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The Osbourne kids are having a rough time with their relationships this summer.

First, Kelly goes through an embarrassing public break-up on Facebook and then Jack’s ex-girlfriend takes her anger out on his car.

Model Niki Cloyd pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor count of vandalism stemming from when she allegedly keyed the word “DICK” onto the exterior of Jack Osbourne’s Aston Martin earlier this year. The scratches reportedly cost $10,000 in damages to the $250,000 sports car, which Cloyd was ordered to pay.

The 24-year-old girl was put on an 18-month probation and will also have to attend 12 sessions of anger management class, according to TMZ. Assuming she stays out of trouble while on probation, Cloyd’s criminal record will ultimately be cleared.

I don’t know why “Ni-key” decided to carve that particular word into Jack’s car (maybe she listened to too manyCarrie Underwood songs), but committing a crime is never the best way to go. I hope it was worth $10,000 and a dozen mandatory anger management classes! (I doubt it.) Maybe next time she’ll think before she keys…

“The next-door neighbour of my protagonist, Eleanor Trewynn, is an artist,” says author Carola Dunn. “Nick had a role in the first Cornish mystery, Manna from Hades. He’s a peaceable sort of chap, laid-back and easy-going. I just started wondering what would make him mad enough to resort to violence.”

Set in the sleepy Cornwall of the 1960s, A Colourful Death opens as murder disrupts the quiet life of Eleanor Trewynn, who is widowed and works at the charity shop below her home in the village of Port Mabyn. On returning from a train trip to London, Eleanor’s friend and neighbor Nick Gresham discovers that someone has slashed several of his paintings in his shop.

Not wanting to go to the police, Nick sets out to confront rival artist Geoffrey Monmouth, who Nick is sure is the culprit. Accompanied by an anxious Eleanor, Nick finds Geoff stabbed to death in his Padstow bungalow. The police detain Nick, while Eleanor sets out to track down the real killer.

“Apart from going to Cornwall (where my sister fortunately lives) and researching the specific places I used as settings for A Colourful Death, the most interesting research was into the dyes used by commercial artists,’ says Dunn. “A friend of mine who’s an artist bought three samples of red dye and we tried them all out on an old rag to see if any would give the effect I wanted. Luckily one did – and I still have the rag lying around in my office to prove it.”

I’m doing my first virtual blog tour,” says Dunn. “It’s fun coming up with posts that are a little different from each other, different angles, all connected with the new book.”

Some of the blogs Carola has contributed to are: makeminemystery.blogspot.com; meanderingsandmuses.blogspot.com/

and wordwenches.typepad.com/wordwenches/

“I was invited to be a guest speaker on a mystery authors’ panel in aid of the Friends of Anaheim Library,” says Dunn “We panelists were asked to let them auction off the name of a character in our next book. A long-time reader of my mysteries bid $800 to have me include her sister’s name in A Colourful Death. She gave me a lot of information about her sister, and I had fun working some of it into my story. I hope she likes the result!”

A Colourful Death has not yet being adapted for film or television. Dunn is currently working on her twentieth Daisy Dalrymple mystery, Gone West. The nineteenth, Anthem for Doomed Youth, will be out in Feb/March 2011.

“I’m very happy to be able to announce that all of the Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries are being published in the UK and Commonwealth at last, by Constable & Robinson, a firm founded in 1795,” says Dunn. “Some of those UK editions already out have been spotted in the window of Hatchard’s bookstore, a firm founded in 1797.”

This is the second Aunt Nell Cornish amateur sleuth mystery. The dialog is great and Dunn’s descriptions of Cornwall are very vivid. Even though the characters where a bit one-dimensional Dunn’s dialog is right on the mark for 1960.

Rating: *** 3 stars

A Colourful Death: A Cornish Mystery by Carola Dunn. Hardcover, 352 pages, Publisher: Minotaur Books, 1 edition (June 8, 2010), Language: English, ISBN, 9780312379469 $24.99

While on holiday in the Southeast Asian country of Laos, Jude Law and Sienna Miller appear to have joined in holy matrimony. The off-again, on-again couple were recently spotted hand-in-hand at a secret wedding ceremony officiated by the local village shaman.

The two actors were reportedly given red and white bracelets to mark their union. Although this exotic marriage is not legal, the news has sparked more rumours that the famous British couple are planning to get married legally in front of friends and family in just a few months time.

After all of their previous make-ups and break-ups, I say these two could benefit from a practice marriage first anyway… eh Jude ol’ boy?

Amy Winehouse posed up with her director boyfriend Reg Traviss in London this week after he was spotted holding hands with his ex earlier in the week. She sure knows how to pick ‘em eh?

The 33-year-old was strolling around Covent Garden with his stripper ex-girlfriend Raven Isis and tried to duck away from photographers when he was caught.

He even ran away from his parents’ pub when he saw Amy inside, to avoid seeing her.

Anyway, it seems the pair is back on track because they were snapped out with Carl Barat of The Libertines Tuesday night and Reg has been given some credit for keeping Amy on the straight and narrow.

But still…OK he’s no Blake but do you really want to be with a bloke who’s still holding hands with his ex – whether it’s perfectly innocent or not? Not so much the catch Wino!

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Rating: 3 Stars

By Gabrielle Pantera

“I’m interested in people who despite overwhelming obstacles achieve extraordinary things and also in people to whom history has been unfair,” says Cleopatra and Antony author Diana Preston. “Cleopatra had a traumatic childhood and adolescence. One of her sisters was executed by her father, probably in front of her. As a young queen her half-brother ejected her from her throne and forced her to flee. She got back her throne by seducing Julius Caesar and kept it for the rest of her life until her suicide at thirty-nine.”

Know as history’s greatest lovers, Cleopatra and Antony are more than that. Their lives were very political with intrigue in both Egypt and Rome.

“She was the most powerful female ruler of the ancient world with a vision of a new world order,” says Preston. “If she and her Roman lover Mark Antony had succeeded in introducing that new order our own world might have been very different. I wanted to capture the importance of their story as well as its drama.”

“Also the picture of Cleopatra that has descended through history thanks to Roman propaganda, is not of a powerful, politically-astute, independent-minded woman but of some sort of sexy siren,” says Preston. “I wanted to set the record straight.”

“I spent a long time in Egypt, especially in Alexandria, Cleopatras’ capital,” says Preston.

“It was intriguing to examine artifacts like stone sphinxes retrieved from beneath the harbor where marine archaeologists believe they have located the remains of her palace.”

Cleopatra knew she needed a man to win and she understood the political ramifications behind her choices. Antony was loyal and viewed Cleopatra as an equal that they could rule the Roman Empire.

Preston provides a more realistic portrait of Cleopatra and Antony. The facts Preston reveals have been heard before, yet she finds other compelling reasons why they did what they did. The descriptions of Roman and Egyptian life and politics are fascinating. Lovers of history will relish her portrait of life in Rome and Egypt.

Preston raises the question of what if? What if Cleopatra and Antony had won? How would that have changed history?

Preston was born in London and still lives there. Preston won the L.A. Times Book Prize for Before the Fall Out: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima. She’s currently working on a quintet of historical novels about the Moghuls of India with her husband under the pseudonym Alex Rutherford. The first book, about the founder of the Moghul dynasty, was recently released in the U.S. It’s called Raiders from the North.

Cleopatra and Antony: Power, Love, and Politics in the Ancient World by Diana Preston. Paperback, 352 pages, Publisher: Walker & Company; 1 edition (March 30, 2010), Language: English, ISBN: 9780802710598  $16.00

Susan Boyle has chosen someone to record a duet with, but this person is not anyone you have ever heard of.

The Britain’s Got Talent star recently conducted an online talent search contest and chose one of thousands of entrants to join her in recording a duet for her next album The Gift.

SuBo picked an American mother-of-three named Amber Stassi. The Scottish singer called Stassi at home in New York to break the good news.

Regarding her decision, SuBo said: “I really wanted to give someone the opportunity I had. Amber is a remarkable and talented lady and I am really looking forward to singing with her.”

In reaction to being plucked from obscurity, Stassi, a 33-year-old paramedic, said: “We have had some hard times, if my father was here now he would be so proud, I know he’s here in spirit, but this is a chance to give my kids a good memory and maybe a chance at a better life.”

It appears Susan has made one of Amber’s dreams come true and has made a sincerely inspirational impact on Amber’s life. Go SuBo, go!

At long last the truth about William Shakespeare.The greatest hoodwink in the literary world – unmasked at last?

Santa Monica, CA. June 10th. 2010 – Santa Monica Playhouse are presenting the world premiere of playwright Abraham Alan Ross’s topical new play ELIZABETH SHAKESPEARE and the ASTUTE DETECTIVE. Finally after 400 years the truth is revealed. Who really wrote those “Shakespeare” plays? Elizabeth says she is a descendant of the Bard and is willing to kill to protect his name. But, with a simple stroke on his computer, the astute detective can prove Shakespeare didn’t write a single word of the plays and sonnets. It gets down to a duel of wits about wills and Wills (with a little romance along the way). Low price previews begin August 13, 2010 and the play opens August 21 for six weeks.
As recently as April 2010 the review of a new book by James Shapiro in The New York Times ran under the headline “Shakespeare: The Question of Authorship.” According to Shapiro the question goes back to the 19th century and is still argued with passion today in the 21st.
In Ross’s historically accurate romantic comedy, ELIZABETH SHAKESPEARE and the ASTUTE DETECTIVE, The Astute Detective of the title, Tad Maxwell, an Oxfordian believes that Edward de Vere, The Earl of Oxford was the true author of Shakespeare’s works. Via his computer he conjures up The Bard and The Earl from their four centuries’ demise. His sleuthing brings him into conflict with Elizabeth Shakespeare, sexy Stratfordian who is positive that William Shakespeare was the true author of his plays and sonnets. As Tad tries to coax Elizabeth to his point of view, she fights her physical (and mental) attraction to this romantic iconoclast. With much at stake, the eventual outcome will surprise, and delight, Oxfordians, Stratfordians, and even those who don’t know their “Othello” from their “Pericles.”
The play previews August 13 – 20 and plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 pm and Sundays at 6:00 pm through September 26. Tickets are $18 for all previews and $25 for regular admission. Discounts are available for students, seniors, teachers, member of the military and groups of 8 or more. Reservations are required. For tickets and group sales, please call the Playhouse Box Office at (310) 394-9779 ext. 1.
Santa Monica Playhouse (http://SantaMonicaPlayhouse.com), currently celebrating its 50th Anniversary of continuous education and entertainment to the community, is located at 1211 4th Street (between Wilshire & Arizona) one block east of the Third Street Promenade. Convenient parking is located across the street in city lot #1. By public transportation take LA Metro Rapid 720 or The Santa Monica Blue Bus, exit 4th and Wilshire.

After months of rumours and speculation about which actress will play the title character, also known as Lisbeth Salander, in the Hollywood remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the role has finally been assigned to a relatively unknown American actress calledRooney Mara.

Reportedly, Mara beat out a number of more established actresses for the part, including Scarlet Johansson, Ellen Page, Natalie Portman, Carey Mulligan, and Emma Watson.

Mara will co-star alongside James Bond thespian Daniel Craig in the film and most likely in two sequels, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. The rising star can next be seen in the film called The Social Network, about the founders of Facebook, along with new Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo begins shooting next month in Sweden and is scheduled to be released in December of 2011.

Congratulations to Rooney for scoring one of the most sought after jobs in Hollywood!