1. Cover Stories: First Impressions -- Alone in Berlin: The Life-Changing Magic of a Title -- `It's never safe to go back in the water...' -- King of First Lines -- Quotes, Puffs, Praise, Reviews -- The Visual -- 2. In The Beginning Was The Blurb: Literary History -- `A Sound Like a Publisher': Authors, Editors, Blurbers -- Daniel Defoe and the Dark Arts of Persuasion -- Great Expectations: How Dickens Kept Them Wanting More -- Hemingway's Wager -- Italians Do it Better -- The Medium is the Massage (in Three Acts) -- An Odyssey Through the Classics -- Orwell Rules -- Step Away from the Bonnet: Jane Austen -- 3. Cracking Good Copy: Writing Rules -- Be a Magpie: One Detail Is Worth a Thousand Adjectives -- Ever-Decreasing Copy -- F**k Wisely: A Note on Successful Swearing -- Goldilocks and the Three Blurbs: Getting It Just Right -- Hegel Goes to Hollywood: The Pitch -- Look at the Harlequins! Dots and Dashes -- Show Me the Funny -- Spoiler Alert! -- Triangle, Diamond or Hourglass? The Shape of Copy -- The Ultimate Bliss of Bad Blurbs -- You. Yes, you. I'm talking to you -- 4. Blurb Spotting In The Wild: Book Species -- Come and Have a Go if You Think You're Hard Enough: Literary Fiction -- Each Peach Pear Plum -- Make Me Better: Self-Help -- Read, Rinse, Repeat: The Comforting Thrills of Genre Fiction -- Simply Wizard! Blurbing Blyton -- `Which one of you bitches is my mother?' -- X-Rated: Lolita and Other Dilemmas -- 5. Wild And Whirling Words: Blurbs Are Us -- Beasts, Quests and Monsters: Story -- Don't Mention Jesus: The Briefing Process -- Lizards, All of Us: The Science Part -- A Musical Interlude -- Oceans Apart: Supersized American Copy -- The Pun Wot Won It -- Sell Sell Sell -- Ventriloquism -- What Women Don't Want: Sexist Blurbs -- Zadie Smith: Big Ideas and a Little Mouse.