"Find your one true love and live happily ever after." The trials of love and desire provide perennial story material, from the Biblical Song of Songs to Disney's princesses, but perhaps most provocatively in the romance novel, a genre known for tales of fantasy and desire, sex and pleasure. Hailed on the one hand for its women-centered stories that can be sexually liberating, and criticized on the other for its emphasis on male/female coupling and mythical happy endings, romance fiction is a multi-million dollar publishing phenomenon, creating national and international societies of enthusiasts, practitioners, and scholars. Catherine M. Roach, alongside her romance-writer alter-ego, Catherine LaRoche, guides the reader deep into Romancelandia where the smart and the witty combine with the sexy and seductive to explore why this genre has such a grip on readers and what we can learn from the romance novel about the nature of happiness, love, sex, and desire in American popular culture.

SLEAZY MAGAZINES AND BOOK COVERS OF THE PAST. IS EXACTLY THAT. THIS BOOK WILL TAKE A LOOK AT THE VARIOUS MAGAZINES AND BOOK COVERS OF THE PAST. THERE HAS BEEN THOUSANDS OF SO CALLED SLEAZE OR SMUT PUBLICATIONS. THIS COLLECTION WILL HIGHLIGHT SOME OF THE WORST OR BEST. THE CHOICE IS YOURS. I THINK THAT THESE EARLY PERIODICALS OF THIS NATURE WERE UNIQUE AND SPECIAL. I PERSONALLY LIKE THE ART WORK AND THE WEIRD PHOTOGRAPHY. NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK, THIS IS ALSO A PART OF THE AMERICAN STORY. IF YOU WERE TO COMPARE THESE EARLY MAGS AND BOOK COVERS. UP AGAINST WHAT IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TODAY. THE OLD MAGS AND BOOK COVERS WOULD LOOK LIKE A JOKE AT LEAST THE OLD MAGS LEFT YOU SOME ROOM FOR IMAGINATION. TODAY WITH THE INTERNET, YOU CAN SEE MORE NAKED MEN OR WOMEN ON ONE PAGE. THAN ALL OF THESE BOOKS COMBINED. TODAY THESE MAGS WOULD CARRY A PG WARNING LABEL. BACK IN THE DAY. THEY WERE CONSIDERED VULGAR. TODAY THEY ARE FUNNY AND OUT DATED. SOMETIMES SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT UNCHANGED ANYWAY YOU BE THE JUDGE, ON WHATS SLEAZE OR NOT. ME, I THINK. IT IS JUST ANOTHER LOST PART OF OUR INNOCENCE OR OUR IGNORANCE. ENOUGH TALK GO LOOK AT SOME VINTAGE COVERS. SEE YOU IN THE NEXT EPISODE.

Mechele is young, attractive, and looking to cash in on her aesthetic assets when she moves from New Orleans to Alaska in 1994 to earn money for college tuition. Her charms ensnare the affections of three men, and the combined effects of jealously, lust, and greed take a deadly turn in this true crime story. Before a murder in the woods shatters her contented life, Mechele works as an exotic dancer at the Alaska Bush Company, where she spends her days pleasing a procession of hard-working men. John, Scott, and Kent are simultaneously smitten with Mechele, and offer affection in the form of lavish gifts and ultimately engagement rings. While the three men begin their affairs on the same path, violent murder blasts apart their parallel lives. One of the trio is shot in the back; another is accused of the murder. Dead Man's Dancer follows this murder case from 1996 throughout Mechele's tumultuous trial in 2006 that becomes a nationwide sensation. Shocking in its detailed portrayal of murder and convoluted love affairs, Dead Man's Dancer excites horror in readers that lingers far after the last page is turned.

Paranormal activity has yet to be accepted by modern culture, and these paranormal hoaxes surely aren't helping its case! Take a detailed look at some of the most famous, and infamous, otherworldly hoaxes perpetrated in recent and ancient history with this in-depth collection.