Tell to Win

June 9, 2014
Grey, a joint pseudonym for Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg, effectively mixes horror and black comedy in this third novel (after The Mall and The Ward) of “the downside,” a weird alternate dimension that abuts our own. The latest immigrant from the downside is Jane Smith, the strange new student at Crossley College in Johannesburg, who’s planning to cull “browns” (i.e., humans) for transference to the downside . Her first victims are Ryan Devlin, the school’s lecherous maintenance man, and Tara Marais, a school library volunteer. Grey’s downsiders learn how to pass as humans by watching outdated television shows and movies, and their antics provide comic counterpoint to the missteps of the tragically fallible human characters. Though the plot meanders a bit, Grey provides a deliciously unsettling depiction of a deeply inhuman world that nonetheless aspires to imitate ours.

January 17, 2011
Former chairman of Sony Pictures and current CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, Guber illustrates how powerful storytelling—about yourself or your product—can be the ultimate tool to get the meeting, engage the listener, and close the deal. With brisk and readable anecdotes, the author relates what he's seen and learned in Hollywood, and how his celebrated friends—Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Arianna Huffington, Nelson Mandela, and Frank Sinatra—impressed upon him the power of a well-crafted story or appeal. The celebrity name-dropping lends some glitter to Guber's very reasonable precepts: as he urges the reader to harness the power of metaphor in crafting the core narrative of a pitch or advertising campaign, he refers to how Michael Jackson taught him about drama by making him watch a python slowly stalk a helpless mouse, and how KISS frontman Gene Simmons, son of Holocaust survivors, used his backstory to fuel his ambition and his business strategy. This valuable and inspiring book will help readers deliver an authentic and meaningful story to customers, colleagues, or prospective clients.