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Showing posts from September, 2025

Weddings of the Super-Rich Aren't Like Yours... and That's a Good Thing(!)-- (review of A Killer Wedding)

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Who  doesn’t  love a great big wedding?   The idea of two people, symbolically sharing their Happily-Ever-After with those nearest-and-dearest... even for the semi-cynical amongst us, it’s hard to resist.   But make it a  celebrity  to-do—where one of them is famous (or infamous), or insanely-wealthy—and suddenly, it’s a whole different ballgame.   [Plus, zero chance most of us would merit an invitation...]   If any of us had the opportunity to attend The Wedding of the Year, we’d RSVP “Yes!”, wouldn’t we?   Especially if we had no clue, going into it, that we’d be RSVPing to the scene of a murder... as in Joan O’Leary’s  A Killer Wedding .     It’s quite a coup when Christine, a lowly staff writer for elite  Bespoke Weddings  magazine—which only covers the  most -fabulous nuptials—is singled out to cover the Wedding of the Year, the Ripton-Murphy union.    Grandmother-of-the-groom, octogenarian Gloria ...

Making Deals with a Devil... (Review of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World)

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The job market is TOUGH. So what’s a recent college grad to do, armed with a shiny degree in whatever, saddled with a mountain of debt... and finding few—if any—job prospects?   Go to work for a secretive multinational corporation dealing in “problem-solving”... essentially, a “fixer” for issues no one dares talk about, outside of hushed boardrooms?    You bet.   And then one day, make a deal with what may be an  actual  agent of Hell... all for the sake of a promotion?   I mean, sure, that's a plan.   Of course, such deals never come without a few strings... as one young man quickly discovers in Mark Waddell’s darkly-satirical take on climbing the corporate ladder,  Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World .     After several years of feeling like the lowest man on the totem pole in Dark Enterprises’ Human Resources department, earnest, cardigan-clad Colin receives the dreaded notice: he has one week to fix his latest screw-up, or f...