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Man breaks into Celine Dion’s home to take a bath

Man breaks into Celine Dion's home to take a bath

Singer Celine Dion was presented with an awkward situation when she learned a man had broken into her home, raided her fridge and run a “nice warmish bath”, according to police.

A 36-year-old man was arrested after allegedly breaking into the singer’s luxury Montreal home, located in the suburb of Laval, which police were alerted to after the home’s alarm system was activated.

Laval police spokesman Franco Di Genova said the suspect was getting ready to take a bath when police arrived with a canine unit.

“He opened the water faucets, was pouring a nice warmish bath (and) he even managed to eat some pastry that was in the fridge,” he said.

Dion, her three children and husband Rene Angélil were not at the home at the time of the break-in.

Di Genova said police, who searched the house, started from the basement and worked their way up to the main floor where the man was discovered.

“The suspect was coming down the big staircase and was asking: ‘Hey, guys what are you doing here?'” Di Genova said.

“So the officers replied: ‘What are you doing here?’ and they proceeded to put him under arrest.”

The man allegedly jumped a fence to get on the property gained entry to the house after he found a garage door opener in an unlocked vehicle to gain access.

This isn’t the first time Dion’s luxury residence has been broken into. Di Genova said another incident took place in 2009 when a man jumped the fence, but was stopped by the security firm patrolling the property before he could enter the home.

Dion and Angélil also own an elaborate estate in Jupiter Island, Florida and a four-bedroom house in Las Vegas where the singer has a concert deal running until March 2014 at Caesars Palace.

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US boy drinks coffee to stop ADHD

US boy drinks coffee to stop ADHD

US mum Christie Haskell has treated her son’s hyper activity with a controversial treatment — two cups of coffee a day.

Although her son Rowan has not been officially diagnosed with ADHD, Christie says she wants to steer clear of prescription medication treatment like Ritalin.

So, she went online to look for an alternative and came up with coffee.

She says it helps him to concentrate and focus, while Rowan says “it calms him down”.

Doctors, on the other hand, say it may be doing more harm than good.

Find out more about Christie’s story and why doctors are against the treatment in the video player above.

Your say: What do you think about this mum’s controversial treatment? Would you try it?

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The Psychopath Test

The Psychopath Test

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, Picador, $32.99.

Remember Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap? The Packer family’s corporate cost-cutter of the early ’90s? Well, he’s exhibit A in Jon Ronson’s new investigation into the madness industry — specifically, whether many leading CEOs and politicians are in fact diagnosable psychopaths.

Lord knows how Ronson persuaded him but he even, hilariously, agrees to sit the official Psychopath Test and passes with flying colours.

Item 1: Superficial charm, tick. Item 5: Grandiose sense of self worth, tick. Impulsivity? Lack of remorse? You betcha.

The point being not Dunlap’s sanity or goodness, but how an industry-standard 20-point test has gained such credence in the psycho-business, where amateurs — like the author — are trained to “spot” for psychopathy.

As with all Ronson’s work (The Men Who Stare at Goats), he uses slapstick and satire to make his argument so it feels, often, like he’s joking, but he’s not.

Behind the laughs, he’s asking a serious question about who can claim to be normal in a world looking for madness.

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Amexica: War Along The Borderline

Amexica: War Along The Borderline

Amexica: War Along The Borderline by Ed Vulliamy, Random House, $35.

A tough, gritty — and most disturbingly, true — report from the Mexican-US border, where drug cartels wage war on each other, and anyone gets in their way.

More than 28,000 have been killed since the official war on drugs was declared five years ago — many hideously tortured, and a disproportionate number of women (the “femicide”, they call it) for reasons I understand for the first time because of the brilliance and bravery of Vulliamy’s investigations.

From the drug feuds over territory to the collapse of civil society to the growth of the maquiladoras, the low-wage factories producing cheap goods for export, he covers it all.

This is hard reading, but it gives context to the random news reports and is a important eye-opener for those prepared to see what happens to a country, and a people, when the narco cartels take over.

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Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh by Joan London, Random House, $23.95.

This is an oldie-but-goody, recommended with such enthusiasm by a fellow reader I felt I had to give it a go — and so enjoyed the experience I am now passing it on.

Drawing on the epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s oldest known poem, it is both a paean to wanderlust (the book’s chief character, Edith, moves from a poor farm in south Western Australia to London, Istanbul, Armenia and Alexandria) and a celebration of the notions of love and home.

Edith is seeking the exotic traveller to whom, while still a teenager, she bore a son. The authorities take her baby away, she steals him back, and together they set out to reclaim his father and a homeland.

This synopsis gives but a scant sense of the elegance and poignancy Australian writer Joan London brings to her subject.

Like the Babylonian King Gilgamesh, Edith must test and almost lose herself before, ultimately, discovering her true value.

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A Visit from the Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, Corsair, $24.95.

“Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” As if anyone can stop the clock.

This exciting novel, winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction, takes us on a wild ride across 40 years in the lives and loves, hopes and disappointments, of a dozen or so interconnected characters based in New York.

They’re a cool bunch, by and large — record executives and celebrity journalists and burnt-out punk rockers, brothers and bosses and friends-of-friends running a criss-cross relay race through each other’s lives, blind to the chaos they cause and those who stumble and fall around them.

Stripped of the of hip and hype, though, they are people like us, wanting to be special and different and wondering when and how it was we actually gave in and grew up.

It sounds sad, and ultimately it is — time being the great leveller — but it’s also funny, fresh and brilliantly done.

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Until Thy Wrath Be Past

Until Thy Wrath Be Past

Until Thy Wrath Be Past by Asa Larsson, Quercus, $32.99

The first chapter of Until Thy Wrath Be Past is so shockingly powerful, beautiful and terrifying, I forgot to breathe.

It sat on the bedside table as I took a few deep inhalations before I could continue, but once picked up again it was only ever put down reluctantly.

Teenager Wilma Persson is dead, the victim of more than one cold-blooded killer.

She watches as beautiful District Prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson and pugnacious Inspector Anna-Maria Mella gradually close in on her murderers.

Asa Larsson cleverly cuts between Wilma’s youthful first-person account and the narration, creating a novel that mixes quiet menace with gently exuberant regret, something like what you’d get if you put The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in a blender with The Lovely Bones.

Investigator Rebecka Martinsson is kind, subtle and intelligent, she’s the last person you’d want to see meet the same terrible fate as lovely Wilma, making the last chapter of this must-read thriller as gripping as the first.

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A Decline in Prophets

A Decline in Prophets

A Decline in Prophets by Sulari Gentill, Pantera Press, $29.99.

Travel back in time to 1932 and book yourself a first-class suite on the luxurious passenger liner RMS Aquitania, but take care, for among your fellow well-heeled passengers is an elegant ruthless killer.

Also travelling the seas in style is wealthy young Australian pastoralist and artist Rowland Sinclair and his band of bohemian friends.

He’s an old school gentleman with new ideas, but his life of polo, parties and painting is interrupted by his polite attempts to find the murderer, who seems very keen on making Rowly his next victim.

Rowland and his mates are fresh, witty and vividly alive. They make the most of 1932, socialising with movie stars Marion Davies and Cary Grant, roaring over the newly completed Sydney Harbour Bridge in a slick roadster and partying in the Blue Mountains with naughty genius artist Norman Lindsay.

An elusive killer, a charming but down-to-earth sleuth, and a glamorous historical setting, A Decline in Prophets is glossy, original and appealingly Australian.

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The Girl From Baghdad

The Girl From Baghdad

The Girl From Baghdad by Michelle Nouri, William Heinemann Australia, $29.95.

Born to a wealthy Iraqi father and a beautiful Czech mother, Michelle Nouri experienced the best and worst of Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad and Communist Eastern Europe.

From her spoiled childhood as her father’s princess to her grotty Prague flat, Michelle’s true life story has been one of extremes.

In Baghdad’s lush country club, this young beauty enjoyed an innocent flirtation with Uday Hussein, who she would years later barely recognise as a bloated corpse on her TV.

When her indulgent father leaves the family for another woman, Michelle, her mother and her two sisters become the target of men who’ve heard they’re fair game, potential rapists who crawl all over their house desperately trying to get inside.

It’s a fascinating insight into life in Baghdad for women before the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

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The Book of Lies

The Book of Lies

The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock, Text Publishing, $32.95.

Like many 15-year-old girls, Catherine Rozier has a flare for the dramatic and a loose association with the truth, so did she really, as she claims, kill her best friend?

It’s 1985 and Catherine lives on the island of Guernsey, a place that suffered terribly under the Nazi occupation.

Her father’s brother, Charlie Rozier, was just 12 when thousands of German boots goose-stepped into town, marching Charlie towards the guilt and shame that he would live with all his life.

With a father who’s an “expert on Guernsey’s guilty past”, fat, smart, and insecure Catherine gradually discovers the truth; that sometimes the guilty are innocent and the innocent guilty, and that those who turn a blind eye can be just as much to blame.

Catherine’s teenage voice rings true — she’s funny, difficult, annoying and a joy, the first person in her family to learn and bravely confront a generation of lies.

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