I was Playboy model in Hugh Hefner's mansion but now I'm homeless in a TENT – I'm desperate to work but there's NO jobs
Stunning Louise Glover, 42, told The Sun how she had been left with no choice but to pitch up in a £60 tent - because of 'impossible' rent hikes six-months ago.
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The model, who once lived in the Playboy Mansion, has now set up the crowdfunding platform to attempt to get around £9,000 to buy a boat she can make her own.
Speaking to The Sun last night, Louise, who is currently back living in her tent, said getting a boat would finally make her "safe" and "secure."
The qualified Personal Trainer added: "I am applying for a lot of jobs and trying my best to find work. But it is so hard.
"I am hoping to go back to personal training and dog walking businesses once I am in one area again, then I can do my businesses again.
"Because otherwise I am all over the place so I can't be committed to anything.
"People say to me, 'Go get a job.'
"But I am all over the place. I am still homeless, so I am living day to day. "
Glamour girl Louise had been renting a room for £550-per-month in a shared home in the affluent town of Windsor, Bucks.
But she struggled to make ends meet after her businesses hit a lull at the same time her rent rocketed to £750.
The brunette, who earned hundreds of pounds per day at the height of her 20-year modelling career, wrote on the GoFundMe page: "I'm trying to raise enough money to move forward to buy a small cabin boat to live on - something dry, safe, and simple, the boat doesn't have to be perfect, just functional.
Watch as Lily Phillips strikes Playboy shoot
"For someone like me, a boat offers stability, affordable and realistic long-term housing solution.
"It gives me independence, security, and a chance to finally exhale. I'll have a roof over my head, a door I can lock, and a space to call my own."
It is a far cry from her days partying with Paris Hilton and Leonardo DiCaprio, while living at the late Hefner's sprawling estate.
After getting her first gig with Playboy following a test shoot in London aged 20, she went on to be the first Briton to be crowned the magazine's Model of the Year.
Described as the 'British Carmen Electra' by multi-millionaire Hugh, Louise spent her twenties jetting around the world attending celebrity bashes and posing for photoshoots.
She would return to her base at Playboy boss Hefner's mansion, where she had a room rent-free with champagne on tap.
During the world-famous parties at the notorious £77million pad, Louise hung out with celebrity royalty such as DiCaprio, Rihanna, Matthew Perry, Snoop Dogg and Paris.
She previously said: 'It was the best time, like another world.
'I didn't even think about it that much at the time, but I was hanging out with the biggest names in the world.
'I loved all the other Playboy models, we were like a family.
'I really liked Hugh, he was a total gentleman.
'The mansion was incredible, there was even a zoo there. Everything was pink and had the Playboy Bunny logo on it.
'We had these wild parties. I once got my body painted and we all danced around Snoop Dogg as he performed on stage at the house.'
But when she was 27, Louise contracted septicemia following breast implant surgery and went into cardiac arrest. It left her in hospital for five weeks.
She said: 'I nearly died because I was so ill from the infection. That was a wake-up call for me.
She decided to move away from her party lifestyle to focus on fitness and wellbeing. Louise recalled: 'I started to train and moved into fitness and lifestyle modelling. I had deals with most of the major brands.
'Nike sponsored me and I felt like I was on the up again.'
She won first place at the Miami Pro Universe Championships and got a string of other fitness titles.
Having become a personal trainer, last year she travelled to Dubai to launch her PT classes there and carry out some promo work for Formula One and rugby.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘Liam Gallagher is funnier than most standups!': Is comedy the new rock'n'roll – or vice versa?
'Comedy is the new rock'n'roll!' This line, variously attributed to a defunct listings mag, a member of the Comedy Store Players and Janet Street-Porter, became common currency in the 1990s, when comedy gatecrashed arenas with Newman and Baddiel's maiden Wembley gig in 1993. Had the art of making people laugh eclipsed – in size, public enthusiasm, cultural cachet – the art of making people groove? It feels like a quaint conversation in light of the arrival of Oasis's mega-tour in Edinburgh this month, which triggered panic among standups at the gazumping of their fringe audience. But has comedy returned to playing second fiddle to its sexier, better-loved big brother? Or are such distinctions meaningless in a cultural landscape unrecognisable from the 1990s? There's certainly no shortage of comedy/rock'n'roll crossovers on the fringe, including Friday Night Dinner star Tom Rosenthal's show Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I Am. As the title implies, the show compares and contrasts Rosenthal with the Arctic Monkeys – specifically, how both have felt trapped by public perception and expectations of their work. Comedian Marc Burrows, meanwhile, is performing The Britpop Hour, celebrating the cultural moment that Oasis (and indeed Newman and Baddiel) bestrode. Burrows, a music critic and musician as well as a comic, doubts that the 'new rock'n'roll' claim holds water any more. 'I don't think there's a Mighty Boosh around at the moment,' says Burrows. 'They were the last comedians with a music-style fandom. Apart from in niche ways, you don't find people wearing comedians' merch these days. Except for Taskmaster, nothing's developed that cult fandom the Boosh had.' Not that comedy's cool era was confined to the 90s. 'If it was the new rock'n'roll in 1994,' says Burrows, 'what was it in 1984 with The Young Ones? Or in 1970 with Monty Python? The Young Ones had bands on their show. There had always been obsessive fanbases in comedy.' Burrows has a point: what made the Newman and Baddiel era different had less to do with dissident, dissolute values than with big money, swagger, and mass appeal, since the 80s alternative comics were more punk than their 90s successors. If by that logic you wanted to prove comedy was rock'n'roll today, you could point to enormo-dome acts such as Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock or even our own Ricky Gervais – the Rolling Stones of their art form, making money by the stadium-load off the back of what was once their shock-of-the-new appeal. I turn to Ollie Catchpole at Live Nation, 'the world's leading live entertainment company', which now – to a degree unimaginable in the 1990s – pays as much heed to comedy as music. Catchpole used to programme theatres, and found that 'comedy is for most regional venues the backbone of revenue. The economics just became a lot more reliable [than music]. So more promoters like us moved into the comedy space.' Nowadays, he says, 'it's overwhelming how much demand there can be. The Ricky Gervaises, the Micky Flanagans – it's big, big business. And it's growing into Europe now.' Between the UK, America and Australia, and now Europe, arena touring for comedians can effectively be endless. 'Someone like Jimmy Carr, he could just keep going.' So you've got a live performance industry rallying to comedy, as a low-cost way to make big bucks. But this doesn't translate into the Boosh-style fandom of yesteryear. (Which at least – let us be thankful – means Jimmy Carr T-shirts are few and far between …) What's going on? To Catchpole, it's about how audiences consume their culture nowadays. 'Audiences cross over. Tastes vary these days. There's no financial risk to anybody to learn something new any more. You don't have to buy a CD or spend £15 on a gig. The young consumer has such a wide range of profiles at the touch of their fingers, so their interests develop. They no longer pigeonhole themselves into one avenue.' That's a phenomenon promoters exploit, proactively encouraging fans of Band A to explore the work of Comedian B. 'We use the word fluid a lot,' says Catchpole. 'If we feel that fans like a particular band, a Fontaines DC, say, we know they might also like [comedian] Vittorio Angelone. It's a lot healthier now in terms of growing comedy and getting names out there.' The comedians I speak to agree: it's easy now to cultivate your own fanbase – but harder to find a mass audience. Says Burrows: 'Punk came out of fanzine culture, that very DIY point of contact, which comedy didn't do in the past. But it does now – because of TikTok, Instagram reels, social media.' Catchpole says: 'You get a more personal interaction with a comedian now. And we're getting digital influencers and Instagrammers who can go straight on stage.' But the culture of comedy versus music online is imbalanced, says Burrows. 'On YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music, the algorithm gives you the same bands, and fandoms can build across those platforms. Whereas for visual stuff, streaming platforms are ghettoised. A sketch show isn't finding an audience on Netflix and Amazon and YouTube. For comedians, there aren't these huge mass communication points you need to kickstart a rock'n'roll-level appeal.' Culture and the media have fragmented, and the ubiquity of 'milky, milky' and the Mighty Boosh – and indeed Oasis – is harder to attain. (The success of the current Oasis revival, argues Burrows, is partly down to a yearning to be united by a monoculture.) But that phenomenon has changed music just as much as comedy. When I pose the 'new rock'n'roll' question to comedians now, one common response is: is rock'n'roll even 'rock'n'roll' any more? Do we still live in a world where social tribes identify themselves by the music they like, and where bad-ass bands can straddle the world, and seem, even, to propose alternative values to the status quo? In 2019, I wrote an article for this newspaper on the anniversary of the death of ur-rock'n'roll comedian Bill Hicks, asking younger comics what they thought of his work. Their distaste for his swaggering, shoot-from-the-hip comedy was striking. So it's a surprise to hear from the musical comedy act Jazz Emu, AKA Archie Henderson, that the say-the-unsayable brand of standup Hicks once represented is alive and well. 'It still has a big pull, that naughty-boy standup energy, where they're pushing things they shouldn't really be saying, especially on podcasts. Maybe now it's hidden behind more layers of irony. There are lots of 'cancel me if you want' games being played. But there's an appetite for it.' While distancing himself from the phenomenon, Burrows cites the anti-woke acts trading under the Comedy Unleashed banner as an example of what some might consider rock'n'roll comedy. (Worth noting that, at the other end of the political spectrum, the most trenchant recent opposition to President Trump has been expressed in comedy, by South Park and Stephen Colbert.) Like all my interviewees, Henderson thinks the comedy and music worlds are so changed as to make the 'new rock'n'roll' claim now meaningless. If you want rock'n'roll-alike comedy, you can find it, he says, citing as an example the 'deliberately disruptive' late-night collective Stamptown, led by American import Zach Zucker. 'The underground energy of being crammed in a room with people late at night is the same whether you're seeing a band in a sweaty music venue or a comedy show at 1am when someone's throwing stuff all around the room.' On the other hand, 'going to see a rock legend who is completely committed to the theatre of being cool, and the audience buys into it – I don't think comedy can do that'. A sense of humour necessarily bursts the bubble. 'Comedy is always being undermined by itself.' But that's fine – because far from comedy aspiring to be rock'n'roll, these days it's often the other way around. 'Musicians who previously might have been cool and aloof,' says Henderson, 'now have to debase themselves a bit and do sketches online. It's a very effective way of getting their music out there: comedy is a good way of gaming the algorithm. So the bands that survive in this anti-band economy are the ones willing to be a bit internetty and a bit cringe, and do sketches about their songs.' Finally, says Catchpole, 'all of these things exist quite happily together in today's marketplace. Comedy is stronger and healthier than ever. The fact that at the Edinburgh fringe it is' (widely expressed panic notwithstanding) 'still selling tickets next to Oasis shows comedy can not only compete with rock'n'roll but can match it. But I don't see it as a competition, I see them as complementary.' So, too, does Burrows, staging his show about Britpop while its most bullish proponents perform to 70,000 fans in a stadium just down the road. There's only one thing niggling Burrows about comedy's current relationship with rock'n'roll, and that's that 'Liam Gallagher is funnier than almost any comic', he says. 'There's a bit in my set where I read out his tweets. And one of the existential crises I have about what I'm doing is that it gets bigger laughs than anything else in my show.' The Britpop Hour With Marc Burrows is at Underbelly, Bristo Square until 25 August; Jazz Emu: The Pleasure Is All Yours is at Pleasance Dome until 24 August; Tom Rosenthal: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I Am is at Assembly Roxy until 24 August
Times
an hour ago
- Times
I kissed a mum (and I liked it): lust, sex and the school run
'If you can't beat them, join them,' doesn't usually apply to dating. But when my ex-husband started seeing a mum with a child in the same class as our son just a few months after our divorce — a woman to whom I'd previously nodded hello at the school gate, and made idle conversation with at quizzes and year 2 discos — well, I admit I thought: sod it. I'll date a school mum too then. So, I did… several, actually, in the past few years since I became a fortysomething single mother. It's all part of my late-life lesbian adventure — and now I'm convinced that every woman of a certain age should try it. Because, let's face it: after childbirth and perimenopause, who isn't completely sick of men? Sex on the school run is surprisingly common — and if you look around at sports day and simply can't imagine that sack races are happening after hours (by which I mean between 9am and 3pm, bringing a whole new meaning to the concept of 'school pick-up'), I'm here to tell you: you are very, very wrong. • Read more expert advice on sex, relationships, dating and love It may no longer be de rigueur to put pampas grass in the front garden to signify there are swingers in the neighbourhood, but, in my circle of middle-class friends, a common and clandestine pursuit today is mums having affairs with each other around PTA meetings. I've done it multiple times since I came out of my marriage. I've started calling it my 'butterfly years' — because you wouldn't believe whom you attract once you unfurl those wings. The first mum I 'dated' (she's still married — to a man — so it's not quite your clear-cut 'Juliet leaves Romeo for Rosaline' situation) propositioned me on a mums' night out. You know — the kind of social event that's organised on a giant WhatsApp group; the kind that gets planned and replanned endless times, then when it finally comes around involves making polite conversation about kitchen islands and whether the kids get enough homework. (Sandra with the wasp mouth always thinks they should get more, and Jenny — who's never missed a Glastonbury and always misses parents' evening — never does any homework with her kids.) This kind of organised fun — which is always called 'drinkies', never 'drinks' — can feel like going into battle, where you have to smile politely and keep your mouth shut for fear of dropping a social clanger that would mean you're never invited to Tiggy's summer party with its free-flowing prosecco again. It can be stiff and gladiatorial, it can be snipey and like Mean Girls — at least until the third bottle of wine, where things tend to get loose and interesting, usually back at someone's house. A lot more interesting, in my case. • The midlife sex revolution: why the over-50s are signing up to Feeld Because that's when Rosaline (let's call her that) — sexy, super-successful, straight, or that's what I'd assumed — leant in close, brushed my hair behind my ear and asked in a whisper if I fancied walking home together through the fields rather than taking the road. I said yes, obviously. That night, as Rosaline pressed me against a tree to kiss me, I realised that rather than scroll wearily through dating apps, what I wanted post-divorce — no-strings dating, frivolous fun — was right on my doorstep. Literally. And once I took that step, there was no turning back. For despite being married for ten years to a man, despite never advertising my fluid sexuality openly or going out of my way to tell anyone that I found women attractive too, it was as if I'd switched on some kind of invisible beacon. For those not in the know, sex with a woman just hits differently (and in all the right places). Women are softer, gentler, more intuitive; we pay more attention to the non-verbal signs that our partners are enjoying what we are doing — and change tack as soon as we pick up that they're not. There's no such thing as ploughing on regardless or selfishly demanding something our partner isn't into. I've yet to meet a woman who insists we 'perform' in the same way men do, who makes me feel unsafe or transparently recreates scenes they've seen in hardcore porn. I've never had a woman grab my throat without consent, for example, though that's happened with plenty of men; no woman has ever got off on calling me a 'whore' or a 'slut'. Plus, women have a built-in understanding of other women's bodies; we appreciate that the key to good sex is simply tuning into what you like — and then saying it out loud (we all know that women are the fairer sex when it comes to communication). Think about it: how many men will make you dinner, run you a bath, help around the house, even offer you a massage — when they're not even trying to have sex? That's women for you. And it's why I seriously struggle to imagine ever going back to men. After things with Rosaline tapered off (she got a job in New York), the next woman to cross my path was another divorced, straight-seeming school mum who 'super-swiped' me on Tinder, where my search filters aren't gender-specific but are set to 'interested in everyone'. I pinged her a message saying I was surprised to see her there, joked that she was a 'top pick', and she then sent me this text on an unassuming Tuesday night: 'I've always thought you were smoking hot and I really fancy you.' She then booty-called me, all through lockdown. Yet at the park, pushing our kids on the swings, meeting up with other parents for picnics and going to godawful trampoline parks, nobody would know a thing. And that's all part of the thrill. Plus, trysts take on a whole new meaning when they're happening halfway through the work or school day. There's something extra-naughty about fitting in a snog or heavy petting session that has to wind up by 3pm; of arriving at school separately and sharing a grin with the person who gave you an orgasm less than an hour earlier. Rosaline and I would ask each other nonchalantly at the bike sheds, in front of a group, 'How was your afternoon? Get up to much?', knowing full well that as little as 30 minutes ago we were entwined on a bed at one of our houses. And if anyone were to see one or the other of us leaving, we had the perfect excuse: we were 'just dropping something off' or 'having a cup of tea' (or, on one memorable occasion when we were almost caught by a fellow parent having a hot stolen moment in a quiet section of a local garden centre, 'just helping to choose some bulbs'). I had no idea extramarital midlife affairs between women were so rife, or could be quite so dramatic. One woman, with whom I hooked up at a friend's 50th birthday party, ended up leaving her husband and coming out as gay. Whoops. Another mum with whom I'd only exchanged niceties at school bake sales found me on the hook-up app Feeld, said she recognised me from the playground — and then confessed she and her husband were looking for a 'unicorn': a third; a woman to join them and become their girlfriend. I politely declined. I had no desire to join someone else's marriage — I'd only just escaped my own. Still, it gave me a peculiar frisson to continue to smile and nod to her at pick-up, thinking of the intimate pictures I'd seen on their shared profile; knowing for the first time what really went on behind closed doors. I've since organised nights out to places like Pussy Liquor at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club — featuring gay cabaret and a lot of glitter — with a group of mums I somehow sense might not entirely be averse to that kind of environment (and triumphantly scored snogs with some of them on the dancefloor). And I've been to lesbian bars with mates whose husbands are fine for them to explore romance with women — just no men. One single mum walked home with me from a night out at a local bar and gave me a passionate kiss at the bus stop, then never mentioned it again. I've been to fetish nights, intimate burlesque shows held in central London and brothel-themed events dressed up as 'performance art'. I've attended 'single and mingles' for corporate women at cocktail bars with a dress code of pencil skirts and heels (and ended up having a one-night stand with an estate agent called Katherine). I've even been (alone) to luxe penthouses in west London to privately organised parties for high-earning women aged 30-plus (spoiler: it was full of CEOs in Coco de Mer). There have been bigger, naughtier group nights out too, arranged in snatched conversations while walking into an end-of-term assembly — such as the time a couple of mums (both creatives) asked me if I wanted to join them at an 'all-women play party'. I said yes, of course, because I made a pledge with myself when I entered my forties never to say no to a wild escapade. Every misadventure begins at someone's house (usually the one whose ex-husband has the kids for the weekend), where we drink and dive into each other's wardrobes, laugh and swap shapewear and fishnets, and compliment each other's cleavage — just like any other girls' night out. It's not just me getting up to mischief, either: single friends with kids at other schools have told me tales of their own scandals, post-divorce. Such as the time one went home with a 24-year-old; and another night where two of them (both mums, both divorced, who met when their kids were at nursery together) ended up in a threesome with a man they took home from a bar. I know at least three high-profile and successful women — authors, TV producers, business owners — who have followed the eerily similar trajectory of being in monogamous relationships with men, followed by kids, divorce and a long-term lesbian relationship, all when they hit their forties. And what I've noticed is that these women, when they hit this spot, simultaneously reject all aspects of the 'straight' lives they lived before. Gone are the Instagram posts about 'mum life' and feeling 'blessed' — they've swapped hashtags about their Victorian semis (#reno) for #pride and #bisexualawareness and #lesbianvisibilityday. In this era of being open about the menopause and female empowerment as we hurtle towards 50, it's fascinating to watch women of my age evolve — and find their 'true selves' in the arms of other women. I sometimes think of it as the 'Miranda July effect'. Her scandalous 2024 novel about womanhood, age and desire, All Fours — in which the main character leaves her husband and child for a journey of self-discovery just 20 minutes down the road, at a cheap motel, where she falls 'in lust' with a man half her age and has lesbian adventures along the way — has been passed around our local book clubs like a cup of confessional wine. • The dirty, funny novel that should have won the Women's Prize 'Have you read All Fours yet?' has become a byword for sizzling conversation; acting as a password that lets you into the inner lives of the women around you. Forget mumsy haircuts and dresses from Boden, these women — the type who have read and loved All Fours — are openly reassessing their lives, their happiness and their sexuality. And I'm one of them. When I happen to mention that I'm dating to a casual friend or acquaintance, and if I say that it's — shock! — a woman, there's always the same response: 'Oh, my friend did that.' And by 'did that' they mean they know a woman, just like me, who has conducted a graceful and sensual pivot from men to women in later life. The interesting thing is that when these 'straight' and married friends react like this, it's often followed up with, 'I'm so jealous,' or, 'I wish I were a lesbian.' To which I can't help responding, 'Well, why don't you try it and see if you are?' Anecdotal evidence aside, even the latest statistics suggest that more women are 'going gay'. We know that an estimated 3.8 per cent of the UK population aged 16 years and over identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual in 2023 — a rise from 2.2 per cent in 2018. Previous research from 2023 also found that women are more likely to display a bisexual pattern in their arousal compared with men. Perhaps women like me are simply so fed up with being mothers to our husbands for so many years that we finally feel brave enough to make the conscious choice to reject the men (and all that comes with them) for someone who makes love and empties the dishwasher afterwards. What do women really want? Someone who wouldn't even think of leaving her underwear on the floor for anyone else to pick up. Someone who actually listens. Someone who understands the difficulty of juggling childcare and work. Someone on the school run.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Australian novel attracts controversy over fictionalised depiction of gay codebreaker Alan Turing
A novel written by a prominent book industry figure in which persecuted gay man Alan Turing has sex with a woman and fathers a child has been criticised online for its portrayal of the codebreaker. The Turing Protocol was released in July and was written by Nick Croydon, the CEO of QBD Books, the largest Australian-owned bookshop chain, where the book is being heavily promoted. Published by Affirm Press, which was bought by Simon & Schuster last year, the novel's cover features the question: 'If you had the power to change history, would you dare?' In the thriller, Turing, the brilliant British wartime mathematician and computer pioneer, builds a time travel machine and has sex with Joan Clarke, with whom he secretly fathers a child. Turing is otherwise depicted as gay and the story includes details of his persecution for his sexuality. In real life, Turing was briefly engaged to Bletchley Park colleague, Clarke, when the pair were employed in vital code-breaking during the war. He was later convicted for 'gross indecency' with another man and died by suicide at the age of 41 after enduring chemical castration. Queen Elizabeth II posthumously pardoned Turing in 2013, four years after prime minister Gordon Brown apologised for his 'appalling' treatment. Croydon told The Australian newspaper he had not pretended Turing was straight, but needed to give him a child for the purpose of his plot. 'I wrote this novel as a tribute to him. I wanted to highlight the genius that he was, but also the injustice that he suffered,' he said. As of Tuesday afternoon, the book had received 115 ratings on Goodreads, with five stars making up 21% and one stars making up 64%. Many of the most positive reviews came from first-time Goodreads reviewers. The negative reviews included anger about what some claimed was the 'erasure' of gay history. 'Anyone who is aware of Alan Turing and his prosecution will be scratching their head in disbelief,' one reader wrote. 'Erasing the whole point of Alan Turing's tragedy is one of the worst things someone can do. Erasing LGBTQ history, erasing a real person's pain? … Turing was not some fictional character to straight-ify,' wrote another. The book is QBD's fiction book of the month and is being actively marketed by the company, including a promotional Channel 7 interview in which Croydon explained that his favourite subjects at school were history and mathematics. Authors who have endorsed the book include historical fiction writer Fiona McIntosh and former QBD fiction book of the month author, Chris Hammer, who compared the book to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Prize-winning author Trent Dalton described the book as 'wildly imaginative' and urged people to 'read the Turing Protocol now', while Candice Fox said it was 'vivid'. Commenting on gay erasure broadly, Equality Australia legal director, Heather Corkhill, told Guardian Australia that 'erasing or marginalising LGBTIQ+ people and characters from historical and cultural narratives to fit a more heteronormative or 'traditional' worldview is not a new phenomenon – but it risks erasing our shared history and diminishing our understanding of the LGBTQ+ experience'. 'At no time did I say Turing wasn't gay,' Croydon said, according to the Australian. 'The book makes it very plain that he is gay. It talks about how he had to hide the fact that he was gay, and in the historical note page at the back of the book I again acknowledge the travesty of the treatment he received.' In a statement released last week, QBD said throughout the novel, Turing's 'identity as a gay man is neither erased, questioned nor diminished'. 'Speculative historical fiction often examines phenomena like lavender marriages – arrangements where LGBTQ+ individuals married opposite-sex partners due to societal pressures, ensuring protection and companionship – which were common during Turing's era and beyond. 'Regarding reviews, it's not unusual for friends, family, colleagues and peers to provide reviews of an author's work. QBD Books staff are a team of avid readers across the country who engage with literature passionately, some of whom have shared their genuine views on the book – both complimentary and critical. 'QBD Books' Book of the Month program follows a rigorous selection process that highlights debut or new authors who have written standout works. Each month submissions are received from publishers, and new releases are reviewed by our team of expert buyers, after which we select four titles for the whole calendar month to spotlight.' QBD, Simon and Schuster and Croydon have been contacted for comment.
