San Francisco, 1976. A naà ve young secretary, fresh out of Clevel&, tumbles headlong into a brave new world of laundromat Lotharios, pot-growing landladies, cut throat debutantes, & Jockey Shorts dance contests. The saga that ensues is manic, romantic, tawdry, touching, & outrageous
- unmistakably the handiwork of Armistead Maupin.
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Tales of the Tartan Army is a glimpse into the occasionally surreal & often all-too-real ranks of a platoon of footsoldiers in the great & bravehearted Army's search to find a team to follow which is worthy of their support. These are the rampant guys & rare gals that you see screaming their allegiance in stadiums around the world, from Mexico to Croatia, via Iceland & Spain, usually imprisoned in a postage-stamp-sized section of the ground behind razor-wire, snarling security forces & killer dogs. These are the people who make Scotland famous the world over for their warmth, generosity & capacity for strong drink. They'll make you laugh & maybe once or twice they'll make you shed a furtive tear. Their clan slogan is ' We'll support you ever more! F*** the score!'. & once you've read about them, you'll want to join them. You'll be welcome. ...

' Until that moment, I hadn't realized how much I'd been needing to meet someone I might be able to say everything to.' They met at a party. It was hate at first sight. Ruth was far too beautiful, too flamboyant. Not at all Ann's kind of person. Until a chance encounter in the bathroom led to an alliance of souls. Soon they were sharing hankies during the late showing of Sophie's World, wolfing down sundaes sodden with whipped cream, telling truths of marriage, mortality & love, secure in a kind of intimacy no man could ever know. After years of shared secrets, guilty pleasures, family life & divorce, they face a crisis that redefines the meaning of friendship & unconditional love. This is the story of Ruth. Of Ann. & of all of us who wonder what we'd say if we knew we didn't have forever. ...

What happened to the great dictators of contemporary history, responsible for some of its most gruesome chapters? &, now that they are disgraced, or in prison, or exiled, or simply forgotten, do they still seem as terrifying as when they held power? Thanks to his conversion to Islam, the unrepentant Idi Amin lives in exile in Saudi Arabia & is still meddling in African wars. Before dying at his dilapidated mansion in Bangui, Bokassa proclaims himself the 13th apostle of the Roman Catholic Church & talks of his secret meetings with the Pope. Colonel Menghistu, still a guest of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, defends his Red Terror campaign. Mrs Hoxha, from her bare prison cell in Tirana, argues why the most isolated regime in the world was right to adopt a brutal Stalinist ideology & explains how it worked. Paris-based Baby Doc Duvalier, in his first interview after fleeing Haiti in 1986, speaks about voodoo, solar panels, the women of his life & how he lost all his money. Mrs Milosevic, clutching her Fendi handbag, defends the wars in the former Yugoslavia & declares her love for her husb&, Slobodan. Jaruzelski, entrenched in a furious legal battle in a Warsaw court, reveals his personal transition from son of an aristocratic family exiled to Siberia by the Soviets, to autocrat army general in sunglasses who defended Moscow's supremacy in eastern Europe. In Talk of the Devil Riccardo Orizio has tracked down these fallen tyrants & thrown a new light on people whose names have become synonymous with misery, death & terror for entire nations. ...

Kincaid found a unique voice, at once in sync with the quintessential elite insider's magazine, & (though unsigned) all her own
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