Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sex by Andrew Wilson

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Beginning each chapter in cod- Robbins style, Andrew Wilson's gleeful "celebration of everything that is vulgar and tacky" reveals an enigmatic playboy who, having spun fanciful tales of a childhood in rags, styled himself in loud shirts, typed furiously for three months a year, then spent the remaining nine taking coke and staging orgies. Of Robbins's jaw-dropping tall tales, the best was that his first wife was a Chinese dancer killed by a parrot bite.

Naturally, his death was an audacious affair — his ashes were encased in an urn resembling one of his bestsellers.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

Harold Robbins, the godfather of the airport novel, changed the face of publishing with classics such as "The Carpetbaggers", "The Dream Merchants" and "The Lonely Lady". His readers loved his steamy tales of money, soft porn, drugs, corruption, greed and, just sometimes, redemption. The world's first playboy writer, Robbins reportedly frittered away $50 million on fast cars, loose women and high living. But obsessed with fame and fortune, Robbins was a deeply complex and often controversial man, and even his closest friends and lovers could only guess at the past of the man behind the perma-tanned mask and gigantic mirrored sunglasses. This is the fascinating story of his extraordinary life.