Jackie Collins

WASHINGTON -- Imagine being in bed with John Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.It's a frequent stop in Michael Korda's controversial new novel "The Immortals" -- a work the author calls "faction" that portrays relationships the global sex goddess had with JFK and later with his brother Robert."

You won't find Kitty Kelley's "Nancy Reagan" in the Paper Door, thatlittle bookstore in downtown Linthicum. But you will find Charlotte Bronte's "Shirley."The latest Jackie Collins potboiler isn't there, nor Stephen King's menagerie of monsters. But if you're after a lesser-known Hemingway classic like "Men Without Women," this is the place.And if you need some obscure volume like "The History and Technique of Swiss Watch Repair" or "History of Comic Books in America," chances are that bookstore owner Charles Thomas can find it.Ever since Thomas and his parents, Charles Sr. and Frances, opened the Paper Door three years ago at 607 Camp Meade Road, some people have mistakenly assumed that this is an old-book bookstore, full of moth-eaten paperbacks, ancient textbooks and dusty novels no one cares about.

It didn't bother Bud Greenspan a whole lot when he lost out in the bidding to provide the official film of last year's Barcelona Olympics because there were serious concerns about the producer's maintaining creative control.Imagine anyone passing up Cecil B. DeMille, John Huston or David Lean in favor of a local outfit to shoot what amounts to a travelogue in Spandex."The Olympic Committee in Spain wanted it to be the Barcelona Olympics. I wasn't interested in that. I wanted to shoot an Olympics, period," Greenspan said.

Some months ago, there appeared in this space one man's vision of hell.Today we present Life in Hell, Part II:At 9 every morning, a whistle sounds mournfully. Everyone shuffles to the TV for a mandatory viewing of "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee!"The first 15 minutes are the cruelest, as hosts Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford engage in mindless, numbing chitchat while pretending to sip coffee from ceramic mugs. Regis, manic as usual, spins another tired story about visiting Notre Dame.

Will Simon and Schuster never learn? The giant publishing house is already mired in controversy over its publication of ''The Last Brother,'' in which author Joe McGinnis puts thoughts in Ted Kennedy's head without ever having interviewed him. Now, unapologetically, the same company proposes to publish a book whose author strikes an even more flagrant pose of omniscience.It's ''The Bible.'' Yes, the Bible, King James version. At long last, God is getting the kind of major publisher's ''big book'' treatment formerly reserved for literary figures such as Philip Roth or Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf.

Driving into Taneytown from Westminster on Route 140, visitors are greeted by sloping fields and open, green spaces. This city in northwestern Carroll County lies 42 miles from Baltimore and 15 miles from Hanover, Pa. It has just over 5,000 residents. Taneytown (pronounced Tawny-town) celebrates its 250th year next month. The historic downtown area is registered in the National Register of Historic Places. The city has seen a marked increase in people and traffic flow, though it continues to have a small-town feel, residents said.

SINCE I BEGAN WRITING THIS COLUMN 10 months ago, I occasionally find myself dreaming about it. Of course, most of the time I don't use the material I dream -- I'm saving that for my novel. Today's column is an exception; it's one I wrote in my sleep last night. Let me know if you like it better than the ones I write while I'm awake.The Dream:I am in a psychoanalyst's office, and as I rise from the couch to leave, I drop my pocketbook. Its entire contents spill out onto the carpet. At that moment, an ABC camera crew arrives from "PrimeTime Live" to do an investigative piece on what I carry in my purse.

Bill Thomas must be softening. He's written a new book, called "Lawyers and Thieves." In the old days, this would have called for a joke: "Lawyers and Thieves? Don't you mean Lawyers as Thieves?""No, no," Thomas says now, striking a sober, authorial pose.He's seen the light. In his time, he's been a stand-up comic, a college professor, a National Public Radio commentator, a feature writer for this newspaper whose lunchtime cafeteria riffs became the stuff of legend, a columnist for Washington's Roll Call magazine, and now he's co-authored "Lawyers and Thieves" with blood-and-guts attorney Roy Grutman.

"The Late Shift" tells a story of greed, stupidity, ambition and childishness. For those reasons alone, it ought to become a best seller.It is the narrative of what was perhaps show business' messiest divorce: David Letterman's estrangement from NBC, his wooing by CBS and the millions involved in the settlement.Viewers saw some of those battles in the marital war enacted nightly on their sets, in the form of Letterman jokes about NBC's "pinhead" executives on his NBC show, "Late Night with David Letterman."

The congregation stared silently at the entrance to Union Street Methodist Church until the doors burst open on a loud and joyful noise.One by one, the Gospel Jubileers entered singing "Praise the Lord," a rousing hymn, part prayer and part drama, that brought the faithful at the small black church in Westminster to their feet."