An Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and a mystery novelist, Roger L. Simon is the only American writer to pull off the amazing trick of being profiled positively in both Mother Jones and National Review in one lifetime. The stunning story of his political odyssey is told in this memoir, where Simon recounts his migration from financier of the Black Panther Breakfast Program to pioneer blogosphere mogul beloved by the right as a 9/11 Democrat. But Simon is beholden to neither right nor left in this tale of Hollywood chic run amuck, as he talks out of school about his adventures with, among many others, Richard Pryor, Warren Beatty, Timothy Leary, Richard Dreyfuss, Woody Allen, and Julian Semyonov, the Soviet Union's version of Robert Ludlum and also a KGB colonel who tempted Simon to join the KGB himself. Among the topics covered along the way: Is there a new blacklist in Hollywood, this one targeting conservatives? Simon's red-carpet tours of the People's Republic of China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union with Hollywood screenwriters and famous mystery novelists. Why Al Gore's documentary on global warming didn't deserve the Oscar on artistic grounds alone; and why the Academy's voting system is so corrupt. And, as they say, there is much, much more besides.

A MOSES WINE MYSTERY Despite a string of successful cases, despite the fact that his work has, on occasion, garnered national attention, when the opportunity suddenly presents itself for private eye Moses Wine to become head of security at the Tulip Computer Corporation, he jumps at the chance. But then one of Tulip's young geniuses is killed, and Moses quickly finds himself trailing a murderer from Northern California to Los Angeles, then across an ocean to the mean streets of Tokyo. Along the way, he discovers that there's far more to the ins and outs of life in Silicon Valley than corporate in-fighting and bureaucratic bungling -- especially when it involves international computer theft, the Japanese mafia, and the GRU.

The diary of Marcus Rottner, the 24-year-old scion of a rich and powerful family, who kills his girlfriend with an overdose of heroin.