The former good girl who became the star of Deep Throat tells the horrifying true story of her life on and off camera in this shocking tell-all memoir. Linda Boreman was just twenty-one when she met Chuck Traynor, the man who would change her life. Less than two years later, the girl who wouldn’t let her high school dates get past first base was catapulted to fame as an adult film superstar. Linda Boreman of Yonkers, New York, had become Linda Lovelace. The unprecedented success of Deep Throat made pornography popular with mainstream audiences and made Lovelace a household name. But nobody, from the A-list celebrities who touted the movie to the audiences that lined up to see it, knew the truth about what went on behind the scenes. Taken prisoner by her sado-masochistic manager, Linda was forced into a marriage of savage beatings, hypnotism, and rape. She was terrorized into prostitution at gunpoint and forced to perform unspeakable perversions on film. Years later, when Linda came out of hiding to tell her story, the revelations rocked the porn industry in ways that made her fear for her life.

*A People Top 10 Book of 2018* The New York Times essayist and author of We Learn Nothing, Tim Kreider trains his singular power of observation on his (often befuddling) relationships with women. Psychologists have told him he’s a psychologist. Philosophers have told him he’s a philosopher. Religious groups have invited him to speak. He had a cult following as a cartoonist. But, above all else, Tim Kreider is an essayist—one whose deft prose, uncanny observations, dark humor, and emotional vulnerability have earned him deserved comparisons to David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, and the late David Foster Wallace (who was himself a fan of Kreider’s humor). “Beautifully written, with just enough humor to balance his spikiness” (Booklist), I Wrote This Book Because I Love You focuses Tim’s unique perception and wit on his relationships with women—romantic, platonic, and the murky in-between. He talks about his difficulty finding lasting love and seeks to understand his commitment issues by tracking down the John Hopkins psychologist who tested him for a groundbreaking study on attachment when he was a toddler. He talks about his valued female friendships, one of which landed him on a circus train bound for Mexico. He talks about his time teaching young women at an upstate New York college, and the profound lessons they wound up teaching him. And in a hugely popular essay that originally appeared in The New York Times, he talks about his nineteen-year-old cat, wondering if it’s the most enduring relationship he’ll ever have. “In a style reminiscent of Orwell, E.B. White and David Sedaris” (The New York Times Book Review), each of these pieces is “heartbreaking, brutal, and hilarious” (Judd Apatow), and collectively they cement Kreider’s place among the best essayists working today.

Abandoned by her parents, brought up by her strict maternal grandmother in a small backwater town, young Beatrice Saubin always dreamed of visiting warm climates and exotic places. As a teenager she hitchhiked to India and later to Afghanistan and Thailand. In Malaysia, at age nineteen, she fell in love with Eddy Tan Kim Soo, a handsome, wealthy Chinese man. They planned to meet in Europe and marry. But at the airport on her way home, her spanking new Samsonite suitcase—a gift from Eddy— was ripped apart by custom officials. Beatrice was horrified to see that it contained several kilos of heroin. Clearly she had been set up by Eddy, who, it turned out, was a member of a powerful drug cartel. Arrested, Beatrice languished in prison for two years before she was tried. Her sentence: death by hanging. On appeal, her sentence was reduced to life in prison. Efforts on the part of her grandmother and an impassioned attorney managed to stir up public opinion, finally leading to Beatrice’s release after ten years. But however terrible, these years were not lost. While in prison, her spirits were never broken: she taught herself Malaysian and Cantonese, and became a model prisoner and a leader as well as a medical supervisor, caring for her fellow inmates. The Ordeal is her odyssey—always gripping, often terrifying, but ultimately a story of courage and inspiration.

A successful, middle-aged novelist with a case of 'bad nerves,' Gilbert Pinfold embarks on a recuperative trip to Ceylon. Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, loud revival meetings. He can only infer that somewhere concealed in his room an erratic public-address system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship. And then, instead of just sounds, he hears voices. But they are not just any voices. These voices are talking, in the most frightening intimate way, about him!