With the unerring reporter's instinct she brought to her widely discussed "The Morning After", one of our most outspoken cultural commentators chronicles our uneasy passage from the sexual revolution to a new Puritanism, in a book that is part history, part prophecy, and all provocation.

Author Cyprian Fernandes was born a war baby in 1943 in Kenya. Forced to leave school at the age of thirteen because he would not drop his pants for a caning, Fernandes experienced a wild and epic childhood. In Yesterday in Paradise, he tells his story growing up in colonial British East Africa. With a history of the region and the people originating from the state of Goa, India, and the Republic of Kenya, East Africa, woven in, Fernandes shares a host of stories that became a part of his first twenty-plus years. He was in the middle of the bloodcurdling Mau Mau rebellion and was arrested with thousands of others. He was there when Pio Gama Pinto was murdered. He embarked on an adventure that eventually took him to the four corners of the Earth. He travelled the length and breadth of Africa, the United Kingdom, and Europe as an investigative reporter. Providing a look at Fernandes eventful past, Yesterday in Paradise narrates a memoir filled with prejudice, murder, conflict, and more. He shares the events, the people, and the many, many places that fashioned his life.

He's known the world over for his heyday with Dawn, but that glittering 1970's whirl was just one chapter in Tony Orlando's rich life. Orlando began his showbiz career as a teen heartthrob with the single "Halfway to Paradise" and had a second successful act as a record company A&R man before he was lured back into the limelight as a performer. Fans from the l960s to the present day have loved his voice, his stage presence and his hits, like "Knock Three Times" and "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree." Now, Tony has written an autobiography as warm and heartfelt as his songs. Halfway to Paradise is rich with stories from the music world-from doo wop to the disco era, from early recording with Gerry Goffin and Carole King to recent concerts in Branson, Missouri and across the United States. It's also full of behind-the-scenes detail of how it felt to be at the top of the entertainment heap-with his #1-rated CBS show, Tony's life in front of and behind the camera was grand, but sometimes not all it seemed. Orlando succumbed to one of the familiar antidotes to the pressures of a big life: drug use, with its predictable toll on family and friendships. And even as his career was soaring, he was unable to save his best friend Freddie Prinze from a fatal downward spiral. With a return to roots-and to the close-knit family that has always sustained him-Tony restored the order and creativity that have allowed him to thrive through four decades of exuberant entertaining. Halfway to Paradise is a wise, funny and spirited life story, and a must-read memoir for fans.

Powerful, eloquent, and paced like a thriller, Strange Piece of Paradise is the electrifying account of the author's investigation into her near murder.

From a prizewinning young writer whose stories have been anthologized in "The Best American Short Stories" and "New Stories from the South" comes a heartwarming and hugely appealing debut collection that explores the way our choices and relationships are shaped by the menace and beauty of the natural world.