Blood Moon Productions – förlag

The hottest compendium of inter-generational scandal in the history of Hollywood. An overview of exhibitionism, sexuality, and sin as filtered through 85 years of Hollywood indiscretion. As they were unfolding, the events described within this book were known only within Hollywood''s most decadent cliques. All of that has changed with the release of this book.From bisexual Elvis to cover-ups of murder, from the scandals of Hollywood''s Golden Age to the Hollywood of Here and Now. It''s all here. Vivid, Candid, Sizzling. To those who love her, Hollywood was and is a gossipy, mendacious (Big Daddy''s word), and whorish place that remains captivating despite the passage of time. In this, an updated new spin on Hollywood as Babylon, it''s depicted at its sleaziest, most venal, and most deliciously unseemly. This monumentally exhaustive collection of sins, foibles, failings, and sexual adventures is the ultimate guilty pleasure-and publisher Blood Moon pledges that it''s merely Volume One. --Books To Watch Out For

That ongoing, barely under control drama known as Marlon Brando--Hollywood''s Ultimate Bad Boy, Megastar, and Sexual Outlaw--with a special focus on his early rise to fame and his social and sexual associations with the A-list legends of the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Brando Unzipped is the definitive gossip guide to the late, great actor''s life --New York Daily News. Lurid, raunchy, perceptive, and certainly worth reading, it''s one of the best show-biz biographies of the year. --London''s Sunday Times. Brando Unzipped received an Honorable Mention from Foreword Magazine in its Book of the Year competition, and it won a Silver Ippy award for Best Biography from the Independent Publisher''s Association.

Katharine Hepburn was the world''s greatest screen diva--the most famous actress in American history. But until the appearance of this biography, no one had ever published the intimate details of her complicated and ferociously secretive private life. Thanks to the deferential and obsequious whitewashes which followed in the immediate wake of her death, readers probably know WHAT KATE REMEMBERED. Here, however, is an unvarnished account of what Katharine Hepburn desperately wanted to forget.

This biography shatters myths with a controversial closeup of Bogart at the debut of his career, pre-Casablanca, pre-Bacall, and pre-African Queen, revealing for the first time what was under the trench coat of history''s most famous male movie star. Focusing on those mysterious early years when Bogart, like dozens of other American actors, was making the transition from Broadway to the early Talkies in Hollywood, it''s loaded with anecdotes and insights about those wild, Pre-Code days in anything goes Hollywood that required years of research to uncover. Darwin Porter uncovers scandals within the entertainment industry of the 1920s and 1930s, when publicists from the movie studios deliberately twisted and suppressed inconvenient details about the lives of their emerging stars.--Turner Classic Movie News. Exceptionally well-written.--Hollywood Inside. London''s Mail On Sunday published extensive excerpts of this title, referring to it as one of the best insights into the entertainment industry of the Jazz Age ever written.

Midnight in Savannah is the deliberately more explicit, and more entertaining alternative to the John Berendt / Clint Eastwood Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. For more than a year after its appearance in 2000, it was one of the best-selling GLBT books in the Deep South. Midnight in Savannah skillfully incorporates Carson McCullers, Pamela Harriman, Libby Holman, the City of Savannah, and references to Georgia''s most famous (recent) murder into one delectable whole. This book is not altogether straight, but it certainly isn''t altogether gay, either. Pan-sexual and Southern might be its best description, permeated throughout with a morality that''s more than a bit untidy. But considering what tends to happen after dark in Savannah, who cares? Darwin Porter is a native-born Southerner who''s also the author of two of America''s best-selling travel guides Frommer''s Guide to Savannah and Frommer''s Guide to The Carolinas and Georgia. Midnight in Savannah evolved from his intense exposure to that city, and to his belief that John Berendt only told a fraction of the real story. Midnight in Savannah is a steamy romp that explores the sexuality of one of the Old South''s most bizarre cities. --The New York Blade. In Midnight, both Lavender Morgan (''At 72, the world''s oldest courtesan'') and Tipper Zelda (''an obese, fading chanteuse taunted as the black widow'') purchase lust from sexually conflicted young men with drop-dead faces, chiseled bodies, and genetically gifted crotches. These women once relied on their physicality to steal the hearts and fortunes of the world''s richest and most powerful men. Now, as they slide closer every day to joining the corpses of their former husbands, these once-beautiful women must depend, in a perverse twist of fate, on sexual outlaws for le petit mort. And to survive, the hustlers must idle their personal dreams while struggling to cajole what they need from a sexual liaison they detest. Mendacity reigns. Perversity in extremis. Physical beauty as living hell. Cat on A Hot Tin Roof''s Big Daddy must be spinning in his grave right now. --Eugene Raymond, staff writer for After Dark.

Hollywood''s Silent Closet provides a banquet of information about the pansexual intrigues of Hollywood between 1919 and 1926, compiled from eyewitness interviews with men and women, all of them insiders, who flourished in its midst. Not for the timid, it names names and doesn''t spare the guilty. If you believe, like Truman Capote, that the literary treatment of gossip will become the literature of the 21st century, then you will love Hollywood''s Silent Closet. Hollywood''s Silent Closet is a vivid portrait of the decadent, homosexual, and gossipy world of pre-talkie Hollywood. It''s an Info-Novel where 90% of everything in it is true. It represents the greatest collection of star-studded scandal ever assembled on the film stars of Hollywood''s Silent Era. Valentino, Ramon Novarro, Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Pola Negri, Nazimova, and many others figure into eyewitness accounts of the debauched excesses that went on behind closed doors. It also documents the often tragic endings of America''s first screen idols, some of whom admitted to being more famous than the monarchs of England and Jesus Christ combined. Many of the interviews that went into the compilation of this book were conducted between 1940 and 1974, as the subjects were nearing the end of their lives and were willing, at last, to reveal scandals and insights that had previously been repressed by their own fears and by the media machines of the studio system. Marriages of convenience are the norm as intra-male peccadillos (and lots of lesbian love, too) are swept under the potted palms of the Edwardian age. The hero of this tale is the amiably cross-dressing Durango Jones, a wide-eyed neophyte from Kansas, circa 1919, who hits Hollywood during its Pre-Code excesses, and stays for a sexual feast wherein the banquet consists of many of the era''s most flamboyant sex symbols. And although technically, this title has been formatted as a novel rather than a straight-line biography, there''s the sometimes disturbing sense that this book is genuinely historical as well as being a jolly and rollicking piece of very savvy entertainment. This is high-testosterone Hollywood at its most compulsively readable. The 60s didn''t invent sex-the stars of the Silent Screen did. --Cruiser. Who slept with Mary Pickford''s three husbands, her two brothers-in-law, and even her brother? The hero of Hollywood''s Silent Closet, that''s who! --Trova Roma.

Blood Moon is about passion, betrayal, and murder among the very rich and powerful, some of whom happen to be gay. It''s about the false gods of power, wealth, and physical beauty. It''s an epic tale about depravity in the glittery, glamorous, and sometimes tawdry world of South Florida. A dazzling and jarringly original erotic thriller. I''ve been marked for life by the red-hot images of Blood Moon''s Gene Robinson and, more raptly, of Buck Brooke II. It reads like an IMAX spectacle about the power of male beauty, with red-hot icons, a breathless climax, and erotica that''s akin to Anais Nin on Viagra with a bump of meth. --Eugene Raymond, former staff writer for After Dark. Blood Moon is a book with BIG cojones. Like a Doberman''s teeth ripping into flesh, and within a spunky context of male eroticism, it exposes the murky labyrinths of fanatical Christianity in America today. If you ever thought that sex, psychosis, right-wing religion, and violence aren''t linked, think again, and read this spellbinder. --Toro. In 2004, during a re-organization and a re-branding of their company, Blood Moon Productions, Ltd. actually re-named their company after this book. In 2008, a British reading group, Boiz Who Read designated this title as one of the ten best suspense novels ever written.

Rhinestone Country is a provocative but tender portrait of Country Music, show biz, stardom, and closeted lives south of the Mason-Dixon line. Sweeping across the racial and sexual landscapes of the Deep South between 1930 and 1978, it takes a hard look at closeted lives and the destructive aspects of fame. Loaded with truly memorable characters, it''s delectable, stimulating, sexy, and tantalizing. Rosacoke Carson, the leading, long-suffering heroine of Rhinestone Country, gives new meaning to the phrase, ''Stand by your Man.'' The portrayal of the time she spends in prison should be standard reading for absolutely everyone. --Nochetta. This is a brash, sensational, and explosive novel about stardom--the glitter, the glamour, the hot sex, and the desolate loneliness. --Leather and G-Scene. Many men love their sons. Pete Riddle, known to his fans as the sexiest musician alive, loved his more than most. --Inferno. This is a daring and dazzling work about trauma, deception, and pain, all of it with a Southern accent. It''s the True Grit of show-biz novels. --Peter Tompkins.

The Original Version of the Cult Classic from the 70s Back In Print At Last! Scorching, bizarre, and flamboyant, a strikingly beautiful blond hustler, Numie Chase, comes to the searing heat of Tortuga, southernmost point in the Continental US--the end of the line. There, he arouses passions in six decadent but vulnerable people, whose lives mesh together under the blood-red sun. There are those who''ve suggested that Darwin Porter''s Butterflies is a potboiling revision of Sweet Bird of Youth. Nevertheless, I''d walk the waterfront for Numie any day. --Tennessee Williams. We know from the beginning that we''re getting into a hotbed that has morbid fascination for potential readers. Butterflies in Heat evolves, in fact, into one massive melee of malevolence, vendetta, and e-v-i-l, stunningly absorbing alone for its sheer and unrelenting exploration of the lower depths. --Bestsellers. How does Darwin Porter''s garden grow? Only in the moonlight, and only at midnight, when man-eating vegetation in any color but green bursts into full bloom to devour its latest offerings. --James Leo Herlihy, author of Midnight Cowboy. Some commentators suggest that this novel''s protagonist, a male hustler-cum-blond-god known as Numie Chase, provided some of the inspiration for the hero in the John Schlesinger film, Midnight Cowboy. Despite this book''s provocative subject matter, (sex for hire among the terminally decadent residents of Old Key West), it''s a sensitive and tender study of the labyrinthine paths to the human soul. Sometimes described as a cult classic, this book has many fans. Until its sales records were broken by other works by other authors in the mid-1980s, Butterflies in Heat reigned for several years as one of the best-selling underground novels in the history of publishing. Bookstores, please note: This title is available with two different cover designs. 1) A tasteful version of blue butterflies against a blue-violet background and 2) a more controversial version featuring male pinup Diego. We refer to these two designs, respectively, as the blue cover and the Diego cover, and both versions carry the same ISBN number. Both versions of Butterflies in Heat have sold consistently throughout the many printings of this title. Gay bookstores seem to prefer the Diego cover, more mainstream stores usually prefer the more conservative blue cover.

The truth about Steve McQueen is spectacularly different from the legend projected by his screen persona and Hollywood''s media machine. Lurid aspects of McQueen''s early life include a gothic horror of a childhood and stints as both a porno performer and pay for play hustler to both men and women. Also revealed are sinister implications associated with his mysterious death. Years of research on the film industry''s coolest player bring McQueen and his legacy brusquely back to Earth.

This is the first post-mortem, unauthorized insight into Merv Griffin, a failed singer and unsuccessful actor who unexpectedly rewrote the rules of America''s broadcasting industry. He became the richest man in TV, befriended everyone in media who mattered, bought a casino, and maintained a secret life as America''s most famously closeted homosexual. From a controversial writer whose previous work has virtually re-defined the art of the celebrity biography, HERE''S MERV.

This is a pioneering and posthumous biography of a charismatic icon of Tinseltown whose rule over the hearts of American moviegoers lasted for more than half a century. It''s loaded with never-before-published revelations that look behind the innocent-looking baby blues that enthralled the movie-going public. He became one of the most potent, desirable, and ambiguous sex symbols in America, a former sailor from Shaker Heights, Ohio, who parlayed his ambisexual charm and extraordinary good looks into one of the most successful careers in Hollywood. It''s all here, as recorded by celebrity chronicler Darwin Porter--the dirt and the glory, the bad and the beautiful, the giddy highs and the agonizing lows of a great American star.

From famed celebrity biographer Darwin Porter, this is the most honest and journalistically important biography of Michael Jackson ever published, with a roster of literary reviews that outnumber and outclass any other MJ bio on the market. After its original release in 2007, it was widely reviewed as the most thorough and comprehensive biography of the superstar published anytime during the previous 15 years. Following the superstar''s death in June of 2009, Porter edited and amplified his already controversial texts to include startling new information about The Gloved One, adding a final chapter and a post-mortem epilogue reflecting the mysterious circumstances surrounding Jackson''s death and an analysis of its aftermath.

The tempestuous, scandalous love affair of the 20th century''s Romeo and Juliet was second in fame and notoriety only to that of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and by many accounts, even more corrupt. Even though the spotlight shone on this famous pair throughout most of their tabloid-fueled careers, much of what went on behind the velvet curtain remained hidden from view until the publication of this ground-breaking biography. For the first time, the sexual excesses and interpersonal anguish of this impossibly famous team of actors are exposed in graphic, sometimes wrenching detail.

Every time I sing a song, I''m actually making love on stage. Call me ''The Boudoir Singer,'' or so claimed Frank Sinatra. The crooner''s career spanned more than half a century, earning him millions of fans. His boudoir conquests involved some of the most stunning women of the 20th century. But exactly who was this mercurial, enigmatic man? Darwin Porter, America''s leading chronicler of Golden Age Hollywood, turns over more than a few boulders in Sinatra''s secret garden, especially for those who thought they''d heard it all. For the compilation of this compendium of show-biz scandal, Darwin Porter, former bureau chief and entertainment columnist for The Miami Herald, drew upon a treaure trove of celebrity contacts he accumulated over the decades.

“Set amid descriptions of the unimaginable changes that affected America between Hughes''s birth in 1905 and his death in 1976, this book gives an insider''s perspective about what money can buy and what it can''t. Darwin Porter''s access to film industry insiders and other Hughes confidants supplied him with the resources he needed to create a portrait of Hughes that both corroborates what other Hughes biographies have divulged, and go them one better.” Foreword Magazine. “Thanks to this bio of Howard Hughes, we''ll never be able to look at the old pinups in quite the same way again.” He was a millionaire while still a teenager, thanks to his father''s Texas tool-bit business. He owned Hughes Aircraft, TWA, and RKO. Yet Howard Hughes remains one of the most enigmatic, oddest, and most contradictory men in public life during the 20th century. Gore Vidal said he was boring, and called him an honest-to-God American shit. But Hughes had a lot more going on than Martin Scorsese''s Oscar-nominated 2004 film, The Aviator, depicts.” (The Times of London). “Darwin Porter''s new, exhaustive biography, Howard Hughes: Hell''s Angel (from Blood Moon Productions), reveals that he bedded not only about every female beauty in Hollywood''s Golden Era, but quite a few gorgeous males too. Born to a wealthy, libertine father, and cosseted by an incestuous mother, Hughes'' life revolved around three obsessions: airplanes, movies, and sex. Porter, who is in his 60s, has had a long career in journalism; he started reviewing movies for the Miami Herald as a teenager, he''s written many Frommer''s travel guides, and he''s published a biography of everyone''s favorite nonlesbian, Katharine Hepburn. I recently chatted with Porter by telephone from his New York City home. We talked all about Hughes'' dazzling, sometimes puzzling life, including those boys in the back room.” (Frontiers Magazine, Los Angeles). Howard Hughes, Hell''s Angel was nominated for best biography in Foreword Magazine''s Book of The Year Awards, and it was selected for serialization in the UK by The Mail On Sunday.

Blood Moon announces the release of Volume Two of its series on sex, scandal, sin, and exhibitionism in Hollywood, Hollywood Babylon Strikes Again. Its format and cover design follows the example set in 2008 by its predecessor, Hollywood Babylon—It’s Back (ISBN 978-0-9748118-8-8), a title that incited massive media coverage (radio and tabloid) and reviews that originated in mainstream publications (New York Daily News); literary reviews (Shelf Awareness); and pop internet sites (The Hollywood Offender). Co-authored by Darwin Porter, one of the world’s top celebrity biographers, and Danforth Prince, a former staff member at The New York Times and long-time writer at THE FROMMER GUIDES, this is an anthology of vice wherein readers can expect more of the corrupt and previously unknown shockers they were exposed to in Volume One. This “naughty sister” is dedicated to the hellraisers, both male and female, who blazed across the silver screen and into our hearts as we followed their every move onscreen. Years ago, we devoured their vanilla, sugar-coated interviews in such magazines as Photoplay. But were these cinematic gods and goddesses really telling the truth? What were they hiding? INQUIRING MINDS DESPERATELY WANT TO KNOW. Within its “artfully lurid” pages, readers learn about “The Not-So-Good, the Very, Very Bad, and The Fabulous” revealed in ways you’ve never seen, heard, or read about before.

Whereas Humphrey Bogart is always at the top of any list of the Entertainment Industry''s most famous actors, very little is known about how he clawed his way to stardom from Broadway to Hollywood. This radical expansion of one of Darwin Porter''s pioneering biographies begins with Bogart''s origins as the child of wealthy (morphine-addicted) parents in New York City, then examines the scandals, love affairs, breakthrough successes, and failures that launched Bogart on the road to becoming an American icon. Drawn from original interviews with friends and foes who knew a lot about what lay beneath his trenchcoat, this expose covers Bogart''s life from his birth in 1899 till his marriage to Lauren Bacall in 1944. It includes details about behind-the-scenes dramas associated with three mysterious marriages, and films such as The Petrified Forest, The Maltese Falcon, High Sierra, and Casablanca. Read all about the debut and formative years of the actor who influenced many generations of filmgoers, laying Bogie''s life bare in a style you''ve come to expect from Darwin Porter.“Bogie, we hardly knew you.” That’s what readers will be saying after reading this dishy, myth-shattering biography of the screen’s most famous movie star. Award-winning biographer Darwin Porter reveals for the first time what really lay under that trench coat. Exposed with all their juicy details is what Bogie never told his fourth wife, Lauren Bacall, herself a screen legend. It’s all here: The screen icon’s unknown affair with Bette Davis, his co-star in The Petrified Forest, and even details about his on- and off-screen romance with Ingrid Bergman during the filming of Casablanca—a tragic liaison which has been falsely denied for years. Detailing the inner secrets of Bogie’s tumultuous life from his birth in 1899 until his marriage to Bacall in 1944, The Making of a Legend contains a new revelation on every page. One tantalizing tidbit, for example, provides lurid details about how his third wife, actress Mayo Methot of “The Battling Bogarts,” plotted his murder. In this biography, the mystery of Bogie’s bumpy ride from Broadway to Hollywood has, like the enigma of The Maltese Falcon, been solved. A serial seducer, he enjoyed affairs with the sexiest sirens of Hollywood’s Golden Age, including Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Harlow, Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Crawford, and a host of lesser but in most cases, fiercely ambitious divas. Within the pages of this book, pre-Code Hollywood—flappers, Prohibition, bathtub gin, and sex of all persuasions—is re-created. We learn about Bogie’s longtime affair with Verita Thompson, a liaison that lasted longer than any of his marriages and which included a final deathbed declaration of their love. This revelatory book is based on dusty unpublished memoirs, letters, diaries, and often personal interviews from the women—and the men—who adored him. There are also shocking allegations from colleagues, former friends, and jilted lovers who wanted the screen icon to burn in hell. All this and more, much more, in Darwin Porter’s newest celebrity exposé, Humphrey Bogart, The Making of a Legend.

Blood Moon’s newest book examines the hidden sexual secrets of long-time companions, FBI Directors J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, and their decades-long obsession with the darkest indiscretions of famous Americans.This is history’s first exposure of J. Edgar’s obsession with voyeuristic sex and its links to the priorities of his law enforcement agency. It’s the most detailed and most shocking insight into J. Edgar Hoover ever published, an unprecedented overview of a life devoted to unveiling other people’s darkest secrets while rigorously concealing his own. Award-winning celebrity biographer Darwin Porter answers the questions you’ve always wanted to know. But if you’d asked them during Hoover’s heyday, he’d probably have had you investigated and punished. “The book,” according to Blood Moon’s president, Danforth Prince, “goes much farther than the Clint Eastwood/Leonardo DiCaprio film, J. Edgar. Hoover enforced his status as a kingmaker through eight presidential administrations, shrewdly manipulating social unrest, wars, and political rivalries to make his ‘dictatorship’ of the FBI indispensible. He developed a talent for blackmail that terrorized presidents, senators, journalists, congressmen, and public advocates who included both Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr. He secretly delivered or deliberately withheld information about issues related to national security as a means of reinforcing his personal power, and he manipulated public anxieties in ways that allowed Red-baiter Joseph McCarthy to destroy some of the most creative people in Hollywood. He collaborated with the darkest factions within American society, including the Mafia, and eventually evolved into one of the most widely loathed people in America, often assuming that no one would dare to publish an exposé of how his shocking sexual values and priorities survived, and flourished, within the FBI.“But eventually, as the book reveals, many of Hoover’s victims inaugurated investigations of their own. Anecdotes were bruited throughout Washington, New York, and Los Angeles and mockingly discussed, in front of witnesses, by key figures in law enforcement, the military, the entertainment community, and the porn industry. And the more famous Hoover became, the more recognizable he was to the male hustlers and everyday, run-of-the-mill gay men he encountered at the private parties and orgies he attended with or without Clyde. This book reveals many of these dynamics in ways never before exposed.” “You can expect a lot from this book, and it richly delivers. It presents stories from both within the FBI and tales from its victims. Compiled from decades of meticulous research, dozens of first-hand interviews, and information recently released through the Freedom of Information Act, Darwin Porter distills J. Edgar’s 50-year obsession with communists, ‘sexual perverts,’ and dissenters of any ilk into a spellbinding read.”

Before she died, Elizabeth Taylor claimed that previous biographers had revealed "only half of my story, but I can't tell the other half because I'd get sued." In response to that challenge, Blood Moon presents history’s most comprehensive compilation of the unpublished—until now—secrets of Dame Elizabeth. With photos, this meaty and startling book offers a juicy feast of till-now untold tales about the 20th century’s most deadlinegenerating actress, relayed with empathy and brutal candor.

The notorious Linda Lovelace was America's first Queen of Porn, presiding over a fast-developing multi-billion-dollar film industry during the decadent 1970s. Her movie, Deep Throat, redefined the nation's views on obscenity and was credited with changing America's sexual attitudes more than anything since the 1948 Kinsey Report. But at decade's end, Linda, in a complete about-face, emerged as one of the more compelling voices in the feminist movement, denouncing the degradations of her cinematic past.

Born in Central Europe during the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, three “vonderful vimmen”—Zsa Zsa, Eva, and Magda Gabor—transferred their glittery dreams and gold-digging ambitions to Hollywood. They supplemented America’s most Imperial Age with “guts, glamour, and goulash,” and reigned there as the Hungarian equivalents of Helen of Troy, Madame du Barry, and Madame de Pompadour. More effectively than any army, these Bombshells from Budapest conquered kings, dukes, and princes, always with a special passion for millionaires, as they amassed fortunes, broke hearts, and amused sophisticated voyeurs on two continents. With their wit, charm, and beauty, thanks to training inspired by the glittering traditions of the Imperial Habsburgs, they became famous for being famous. “We sold the New World high-priced goods from the Old World that it didn’t need, but bought anyway,” Zsa Zsa said.In time, they would collectively entrap some 20 husbands and seduce perhaps 500 other men as well, many plucked directly from the pages of Who’s Who in the World. At long last, Blood Moon lifts the “mink-and-diamond” curtain on this amazing trio of blood-related sisters, whose complicated intrigues have never been fully explored before. Orson Welles asserted, “The world will never see the likes of the Gabor sisters again. From the villas of Cannes to the mansions of Bel Air, they were the centerpiece of countless boudoirs. They were also the most notorious mantraps since Eve. I can personally vouch for that.”

One hot summer night in 1945, three young American writers, each an enfant terrible, came together in a stuffy Manhattan apartment for the first time. Each member of this pink triangle was on the dawn of world fame—Tennessee Williams for A Streetcar Named Desire; Gore Vidal for his notorious homosexual novel, The City and the Pillar; and Truman Capote for Other Voices, Other Rooms, a book that had been marketed with a photograph depicting Capote as a underaged sex object that caused as much controversy as the prose inside.Each of the three remained competitively and defiantly provocative throughout the course of his writing career. Initially hailed by critics as “the darlings of the gods,” each of them would, in time, be attacked for his contributions to film, the theater, and publishing. Some of their works would be widely reviewed as “obscene rantings from perverted sociopaths.” From that summer night emerged betrayals that eventually evolved into lawsuits, stolen lovers, public insults, and the most famous and flamboyant rivalries in America''s literary history. The private opinions of these authors about their celebrity acquaintances usually left scar tissue. Vidal became the most iconoclastic writer since Voltaire, needling and satirizing the sacred cows of his era and explosively describing subjects which included America''s gay founding fathers, the lesbian affairs of Eleanor Roosevelt, his own seduction of the Beat Generation''s spiritual leader and guru, Jack Kerouac. The book contains an overview of Vidal''s hot, then glacial, relationship with the fabled diarist Anaïs Nin, and the drawn-out slugfests which followed. Capote became the mascot of the ultra-fashionable jet set, surrounded and showcased by his glamorous “swans.” Eventually, Capote feuded not only with Vidal, but with “The Queen of the Best-Sellers,” Jacqueline Susann, publicly referring to her as “a truck driver in drag.” Capote''s own struggles for bestsellerdom are depicted during the research of his all-time hit, In Cold Blood, wherein he falls hopelessly in love with one of its killers. The book contains details about his hosting of “The Party of the Century,” and his self-destructive descent into isolation, alcohol, and drugs. Tennessee Williams, attacked for his “incurable sense of decadence,” became as notorious as his plays. His tumultuous private life is explored as never before in a portrait that''s as poignant and flamboyant as any character he created, including that of Blanche DuBois. Did Tennessee really perform fellatio on JFK at his Palm Beach compound? Did Warren Beatty really have sex with him as a means of procuring his role as the gigolo in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone? What really happened when a then-unknown actor, Marlon Brando, arrived on Tennessee''s doorstep in Provincetown during World War II?

God had a talent for creating exceptional women--Helen of Troy and Cleopatra come to mind. So does Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, who lives again in this "warts-and-all" portrait. It's being released on the 20th anniversary of the tragic death, in 1994, of the icon who changed America's beliefs about what a woman of style, power, and influence could accomplish "behind the throne" of men whose careers changed the course of history.During her tumultuous life, she zealously guarded her privacy and her secrets, but in the wake of her death, more and more revelations have emerged about her frustrations, her rage, her passions, her towering strengths, and her delicate fragility, which she hid from the glare of the world behind oversized sunglasses. Within this posthumous biography, a three-dimensional woman emerges through the compilation of some 1,000 eyewitness testimonials from men and women who knew her over a period of decades. The public epitome of charm, grace, and elegance, the private, chain-smoking Jackie was known for her sharp wit and her acid tongue, dissing some of the great men and women she encountered. Examples include such figures as Nancy Reagan (“I heard she used to give the best head in Hollywood when she was a starlet at MGM”); Queen Elizabeth II (“pompous, stuffy, a heavy trip, and seriously pissed off at me for turning on Philip”); or Martin Luther King, Jr. (“a terrible man and a tricky, phony, skirt-chaser and race baiter”). This outspoken testimonial to the flimsier side of Camelot, defined by the 2015 BEACH BOOK AWARDS as BEST BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR, contains a cornucopia of gossip and intrigue, including details about Jackie''s scandalous love affairs with her two brothers-in-law (Bobby and Teddy), and her penchant for movie star seductions (Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, William Holden).Also detailed are her famous feuds with Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, and Maria Callas; her almost unknown love affairs with Spain''s greatest matador and with Peter Lawford; her night in Georgetown coping with LBJ''s aborted seduction; her friend Rudolf Nureyev''s pursuit of both her and Bobby; her interchanges with Lem Billings, JFK''s homosexual “First Friend” whom Bobby defined as “Jack''s other wife”); her blood feud with Christina Onassis; her sibling rivalry with Lee Radziwill; her illicit affair with a senator nicknamed “Gorgeous George; her love-hate relationship with Frank Sinatra; and her Italian fling with Fiat''s kingpin, Gianni Agnelli, who taught her all about La Dolce Vita during the summer of 1962.Conceived in direct and sometimes defiant contrast to the avalanche of more breathlessly respectful testimonials to the life and legacy of “America''s Queen,” this book is the latest installment in Blood Moon''s endlessly irreverent BABYLON series.

Most of the world remembers Ronald Reagan and Nancy (Davis) Reagan as geriatric figures in the White House in the 1980s. And it remembers Jane Wyman as the fierce empress, Angela Channing, in the decade’s hit TV series, Falcon Crest. But long before that, two young wannabee stars, Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, had arrived as untested hopefuls in Hollywood. Each of them separately stormed Warner Brothers, looking for movie stardom and love—and finding both beyond their wildest dreams. They were followed, in time, by Nancy Davis, who began her career posing for cheesecake in a failed attempt by the studio to turn her into a sex symbol. In their memoirs, Ronald and Nancy (Jane didn’t write one) paid scant attention to their “wild and wonderful years” in Hollywood. To provide that missing link in their lives, Blood Moon’s Love Triangle explores in depth the trio’s passions, fury, betrayal, loves won and lost, and the conflicts and rivalries they generated. A liberal New Deal Democrat, Reagan quickly became a handsome leading man in “B” pictures and a “babe magnet,” as studio mogul Jack Warner defined him, “a swordsman like our resident Don Juan, Errol Flynn.” Reagan himself admitted he developed “Leading Lady-itis” even for stars he didn’t appear with. He launched a bevy of affairs with such glamorous icons as Lana Turner, Betty Grable and Susan Hayward, even a “too young Elizabeth Taylor.” He eventually married Jane, but he was not faithful to her, enjoying back alley affairs with the likes of “The Oomph Girl,” Ann Sheridan. Jane, too, had her affairs on the side, notably with Lew Ayres (Ginger Rogers’ ex) while filming her Oscar-winning Johnny Belinda. After dumping Reagan, Jane launched a series of affairs herself, battling Joan Crawford (for Hollywood’s most studly and newsworthy attorney, Greg Bautzer), and Marilyn Monroe (for bandleader Fred Karger, divorcing him, marrying him again, and finally divorcing him for good.) Reagan’s oldest son, Michael (adopted), later said, “If Nancy knew that one day she would be First Lady, she would have cleaned up her act.” He was referring to her notorious days as a starlet in the late 1940s and early 50s, when the grapevine had it that: “her phone number was passed around a lot.” The list of her intimate involvements is long, including Clark Gable, whom she wanted to marry; Spencer Tracy; Yul Brynner; Frank Sinatra; Marlon Brando; Milton Berle; Peter Lawford; Robert Walker; et al. Love Triangle, a proud and presidential addition to Blood Moon’s Babylon series, digs deep into what these three young movie stars were up to decades before two of them took over the Free World.