Christopher Browne ~ recent books

'The Prying Game' Robson Books, 1996, £15.95 Christopher Browne exposes the tricks, scams and insanity of the world he knows - the news media. Read about the tabloid newspaper that paid huge sums for a rent-boy's story in a car park and the private views of Princess Pushy. You couldn't make these stories up - and Christopher hasn't.

Victoria Glendinning, the Whitbread Prizewinner, biographer and novelist, said "bits shine out like good deeds" when she reviewed it in The Daily Telegraph.

'The Journalists Handbook' A&C Black, 1999, £10.99 Insider tips on how to make it as a journalist. Christopher guides you through that first media job application. He shows you how to turn government gobbledegook into pithy prose and the unique Browne interviewing method.

The book covers editing, news reporting, public relations, broadcasting, feature-writing, sub-editing and freelancing. If you're hard-working, able and confident read this, join a training course and march resolutely into your first media job.

'Getting The Message' Alan Sutton, 1993, £14.99 The extraordinary story of the global post office from the messenger Pheidippides who carried news of the Greek war against the Persians from Marathon to Athens to today's Royal Mail robots.

Find out why the novelist Anthony Trollope preferred his work as a senior postal official to writing books and the real identity of the 'Mr Big' behind the 1963 Great Train Robbery.

'Limericks' Stockwell, 1983, 50p Co-written with John Spreadbury. Merriment, mayhem and much much more. Touches of Lear, Milligan and Lewis Carroll. 'Side-splittingly silly' - 1999 Comic Relief.

Shamelessly satirical. Ideal for a grown-up's Christmas stocking or as a stopper for a tiny door.