'I was mind blown... I ended up finishing the book at 2:30am on a workday - need I say more?!' Reader review, 5 stars 'Whoa baby, this was a WILD ride! A brilliant page turner' Reader review, 5 stars Some couples would kill for a weekend away... It was supposed to be a fun trip. Three couples, friends since high school, arrive at a remote mountain retreat ready to unwind and catch up. When an innocent remark of swapping partners is made, they laugh it off as a joke. But after a few glasses of wine, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea. With the lights off, it's not really cheating when you don't know who you're with, right? As the lights flicker back on, what started out as a night of fun quickly descends into horror when one of the husbands is discovered dead. Suspicion grows between the friends, but no one is willing to come forward and confess what they know. With no phone service and the car keys missing, they're now stranded on the mountain with no way down. And the killer is just getting started... An absolutely unputdownable and fast-paced crime thriller that will keep you guessing with each new page, never knowing what to expect next. Fans of Clare Mackintosh, Sarah Pearse and Lucy Foley will enjoy this gripping locked-room thriller from Jack Heath set in the Australian bush. *First published as Kill Your Husbands, an Audible Original title* Authors and readers are GRIPPED by The Wife Swap: 'AMAZING... you need to read this book asap! Put down your current read, pick this one up! You won't be disappointed!!' Reader review, 5 stars 'A twisted and devious ride... I loved it!' Hayley Scrivenor, author of Dirt Town 'Could. Not. Stop. Reading. An absolutely brilliant, well-crafted, sophisticated tale of intrigue, lust, betrayal, and sheer creepiness... Warning: don't read before bed or you will be up late wondering 'what the hell happened'? and 'who the hell did it'?' Reader review, 5 stars 'A deviously clever locked-room mystery that had me nailed to the page till the very end. I dare you to stop reading once you begin' Dinuka McKenzie, author of The Torrent and Taken 'I had to read this with the lights on! ...it sucks you in before it ramps up the dial to spine-chillingly terrifying! This is an addictive, turn the page, locked-room thriller that I found impossible to put down' Reader review, 5 stars

Annette Hill discusses a wide range of reality television shows, drawing on research among reality TV viewers to consider how different audience groups think about factual television, and whether they consider such programmes to be providing entertainment or information.

A fascinating look at the changing role of wives in modern America After a half century of battling for gender equality, women have been freed from the necessity of securing a husband for economic stability, sexual fulfillment, or procreation. Marriage is a choice, and increasingly women (and men) are opting out. Yet despite these changes, the cultural power of marriage has burgeoned. What was once an obligation has become an exclusive club into which heterosexual women with the right amount of self-discipline may win entry. The newly exalted professionalized wife is no longer reliant on her husband’s status or money; instead she can wield her own power provided she can successfully manage the business of being a wife. Wife, Inc. tells a fiercely contemporary story revealing that today’s wives do not labor in kitchens or even homes. Instead, the work of wifedom occurs in online dating sites, on reality television, in social media, and on the campaign trail. Dating, marital commitment, and married life have been reconfigured. No longer the stuff of marriage vows, these realms are now controlled by brand management and marketability. To prosper, women must appear confident, empowered, and sexually savvy. Guiding readers through the stages of the “wife-cycle,” Suzanne Leonard follows women as they date, prepare to wed, and toil as wives, using examples from popular television, film, and literature, as well as mass market news, women’s magazines, new media, and advice culture. The first major study to focus on this new definition of “working wives,” Wife, Inc. reveals how marriage occupies a newly professionalized role in the lives of American women. Being a wife is a business that takes a lot more than a vow to maintain—this book tells that story.

Reality programming—a broad title for unscripted shows that involve non-actors—is really an updated version of a classic television genre that had its first successes decades before The Real World or Survivor made their premieres. NBC launched Try and Do It, a show in which audience members attempted to complete tasks such as whistling with a mouthful of crackers, in 1949. In the 1950s Queen for a Day crowned the most down-trodden of its four contestants, draping her in a sable-trimmed robe and granting a previously declared wish. The wild success reality television has achieved of late has pushed the envelope of such programming ever further away from the genre's innocuous beginnings. The time is now ripe for a look back on how this genre has developed, what it reveals about us, and what has transformed it into one of the most powerful forms of entertainment on television today. Reality programming—a broad title for unscripted shows that involve non-actors—is really an updated version of a classic television genre that had its first successes decades before The Real World or Survivor made their premieres. NBC launched Try and Do It, a show in which audience members attempted to complete tasks such as whistling with a mouthful of crackers, in 1949. In the 1950s Queen for a Day crowned the most down-trodden of its four contestants at the end of each show, draping her in a sable-trimmed robe and granting a previously declared wish. The wild success reality television has achieved of late has pushed the envelope of such programming ever further away—from the genre's innocuous beginnings. The time is now ripe for a look back on how this genre has developed, what it reveals about us, and what has transformed it into one of the most powerful forms of entertainment on television today. Using interviews with network insiders, reality producers, and other experts, Richard Huff supplies fascinating insights into the diverse content and often erratic development of reality television programming, augmenting this information with illuminating general connections between the past and present forms these shows assume. From Queen for a Day through Extreme Makeover, from Cops to Fear Factor, the genre is placed before us in this exhaustive and many-sided account, an account that uncovers the foundations and the future potential of the compelling and dominating phenomenon that is reality television.

Trans-Reality Television: The Transgression of Reality, Genre, Politics, and Audience offers an overview of contributions which engage with the phenomenon of reality television as a tool to reflect on societal and mediated transformations and transgressions. While some contributors delve deep into the theoretical issues, others approach the topic at hand through empirical studies of specific reality television formats and programs. The chapters in this volume are divided into four sections, all of which deal with how we see the fluid social at work in reality television through the trans-real, trans-politics, trans-genre, and trans-audience. The first section stresses the concept of the trans-real. These chapters go into the complexity of the construction of reality in reality television. The second section, which deals with the concept of trans-politics, offers a diversity of perspectives on the articulation and re-articulation of politics and the political. In the third section, trans-genre, the chapters analyze how the modern conceptualizations of genre and format are transcended. Finally, the last set of chapters articulate the concept of trans-audiences, using case studies of particular audiences and a study of reality celebrities. Trans-Reality Television concludes by returning to the sense and nonsense of the use of these 'post' concepts.

Jonathan Bignell presents a wide-ranging analysis of the television phenomenon of the early twenty-first century: Reality TV, exploring its cultural and political meanings, explaining the genesis of the form and its relationship to contemporary television production, and considering how it connects with, and breaks away from, factual and fictional conventions in television. Relationships with surveillance, celebrity and media culture are examined, leading to an appraisal of the directions that television culture is taking in the new century. His highly-readable style is accessible to readers at all levels of Culture and Media studies.

"The collapse of the Ming dynasty and the Manchu conquest of China were traumatic experiences for Chinese intellectuals, not only because of the many decades of destructive warfare but also because of the adjustments necessary to life under a foreign regime. History became a defining subject in their writings, and it went on shaping literary production in succeeding generations as the Ming continued to be remembered, re-imagined, and refigured on new terms. The twelve chapters in this volume and the introductory essays on early Qing poetry, prose, and drama understand the writings of this era wholly or in part as attempts to recover from or transcend the trauma of the transition years. By the end of the seventeenth century, the sense of trauma had diminished, and a mood of accommodation had taken hold. Varying shades of lament or reconciliation, critical or nostalgic retrospection on the Ming, and rejection or acceptance of the new order distinguish the many voices in these writings."