Between the Covers 08/09/2012

Between the Covers is increasingly worried by the strange disappearance of the entire Amazon press office. We've tried several times to contact them by email, on their published phone number, and on the four mobile phone numbers for individual press officers that are given on its answering machine message. We've also tried talking to the external PR firm employed by Amazon, which assures us that Amazon's press office has received our messages and is going to get back to us one day. Unfortunately, the external press office paid by Amazon is not entitled to answer our questions about Amazon, or let us know whom to contact in order to register our concerns about the press office's disappearance.

What we want to know is what Amazon thinks of the fact that many Facebook users are apparently "liking" Amazon UK on Facebook, despite the fact that they haven't "liked" Amazon, don't like Amazon, and keep trying to delete the false advertising for Amazon that is being published under their names. But Amazon, it seems, isn't able to tell us. It's been three weeks now, and we're more and more concerned that Amazon's press office has been kidnapped by some rival who wishes the press to think ill of Amazon. Please, press office, get in touch, before we file a missing persons report.

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"With only 15 of these exclusive editions being signed by JK Rowling for the UK, the books will be a unique item for lucky Harry Potter fans," reads a press release from Rowling's publisher about leather-bound and numbered editions of the book to be won in a competition. Between the Covers wonders if there is a special word for something that is so unusual that there are only 15 of it. Quindecimique, perhaps. It probably won't catch on.

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Goodness, the Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby gets around. According to a press release from Kings Hart Books, Stephen Twigg MP appears to have written a book: Diana: Her Transformation, which was published last week. "Now [Princess Diana's] mind-body therapist, masseur Stephen Twigg, the man who helped her take charge of her life over a seven-year period" is revealing his secrets, it tells us. Presumably so that you, too, can end up just as in charge and well-balanced as the late Princess of Wales. It could of course be that this man is a different Stephen Twigg. In fact, now we think about it, it probably is a different Stephen Twigg, because in the seven years before Diana died, the MP Stephen Twigg was quite busy working as an Islington councillor and then Chief Whip. We'll stay on the fence about which Mr Twigg we'd rather take self-help advice from, however.

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Bagsie first to the sausages at the Hobbit Second Breakfast on Saturday 22 September. The 75th anniversary of JRR Tolkien's classic novel actually falls on 21 September, but as all Hobbit fans know, the 22nd is the birthday of Bilbo and Frodo, and second breakfast is among a hobbit's favourite meals. The book's publisher, HarperCollins, is commemorating the occasion with a special meal in the garden of Fulham Palace, west London. Tickets are free, but limited to 150, and can be won at hobbitsecondbreakfast.com.