Pardon My Hearse: A Colorful Portrait of Where the Funeral and Entertainment Industries Met in Hollywood (46 page)

$16.95
($17.95 Canada)

1939

The Making of Six Great Films from
Hollywood’s Greatest Year
by Charles F.Adams

The films and the culture of the greatest year in movie history are brilliantly explored in the film history
1939: The Making of Six Great Films from Hollywood’s Greatest Year. 1939
profiles the making of six of the most significant films of 1939:
Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
and
The Wizard of Oz
, covering each film from the origins of the script to the finished film’s debut and critical reception.
1939
is a book that no movie fan should miss.

Available from bookstores, online bookstores, and
QuillDriverBooks.com
, or by calling toll-free 1-800-345-4447.

$14.95
($15.95 Canada)

400 Things Cops Know

Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman

by Adam Plantinga

400 Things Cops Know
shows police work from the viewpoint of the regular cop on the beat—a profession that can range from rewarding to bizarre to terrifying in one eight-hour shift. Written by a veteran police sergeant,
400 Things Cops Know
takes you into a cop’s life of danger, frustration, occasional triumph, and plenty of grindingly hard routine work. In a laconic, no-nonsense, dryly humorous style, Plantinga tells what he’s learned from 13 years as a patrolman, from the everyday to the exotic. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, this is an eye-opening revelation of life on the beat.

$14.95
($16.95 Canada)

California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts

True Tales of California Crazies, Crackpots,
and Creeps
by David Kulczyk

From insane celebrities to wacky religious cults, if it’s weird, it happens in California. A freewheeling catalog of misfits, eccentrics, creeps, criminals and failed dreamers,
California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts
relates the hilarious and heartbreaking lives of 48 bizarre personalities who exemplify California’s well-deserved reputation for nonconformity. It’s a side-splitting, shocking, and salacious salute to the people who made California the strangest place on earth.

Available from bookstores, online bookstores, and
QuillDriverBooks.com
, or by calling toll-free 1-800-345-4447.

Allan Abbott grew up in Los Angeles. He entered the funeral business in 1957, delivering flowers to funerals. The funeral service accommodation company he founded with his high school friend, Ron Hast, grew into a full service funeral home. Allan pioneered many innovations in the funeral industry, including inventing the airtray to protect caskets transported by airlines, developing mini-hearses from modified station wagons and other hearse modifications, and offering some of the earliest services to scatter cremated remains by air and at sea. Abbott has participated in the funerals of numerous celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Clark Gable, Jack Benny, Gary Cooper, and Karen Carpenter. Allan’s other business ventures have included providing limousine services for Hollywood celebrities, rentals of cars and mortuary props to movie and television productions, and publishing
Mortuary Management
magazine.

Greg Abbott served for over a decade as managing director of Abbott & Hast Publications, publisher of
Mortuary Management
monthly magazine and
Funeral Monitor
weekly newsletter. He joined the company as news editor while still in high school and gradually took on more responsibilities until he managed the business. In total, Greg spent twenty-two years with the company before changing careers when the business was relocated outside of California. He has a degree in computer science and currently works in the property management field. His passions include artwork, writing, photography, and backpacking to remote locations with his wife. He is certified as a Wilderness First Responder and volunteers with the city of Monterey as an emergency responder.