Books published by Open Road Media

The authorized biography of the celebrated film director William Wyler, a giant in his craft, who directed such classics as Ben-Hur, Funny Girl, and Roman Holiday.

Set in the world of classical music and opera in the 1970s, Love Song is the story of a marriage between young, rising stars that is wrenchingly affected by a young prodigy and by the specter of a serious illness. Moving from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera to the glamour and wealth of Paris and Venice and its titled patrons, Love Song tells how triumph can rise from tragedy, in the face of impossible odds.

Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Barbara Stanwyck-to name a few-maintained their images as glamorous big-screen sex symbols complete with dashing escorts, handsome husbands, and scores of male admirers, thanks to studio publicity departments. But off the set, all three box office divas were involved in "lavender" marriages (marriages of convenience, often to gay men) or remained stoically single. They, and several other Hollywood starlets of the era, were members of a discreet women's "club" called the Sewing Circle, Hollywood's underground lesbian society. Madsen takes a candid look at the very complicated dual lives these great stars led and the impact their preference for same-sex relationships had on their movie careers.

Seeking rejuvenation and rest, six very different people converge at a lush Caribbean spa on the island of St. Christoph and find more than they had bargained for: mystery, intrigue, and romance. Successful and single journalist Joyce Redmond, who is on assignment to root out the nitty gritty on the other guests, has been so busy working on her career that she has forgotten to work on her life. Cliff Eastman, the romantic over-the-hill movie star and heartthrob, is watching his career fade through the bottom of a bottle. Cathy Stewart, the overweight, frustrated housewife, who cringes each time her husband calls her his "big mama," is intent on finding a way to shed that name. Maxine Kraft, married for twenty-five years needs only a little more courage to face the world as a single woman. Finally, there is Belle Taylor and her famous teen idol daughter, Regina, who both need to find a way to stop hating each other. Fortunately, the Spa at St. Christoph has something for everyone. Yet, behind the luxurious façade of this retreat awaits a mystery for which they had not bargained.

Romance and high comedy in the heat of the summer.

Ann Birstein''s account of her adventures in the New York male literary scene as a woman and as a female writer.

Young Daisy Learner is a newcomer to the hijinks and sexual machinations of the academy.

A dual biography of the two most influential socio-political moralists of the twentieth century, whose lives were intertwined personally and intellectually for more than forty-six years. Madsen provides an engrossing view of the luminously transparent relationship that was unconventional yet faithful to its ideals.

The authorized biography of the most important man of letters in twentieth century France: André Malraux, French novelist, art theorist, and France's Minister of Cultural Affairs.

One of the most influential men of the twentieth century, Jacques Cousteau was an eco-emissary whose own life of derring-do brought him fame and the means to proselytize his cause. Ecologist, adventurer, celebrity, businessman-Cousteau was a brilliant and complex individual, and Madsen's biography captures him in style. Madsen, who knew the Cousteau family for over two decades, interviewed Cousteau personally for this book.

The ultimate Hollywood story revealed: the sizzling relationship between Joseph Kennedy, patriarch of America's most influential political family, and Gloria Swanson, one of the most prominent silent film stars of her day. Gloria and Joe were in love with each other and with the movies, especially Queen Kelly, which completed the real-life ménage à trois. Starring along with the star of the screen and the Boston Brahman in this exposé are Erich von Stroheim, Kennedy's wife Rose, Swanson's husband, and a cast of colorful hangers-on. Madsen recreates their love, scandal, and world, which in its extravagance and intrigue has never been surpassed.

A sweeping novel of the 1930s that captures the essence of a golden, lurid era when Hollywood became the fantasy capital of the world

One of the greatest art theft stories of the 20th century: André Malraux, French novelist, art theorist, and eventually France's Minister of Cultural Affairs, and his wife, Clara, traveled to Cambodia in 1923, planning to steal and smuggle artifacts out of the country and sell them in America. The Cambodian treasure hunt promised to be a mix of cultural sleuthing for important antiquities and risk-taking on the fuzzy edge of the laws that governed historical sites. The jungle expedition ended in arrest and, for André, trial and conviction. But it also led to a second Asian venture: the launching of a Saigon newspaper, L'Indochine, dedicated to the aspirations of the indigenous population. Madsen follows the couple from this fateful adventure that so shaped their future to the end of their marriage, and after.

At each stage of their lives-from infant cribs to teen dropouts to welfare dependents to basement shelters for the elderly-the people of the underclass are shunned by the rest of the population, even by the working poor. The cycle is vicious: Underclass children get little help in their own homes (when they have homes); they are shoved aside at school until they drop out like their parents did; they are unable to find decent work without an education; they have children of their own for whom they cannot provide adequate care; and finally, they are dumped into human (but inhumane) warehouses for the not-quite-deceased. America cannot afford to do this to its poorest citizens; we cannot afford not to rescue the underclass. In the richest country on earth, the people of the underclass are not merely a problem, they are a scandal.

Author John Hanson Mitchell recounts a marathon bicycle trek from Andalusia to the Outer Hebrides, tracing solar myths, sun cults, birds, and flowering plants all along the way.

An eccentric billionaire, a best-selling author, and a beautiful, self-destructive woman: three lives linked by the tragic sinking of the Titanic April 11, 1912: The gala sailing out of Southampton of White Star Line's peerless luxury liner, the R.M.S. Titanic. Among the dazzling, doomed names on the passenger list for this, the Titanic's maiden voyage, is Clair August Ryker, the lovely and dissolute wife of billionaire industrialist William Ryker, and her ten-year-old daughter, Eva. Also present is a young couple, obviously newlyweds, the Eddingtons, who are drawn to Clair and her child. Beneath the decks, in the cargo hold, is a crate marked Ryker Industries. November 30, 1941: In Honolulu, the apparently accidental death of tourist Albert Klein and the brutal murder of his wife confound the promising career of a rookie cop. Norman Hall will never be able to forget the grisly sight of the dismembered body of Martha Klein. Decades later, a best-selling author, he is still haunted. What could possibly link these events? A faded film, capturing the sunny pleasures of a ship-board party, and a terrifying recording of a voice describing a night of darkest infamy and moral outrage? It is Norman Hall's assignment, fifty years after the sinking of the Titanic, to cover for World Magazine William Ryker's multimillion-dollar salvage expedition to recover the lost riches of the Titanic. Norman Hall is determined to understand the reclusive billionaire's motives for the expedition, but as he delves deeper into the past, he finds himself in grave danger. To solve the mystery, he must somehow unlock the memory of the deeply troubled Eva Ryker.

In these five profiles, four of which originally appeared in the New Yorker, the author evokes the life and work of seven gifted artists. Among those presented, often through lively conversations, are Jean Hélion, Mark Rothko, R.B. Kitaj, and Dennis Creffield. Chief among those portrayed however is Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), the great French photographer and photojournalist who, famed for dodging contact with the press, is here sketched in rare and fond detail. Of all these artists, only two still live: what emerges from this book is a picture, often bizarre, often hilarious, of a bygone bohemian world.

Two completely separate novellas about putting right the mess two men have made out of their lives.

The story of a father and son-and is it true, as Wordsworth claimed, that "the child is father of the man" or can one's character actually change as one grows older?

The first year of the Reagan administration finds all manners of scoundrels and supplicants scrounging for favors and position.

A story of a coup d'etat in Central Africa, Rogue's March is about the men on all sides of the conflict, men caught up in events beyond their control or understanding.

Set in post-war Berlin, a disillusioned former CIA operative and a Russian spy cross paths in their search for an elusive double agent.

This series of entwined biographical sketches recounts how, in the Romantic Era, love affairs, often illicit, were transformed into novels, memoirs, and published correspondences. We make the intimate acquaintance of great writers like Mme de Staël, Chateaubriand, George Sand, and Anatole France, who, however, fall gradually under the suspicion of pursuing their amorous entanglements for “good material.” The tale ends with a moving account, based on unpublished sources, of the strange, intense friendship of Marcel Proust and Jeanne Pouquet, the girl who became the model for Gilberte in Swann’s Way. Disenchanted yet compassionate, this book explores how our affections may be exalted (and at times betrayed) by our desire to refashion them as stories.

Set against a bloody Sudanese civil war, a disgraced American mercenary pilot and a missionary's widow find a love as rich and complicated as its milieu.

Rachel Simon's debut, originally published in 1990, is a collection of stories about the struggle for love and intimacy, told from the point of view of adolescent girls, young mothers, and elderly women. Some are rooted in reality, others in magical realism, with tones ranging from serious to comic, sunny to dark. Throughout, Simon employs such a wide range of voices-sweet, shrewd, wistful, irascible, vulnerable, sensual-the Philadelphia Inquirer hailed her as "a literary ventriloquist." Among the highlights are "Little Nightmares, Little Dreams," in which an elderly couple enters the unknown by trying to dream the same dream; "Paint," in which a runaway-turned-artist's-model provokes protests after her naked body becomes the canvas; "Afterglow," in which a plucky thirteen-year-old playing hooky is held hostage by an escaped convict; "Grandma Death," in which an overbearing grandmother can't seem to go anywhere without someone dropping dead; and "Better Than A Box of Dreams," in which a maid irritated by her boss's dream therapy sessions dreams her own fondest wish back to life.Little Nightmares, Little Dreams was presented on NPR's Selected Shorts and the Lifetime program The Hidden Room. This 2014 rerelease includes four previously uncollected stories. It also includes a new introduction.

The wind has sculpted Earth from the beginning of time, but it has also shaped humans—our histories, religions and cultures, the way we build our dwellings, and how we think and feel. In this poetic, acclaimed work, Jan DeBlieu takes the tempests of her home, the North Carolina Outer Banks, as a starting point for considering how the world’s breezes and gales have made us who we are. She travels widely, seeking out the scientists, sailors and sages who, like her, are haunted by the movement of air.

The Rise of the Computer State is a comprehensive examination of the ways that computers and massive databases are enabling the nation's corporations and law enforcement agencies to steadily erode our privacy and manipulate and control the American people. This book was written in 1983 as a warning. Today it is a history. Most of its grim scenarios are now part of everyday life. The remedy proposed here, greater public oversight of industry and government, has not occurred, but a better one has not yet been found. While many individuals have willingly surrendered much of their privacy and all of us have lost some of it, the right to keep what remains is still worth protecting.

Rosie Mortimer, celebrity gardener with a successful TV show, has a pleasantly uneventful life with her undemanding beau. Her gay son and his partner live nearby. When her estranged daughter, Susannah, product of a fractured family, returns to Rosie''s Connecticut town with her husband, a former priest, to open a restaurant, the tense relationships among these three build to a near-tragedy. Rosie is forced to face the mistakes and failures that have plagued her-and Susannah, who has her own demons, learns to forgive.

A chance encounter on a train leads painter Christine Ward to wonder whether Orin Pierce, her beloved college friend, believed dead for two decades, may actually be alive. As she begins to track down the man she believes he might be, she finds herself in the grip of a troubling past she thought she had come to terms with. In her search through the tangles of truth and illusion, memory and dream, she questions her roles as lover, mother, artist, and mourner of the dead. This haunting literary thriller is an uncompromising portrait of a contemporary woman in crisis.

Cordelia Miller, an endearing young misfit in a scholarly, cultured family, loves junk food, TV, and the son of the local grocer. Her attempt to escape her stifling background and find her way in the world takes her on a classic journey from innocence to experience. She encounters a varied cast of characters-some comic, some calamitous-and, in the end, discovers her true vocation.