Photo gallery // News coverage

Alexandra Lebenthal is the founder of Alexandra and James Inc. (www.lebenthal.com), a wealth management company that she runs with her father, Jim Lebenthal, who made his name selling municipal bonds. She now caters to a group she calls "the lost affluent."

In this rollicking debut novel, Lebenthal follows two Wall Streeters as they scramble to salvage their money and their lives through the economic collapse of 2008. Look for high-society shindigs, Wall Street jargon, and Bernie Madoff–like skullduggery in this diary of craven greed and its inevitable comeuppance.

Photo gallery // News coverage

The 1950s heartthrob has penned a memoir with very little hedging, great good humor and no pretentiousness. “Tab Hunter Confidential” delivers the story on how a young, gorgeous kid named Art Gelien, child of an absent father and a repressed, platitude-spouting mother, suddenly became “The Sigh Guy.”

Tab Hunter was, in the 1950s, one of the reigning hunks, every teenage girl's dreamboat. He dated Debbie Reynolds and other starlets, did countless interviews about the kind of girl he would marry and, through it all, kept his private life very private.

The book charts Hunter's life through friendships and hardships (emotional and financial), rather than just his career trajectory. It is an illuminating and important piece of Hollywood history.

Photo gallery // Article & excerpt

This is a harrowing memoir by Jere Van Dyk, an American journalist exploring the war zone on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Having traveled with the freedom fighters in the 1980s, Van Dyk thought he had the connections and knowledge to navigate the tribal lands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but he was captured by a fractious band of Taliban fighters in 2008. Van Dyk and his Afghan guides spent 44 days in a dark cell.

Van Dyk's claustrophobic narrative presents his ordeal through the distorting emotions of fear, shame, and self-pity. In telling his story this way, he brings us viscerally into the mental universe of the Taliban, where paranoia and fanaticism reign, and survival requires currying favor with powerful men. The result is a gripping tale of endurance and a vivid evocation of Afghanistan's grim realities.

Photo gallery // News coverage

Dominique Browning's 13-year-job as editor-in-chief of House & Garden magazine defined her days and her identity. When the magazine folded in 2007, she was shaken to the core of her being.

Having maintained her Westchester house, family of two grown sons, extensive garden, and frequent dining out, her life and general sense of self was radically shaken over the next year. In this enchanting, funny, gracious memoir, Browning recounts how she found enlightenment at the other end.

Dominique Browning's Web site

Cancelation info // News coverage

In an extensively researched and well-told tale, attorney and author Arthur Vanderbilt II relates how his ancestors accumulated and then depleted an almost unimaginable fortune.

During his lifetime (1794-1877), Cornelius Vanderbilt, a.k.a. "The Commodore," amassed a fortune of $105 million -- more than any other American ever had. He left most of it to one son, who increased it beyond his father's wildest dreams.

The book provides a witty, entertaining and sad history of how the seemingly solid fortune was dissipated down to practically nothing in the space of a century. The author dramatizes both the successes and excesses of America's Gilded Age.