New Releases by Joe McGinniss

"Joe McGinniss was a paradox: a brilliant writer whose dazzling achievements were overshadowed by personal demons. At age twenty-six, he became the youngest living person to top the New York Times bestseller list, for his book The Selling of the President about Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign. Shortly after, he walked out on his wife and their three young children. His oldest son, Joe McGinniss Jr., went on to become a writer himself, known for his critically acclaimed novels The Delivery Man and Carousel Court. In the memoir Damaged People, McGinniss Jr. vividly recounts his affectionate yet stormy relationship with his famous father, capturing moments of tenderness and humor amid the chaos and tension. The prosaic commitments of full-time fatherhood held little appeal for Joe McGinniss, a superstar author who proudly relished the freedom to chase stories anywhere his curiosity led. He rose to prominence with a trilogy of true crime blockbusters in the 1980s and early '90s, Fatal Vision, Blind Faith, and Cruel Doubt. Notoriously, he found himself the subject of Janet Malcom's The Journalist and the Murderer, a book accusing him of manipulating one of his subjects. Controversy would dog the rest of his journalistic career, as he was accused of falsifying details in his 1993 biography of Ted Kennedy and his 2011 biography of Sarah Palin. His life was a turbulent mix of success and scandal, marked by alcoholism, depression, and an obsessive dedication to his craft that often left his family struggling to stay afloat. Now a father raising a son of his own, McGinniss Jr. wrestles with the legacy of his upbringing and his father's self-destruction, striving to create a stable and nurturing environment for his child. The pressures of modern parenting -- ranging from competitive school admissions to the mental health challenges that today's youth face -- force him to confront long-buried demons of ambition and obsession. Damaged People dives deep into the heartbreak of unfulfilled expectations and the beauty of second chances, offering an unflinching look at what it means to grow into a more compassionate and present parent." --

Nick and Phoebe Maguire, a Southern California couple seeking a new start after a devastating loss, find themselves confronted by the economic recession and the consequences of a desperate plan to reclaim their middle-class status.

At thirty-nine, Nancy Kissel had it all: glamour, wealth and the royal lifestyle of the expatriate wife. Not to mention three young children and what a friend described as "the best marriage in the universe" to Robert Kissel, a hugely successful investment banker. But that marriage ended abruptly one November night in 2003 in the bedroom of their luxury apartment high above Hong Kong's glittering Victoria Harbour. Hong Kong prosecutors, who charged Nancy with murder, said she wanted to inherit Robert's millions and start a new life with her lover. She said she'd killed her husband in self-defence while fighting for her life against a brutal, cocaine-addicted husband. Her trial in 2005 captured attention worldwide, and less than a year after the verdict Rob's brother Andrew, a real estate tycoon facing prison for fraud and embezzlement was also found dead - tied up and stabbed in the basement of his multi-million dollar home by person or persons unknown. Never Enough is the harrowing true story of Robert and Andrew Kissel, who wanted to own the world but instead wound up murdered half a world apart; and of Nancy Kissel, a riddle wrapped inside an enigma, for whom having it all might not have been enough.

The sordid, #1 New York Times bestselling true crime story of adultery, addiction, gambling debt, and murder in a privileged suburban town—from author and journalist Joe McGinniss. The Marshalls were the model family of Tom’s River, New Jersey, living the American dream and seemingly in possession of all that money could buy. Rob Marshall, a successful insurance broker, was the big breadwinner, king of the country club set. Maria Marshall was his stunningly beautiful wife and the perfect mom to their three great kids. Then one night while the couple drove home from Atlantic City, Rob, his head bloodied, reported Maria had been brutally slain. Sympathy poured in—until disquieting facts began to surface…and the true story of adultery, gambling, drugs and murder tore the mask off Rob Marshall and the blinders off the town that thought he could do no wrong.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Fatal Vision comes a shocking true account of murder, family secrets, and final justice now available for the first time as an e-book... One hot summer night in 1988, Bonnie Von Stein's second husband was murdered in their bed, Bonnie herself stabbed, beaten, and left for dead beside him. It looked like a brutal but tragically typical case: Von Stein was newly wealthy, and Bonnie's troubled son Chris, seemed like the obvious suspect. But Chris turned out to have an air-tight alibi and new leads suggested the crime could be much more complex. The trail led to Chris’s two strange new friends from college and a real-life enactment of a bizarre Dungeons and Dragons fantasy adventure, and it implicated Bonnie's teenage daughter as well. In Cruel Doubt, Joe McGinniss probes the dark heart of family life and small-town North Carolina society to uncover a fascinating and terrifying story that is at once a chilling murder mystery, a tense courtroom drama, and a heartbreaking account of a mother forced to doubt her own children.

rogue (r¯og), n: An elephant that has separated from a herd and roams about alone,in which state it is very savage.—Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary After three years of research, bestselling journalist Joe McGinniss presents his already controversial and much anticipated investigative chronicle of Sarah Palin as an individual, politician, and cultural phenomenon. In his critically acclaimed book about Alaska, Going to Extremes, the fledgling state itself was Joe McGinniss’s subject. Although he didn’t hesitate to reveal the many flaws and contradictions behind its “last frontier” image, McGinniss fell in love with the land and its people. More than three decades later, he returned to Alaska in search of its most famous resident, Sarah Palin. On Election Day 2008, McGinniss began his on-the-ground reporting that culminated, famously, in his moving next door to Sarah Palin in spring 2010. THE ROGUE is the eagerly awaited result of his research and writing: a startling study of the illusion and reality of Sarah Palin—and a probing look at the Alaska and the America that produced her. Sometimes funny, sometimes frightening, always provocative and illuminating, THE ROGUE answers the questions “Who is she, really?,” “How did she happen?,” and “Will she ever go away?” In all of his books, McGinniss has scrutinized the mysterious space between image and reality—how that space is created, negotiated, and/or manipulated. Now, with The Rogue, McGinniss combines his deep appreciation of the place Sarah Palin comes from with his uncanny ability to penetrate the façades of people in public life. The result is an extraordinary double narrative that alternately traces Palin’s curious rise to political prominence and worldwide celebrity status and recounts the author’s day-to-day experiences as he uncovers the messy reality beneath the glossy Palin myth. Readers will find THE ROGUE at once bitingly insightful, hilarious, and profoundly ominous in what it reveals—not just about the dark underpinnings of a potential presidential nominee but also in regard to the huge numbers of Americans who passionately support her.

"A gripping literary thriller and an auspicious debut" set against the surreal excess of Las Vegas from the author of Carousel Court (George Pelecanos, author and award-winning writer/producer of The Wire). After attending college in New York, Chase returns to Vegas and is drawn into the lucrative but dangerous world of a teenage call-girl service with his childhood friend Michele, a beautiful Salvadoran immigrant with whom he shares a tragic past. Over the course of one extraordinary summer, they will confront the violence and emptiness at the heart of the city and their generation. At once stark and electrically atmospheric, horrifying and hopeful, The Delivery Man is an ambitious literary novel as well as a fast and absorbing page-turner—and a powerful indictment of a society in which personal responsibility has been abandoned, lust is increasingly mistaken for love, and innocence is an anachronism. "A dead-of-night story surehandedly told in a pared-down, teeth-bared style reminiscent of Joan Didion." —Janet Fitch, New York Times–bestselling author of White Oleander "[A] brisk, bleak debut novel . . . offers unflinching glimpses at mores in free fall . . . searing . . . memorable . . . not for the faint of heart." — The New York Times Book Review "McGinniss offers a fresh take on the seamy side of Vegas by focusing on the wasted lives of burned-out teens hooked on drugs and money." — USA Today "It's sex, drugs, and a slew of lost souls . . . engrossing . . . Could The Delivery Man be this decade's Less Than Zero?" — Marie Claire "Grim, convincing, and compelling . . . The Delivery Man really delivers." — The Washington Post

Joe McGinniss - journalist, investigative reporter, and horse racing obsessive - recounts the heartwarming story of veteran trainer P. G. Johnson who, in sixty years as a leading trainer at all three New York tracks, had never had a "big horse." Then, in his seventies, he bought a mare, bred her, and produced Volponi, who won the Breeder's Cup Classic in 2002.

Master storyteller Joe McGinniss travels to Italy to cover the unlikely success of a ragtag minor league soccer team--and delivers a brilliant and utterly unforgettable story of life in an off-the-beaten-track Italian village. When Joe McGinniss sets out for the remote Italian village of Castel di Sangro one summer, he merely intends to spend a season with the village's soccer team, which only weeks before had, miraculously, reached the second-highest-ranking professional league in the land. But soon he finds himself embroiled with an absurd yet irresistible cast of characters, including the team's owner, described by the New York Times as "straight out of a Mario Puzo novel," and coach Osvaldo Jaconi, whose only English word is the one he uses to describe himself: "bulldozer." As the riotous, edge-of-your-seat season unfolds, McGinniss develops a deepening bond with the team, their village and its people, and their country. Traveling with the miracle team, from the isolated mountain region where Castel di Sangro is located to gritty towns as well as grand cities, McGinniss introduces us to an Italy that no tourist guidebook has ever described, and comes away with a "sad, funny, desolating, and inspiring story--everything, in fact, a story should be" (Los Angeles Times).

Brings to life the childhood, the brief triumph and the long downward slide of Edward Kennedy. This book examines the facade of America's first political family, as well as the terrible cost of Joseph Kennedy's ambitions for his children.

What makes you cast your ballot? A Presidential candidate or a good campaign? How he stands on the issues or how he stands up to the camera? The Selling of the President is the enduring story of the 1968 campaign that wrote the script for modern Presidential politicking—and how that script came to be. It introduces: Harry Treleaven, the first adman to suggest that issues bore voters, that image is what counts Roger Ailes, a PR man who coordinated the TV presentations that delivered the product Frank Shakespeare, the man behind the whole campaign, who, after eighteen years at CBS, cast the image that sold America a President And the candidate, Richard Nixon himself—a politician running on television for the highest office in the land In his introduction, Joe McGinniss discusses why—unfortunately—his classic book is as pertinent today to understanding our political culture as it was the year it was published.

A documented book on a doctor in the Green Berets who was convicted of the slaying of his pregnant wife and two small daughters.

An account of life in today's Alaska takes in whites, Eskimos, and Native Indians, cities, towns, and wilderness, industry and trapping, and the idiosyncracies, dangers, vastness, and wonders of America's last frontier.

Three people meet by accident in San Francisco.

As far back as the first debate with John F. Kennedy in 1960, Nixon had learned, bitterly, the importance of television. And as early as 1966, he had set out to master this new media. One of his first moves in putting together a team for the 1968 campaign was the appointment of seasoned advertising and TV professionals. This book examines that move and the many other considerations that went into Richard M. Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign--at the heart of which was the adroit manipulation and use of television.