asked her to stop blessing pilgrims, according to South Africa’s Independent Online. [...]
She left Oakland, California — which is undergoing a plague of homicides this summer — but violent crime followed her. Decomposed, face beaten beyond recognition, the body of 21-year-old Boitumelo “Tumi” McCallum — who attended Oakland’s Mills College last year — was found on August 5 wrapped in a sheet between a wall and a bloody, [...]
Norway’s 35-year-old Princess Martha Louise, author of the 2006 English-language children’s book Why Kings and Queens Don’t Wear Crowns, “has shocked the nation by announcing she is a clairvoyant and wants to teach people how to communicate with angels,” according to the Times Online. Having opened the Astarte Centre for alternative therapy this month, the [...]
Skylar Auel Skylar Auel, the 19-year-old grandson of Jean M. Auel — author of the “Earth’s Children” series of bestsellers set in prehistoric times, including The Clan of the Cave Bear and The Mammoth Hunters — pleaded no contest today to a charge of sexual assault in Clackamas County, Oregon. “According to court documents, both [...]
Terry Chimes was a worldwide punk phenomenon as the original drummer for The Clash. After leaving the band, he was replaced by Topper Headon, who was presently kicked out for drug problems, at which point Chimes was asked to rejoin. He toured the US and UK in that capacity. He also drummed in other bands [...]
Dibs! has received a press release from Cleis Press in San Francisco about an upcoming reading in the city featuring successful West Coast writer Stephen Elliott, author of five books including 2004’s Happy Baby (a novel about a down-and-out masochist which some said was autobiographical). Elliott’s father started contacting the media after Happy Baby came [...]
Turkmenistan is the source of our book-news today, as its president Saparmurat Niyazov inaugurates a massive building shaped like an open book, dedicated to democracy in the media. It’s a very attractive building in that old Iron Curtain style: pale and huge, with a door at the top of steps, above which a massive concrete [...]
A huge case involving millions of dollars’ worth of books, stolen from libraries by various thieves including a trained antique-books expert over several years, is rocking New Zealand. Called Operation Pukapuka (the latter is the Maori word for “book”), the case centers around 44-year-old Lee Simpson, who over ten years stole some 2,500 books from [...]
You’ve always wondered whom to blame for nurse romances. Well, we’ve got the culprit right here: Lucilla Matthew Andrews Crichton, who using several different bylines including Lucilla Andrews, Joanna Marcus and Diana Gordon wrote 35 novels such as Quiet Wards, The Young Doctors Downstairs, Hospital Summer, Flowers From the Doctor, Healing Time, Nurse Errant, Ring [...]
Dressing up as Stuart Little or the Cat in the Hat is paltry compensation for not being allowed to dress up as a witch, bat or ghost for Halloween — but that’s what a North Carolina school is forcing students to do. At Stokesdale Elementary, holiday parties that include references to actual holidays as traditionally [...]