Books published by Sager Group LLC

Senlac is a two-part historical novel that brings to life the turbulent period leading to the Norman conquest of England in 1066, when the English were forced to defend the kingdom against invasions by both the Normans and the Vikings. The book is named for the hill upon which the final defense was mounted. The results would dramatically change the course of history.Senlac, Book One, opens during Christmas, 1065, a time of grave national crisis and disquieting omens in England, when the aged King Edward the Confessor, the seventh son of ├åthelred the Unready, dies in the Palace of Westminster in London. Even as a successor is crowned by popular acclaim, King Harold II faces attack from two formidable neighbors: the Viking army of Harald Hardraada, and the Norman forces lead by William the Conqueror. Also in play is Harold''s own exiled younger brother, Tostig, who is bent on revenge against the King who banished him.ΓÇïIn Book Two of Senlac, the inevitable happens; forces are engaged in violent, bloody war. Each of the three powerful leaders are forced to the very limit of their abilities and resources as they fight to achieve their ambitious goals. The result is the tragic year of The Three Battles, the death of thousands of warriors and common people conscripted for the carnage, and the destruction of a whole way of life. Nothing will ever be the same. Carefully researched and re-imagined by Londoner and first-time novelist Julian del la Motte, Senlac turns the dust of history into living flesh and emotion. "It might just be the best historical fiction you''ll ever read," says Charles McNair, who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel, Land O'' Goshen.

When affable computer salesman Sid Straw sends an innocent letter requesting an autographed photo from his former college classmate, the popular and cultish Hollywood actress Heather Locklear (Melrose Place, Spin City), he has no idea that his life will soon be spiraling out of control-costing his job, draining his finances, foiling his romantic designs on a co-worker, and leaving his entire world in ruins . . .  Until he decides to fight back.  Told through a series of one-sided correspondences with the television star, his bosses, his girlfriend, and various lawyers and PR representatives, Eat Wheaties! is a farcical look at celebrity in today''s society. A charming, laugh-out-loud novel (originally published as The Locklear Letters), Eat Wheaties! has been adapted for a major motion picture starring Tony Hale (Veep, Arrested Development), Elisha Cuthbert (24, Happy Endings), Paul Walter Hauser (Da 5 Bloods, Richard Jewell), Danielle Brooks (Orange Is The New Black), Alan Tudyk (Dodgeball,  Firefly) and Sarah Chalke (Scrubs, Roseanne).  

Senlac is a two-part historical novel that brings to life the turbulent period leading to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. A bloody war, fought at close hand and on horseback with sword and battle-axe, the English were forced to defend the kingdom against invasions by both the Normans and the Vikings. The book is named for the hill upon which the final defense was mounted. The results would dramatically change the course of history.Senlac, Book One, opens during Christmas of the year 1065, a time of grave national crisis and disquieting omens, when the aged King Edward the Confessor, the seventh son of ├åthelred the Unready, dies in the Palace of Westminster in London. He leaves behind no heir.To fill the void, Edward''s brother-in-law, Harold, the Earl of Wessex and the greatest warrior in England, is hurriedly elected king by popular acclaim.  Harold desperately seeks to unify a kingdom ravaged by the Danish occupation, and by unrest on both the Scottish and Welsh borders.In order to ensure military support in the north, Harold must turn his back on his beloved common-law wife, Edith the Fair-also known as Edith Swanneck, for the graceful length of her neck-and their children to marry Aeldyth, the sister of both the Earl of Northumbria and the Earl of Mercia. Meanwhile, Harold''s mercurial younger brother, Tostig, is bitterly plotting a return from exile and revenge against the King.Across the North Sea, the King of Norway, the aging and psychotic Harald Hardraada, who was said to be a full seven feet tall, dreams of a new Viking Empire on English soil, and strikes an alliance with Tosig. And across the English Channel, William, Duke of Normandy-the leader of a powerful yet unstable military state-plans his own attack, determined to avenge Harold''s broken promise to make England his.Carefully researched and re-imagined by Londoner and first-time novelist Julian del la Motte, Senlac turns the dust of history into living flesh and emotion.  "It might just be the best historical fiction you''ll ever read," says Charles McNair, who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel, Land O'' Goshen.

Chris Erskine is the master of domestic dramedy.For three decades in the Los Angeles Times, Erskine''s columns explored modern fatherhood and family life, from the absurd to the mundane, the sublime to the heartbreaking. Now, with Lavender in Your Lemonade: A Funny and Touching COVID Diary, he tackles the New Normal with his chronicle of daily life under the frustrating, terrifying, and sometimes antic strictures of a world-wide pandemic.No, it''s not funny. And yet somehow, in Erskine''s hands, it is.Or at least it feels more tolerable.With elegant prose and an eye for telling detail, Erskine draws simple truths from the infinite complexities of the human condition, eight hundred words at a time. In the great tradition of Erma Bombeck, Mike Royko, Dave Barry, and Bob Greene, Erskine shows us ourselves in a funhouse mirror.

Some say he was a breakthrough academic and visionary shaman. Others say he was a sham. Either way, Carlos Castaneda shaped a generation of mystical thinkers and magic mushroom eaters.In 1968, at the height of the psychedelic age, Castaneda published The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, the first of twelve books describing his apprenticeship to an Indian shaman, and his journeys to the "separate reality" of the sorcerers'' worlds.Like Herman Hesse''s Steppenwolf and Aldous Huxley''s The Doors of Perception, The Teachings of Don Juan and its sequels became essential reading for legions of truth seekers. Castaneda himself became a cult figure-seldom seen, nearly mythological, a cross between Timothy Leary and L. Ron Hubbard: a short, dapper, Buddha-with-an-attitude who likened his own appearance to that of a "Mexican bellhop."Though Castaneda had more than ten million books in print in seventeen languages, he lived in wily anonymity for nearly thirty years, doing his best, in his own words, to become "as inaccessible as possible." Most people figured he had a house somewhere in the Sonoran Desert, where he''d studied with his own teacher, a leathery old Indian brujo named Don Juan Matus.In truth, Castaneda lived and wrote for most of that time in Westwood Village, a neighborhood of students and professors in Los Angeles, not far from UCLA and Beverly Hills. Upon his death in 1998, things became even more murky.A year-long investigation into the mysterious life and impeccable death of Carlos Castaneda, as told by his wife, his adopted son, his mistresses, and his followers.

Now with new cover, new interior art, and vintage movie posters added."John Holmes was every man''s gigolo, a polyester smoothie with a sparse mustache, a flying collar, and lots of buttons undone. He wasn''t threatening. He chewed gum and overacted. He took a lounge singer''s approach to sex, deliberately gentle, ostentatiously artful, a homely guy with a pinkie ring and a big dick who was convinced he was every woman''s dream." -from "The Devil and John Holmes."John Curtis Holmes had the longest, most prolific career in the history of pornography. He had sex on-screen with two generations of leading ladies, from Seka and Marilyn Chambers to Traci Lords, Ginger Lynn, and Italian Member of Parliament Cicciolina. The first man to win the X-Rated Critics Organization Best Actor Award, Holmes was an idol and an icon, the most visible male porn star of his time.Holmes started in the business around 1968 and made more than two thousand movies. But after descending into a world of drugs and crime, he became the central figure in one of the most publicized mass murders in L.A. history, the 1981 Wonderland Avenue killings in Laurel Canyon, in which four people were brutally bludgeoned to death. Holmes was tried and acquitted of the crimes in 1982. He died from complications of AIDS on March 13, 1988.Read the story that inspired the movies Boogie Nights, with Mark Walhberg, and Wonderland, with Val Kilmer and Lisa Kudrow. Now with restored edits, updated information, new cover and interior art by Austraila''s famous illustration team WBYK, and photos of old Holmes movie posters. The collection includes three bonus stories. "Little Girl Lost," about the life and death of beautiful porn starlet Savannah, among the first of the Vivid Girls; "Deviates in Love" about swingers and amateur porn; and "The Porn Identity," about a divorced man''s search for retired porn starlets in an effort to get his mojo back.

Named to Kirkus Reviews'' Best Books of 2020.The Orphan''s Daughter is a novel about a girl who grows up in the shadow of her charismatic but troubled father, a man shaped by his boyhood in a Depression-era Jewish orphanage. The two life stories are woven together to form the fabric of this funny and suspenseful work of literary fiction.Clyde Aronson survives the cruelties of the seemingly bucolic orphanage but is left scarred. Brilliant and self-destructive, a popular high-school teacher and a callous womanizer, he yearns for a son to replace the relationship lost when his father abandoned him. Instead, he fathers two daughters. He resents most the one who most resembles him: the younger, Joanna.Joanna Aronson is thirty, alienated, and living in Southern California when she learns of her father''s puzzling illness. She returns home to Baltimore to help care for him. In the process, the two reconcile; Joanna struggles to come to terms with her own difficult history. Clyde promises to leave Joanna his collected papers, including a secret manuscript written long ago about life in the orphanage. After Clyde''s death, Joanna''s stepmother inherits the house and all of his possessions. She refuses Joanna any access. Determined, Joanna breaks into the house and steals the manuscript. The stepmother presses charges. Though fictional, The Orphan''s Daughter is based upon the time, from 1924 to 1934, the author''s father spent in the Hebrew National Orphan Home in Yonkers, New York.This evocative novel incorporates contemporary feminist themes, Jewish cultural history, and a nostalgic sense of place. By turns wrenching and delightfully humorous, The Orphan''s Daughter is a deft melding of history and psychological drama, a literary page-turner you won''t want to put down.

Arnie Pepper is having the worst day of his life. The Pulitzer-prize winning sports columnist for the Washington Post has lived a thrilling, prestigious and (mostly) blameless existence over nearly four decades of rubbing shoulders with athletic royalty at all the most prestigious sporting events of our times. Then one day, within the confines of an impromptu gathering of fellow reporters, he tosses out a characteristic one-liner. Overheard and subsequently posted on social media, his joke goes viral. The ensuing hurricane of condemnation threatens to take his job and reputation, alienate his daughter, and decimate his obsessively observed inner world.#MeAsWell is the second novel from Peter Mehlman, an essayist, artist, comic, filmmaker, and longtime writer/producer for the iconic television show Seinfeld. At once surreal and too real, laughable and on point, the novel examines the inner and outer turmoil that results when a well-meaning but iconoclastic public figure, having failed to update his cultural operating system, unwittingly runs afoul of the new rules of woke America.In everyday interactions, and especially in his popular columns, Pepper’s sense of humor has always been his fortune—the gateway to a comfortable life as a journalist and enriching friendships with everyone from Billy Jean King to Barack Obama. An early proponent of Title IX–and a devoted single father of a daughter–Pepper has long been a champion of women’s sport. But now, despite his best intentions, he finds himself in the eye of a media storm that is turning darker and more dangerous, his life threatened by a hilarious retort—or at least it seemed hilarious at the time.Early Praise for #MeAsWell, A Novel“Mehlman’s narrative is spirited, political, and both hilarious and sadly reflective of the digital culture that can befriend or betray on a whim. A witty, culturally perceptive dark comedy.”–Kirkus ReviewsPraise for Mehlman's first novel, It Won't Always Be This Great “It turns out that not only can Peter Mehlman write funny television, he can write a funny book. Who knew?”–Julia Louis-Dreyfus, star of Veep and Seinfeld “Anyone who writes for television gets frustrated that they can’t write like Peter Mehlman. Now he’s going to make novelists mad too. Mehlman’s writing style is completely unique and creates an intimate bond between the narrator and the reader. You finish the book feeling as though you’ve made a new friend.” – Aaron Sorkin, Academy and Emmy-award winning screenwriter, producer, and playwright, whose works include A Few Good Men, The West Wing, The Social Network, and The Newsroom “Equal parts moral dilemma, subtle social commentary, and journey of self-discovery, Mehlman’s tale of a man forced outside the comfort zone of his ‘respectable, decent, low-impact, relaxed-fit, gluten-free world’ is both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving.” –Publishers Weekly

New Stories We Tell is the third in a series of women-centric journalism text/anthologies created to celebrate the great women of American longform writing. New Stories features sixteen of the most talked-about contemporary magazine writers.Each chapter includes a landmark true story, a bio, and an interview with the writer. We learn about lives, careers, writing philosophies, tricks of the trade, and backstories. Taken together, the assembled articles-republished from both legacy and new media--paint a picture of the shifting role of the genre known variously as longform, creative or literary nonfiction, and the New Journalism.Writers include Rachel Aviv, Anne Babe, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Pamela Colloff, Sara Corbett, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Brooke Jarvis, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Sheelah Kolhatkar, Jaeah Lee, Lizzie Presser, Janet Reitman, Lisa Taddeo, Jia Tolentino, Amy Wallace, and Elizabeth Weil.While journalists today, as always, are pledged to intellectual honesty and a true reporting of the facts, more than ever the genre is seen as an outlet for agency and a tool of social justice. Almost all of the women featured in New Stories We Tell aim their considerable journalistic talents at pressing issues of our day. Maybe someday soon, books like this won't be necessary. Written by women or not, these stories are simply great work.About the editors: Kaylen Ralph is a writer and editor; Joanna Demkiewicz is a marketing director for an independent press. Graduates of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, they were co-founders of the groundbreaking publication The Riveter, a longform magazine by women for everyone.PRAISE FOR NEW STORIES WE TELL "A well-selected anthology of potent stories by formidable women writers."-Kirkus Reviews"I would have killed for this book when I was a young and obsessed reader. I'm now an old and obsessed reader and I can't wait to read (reread) the stories and especially the As Told Tos. I'm honored to be in such amazing company."-Sara Corbett, coauthor, Becoming by Michelle Obama "New Stories We Tell is a collection of true stories written by American women journalists. It is a known fact that men dominate the world of nonfiction. This book is different because it brings together the excellent contributions of women journalists on varied topics. I appreciate how the editors celebrate the differences between the writing styles of authors from varied backgrounds. Every story begins with a short biographical account by the writer that helps you to understand the underlying passion and focus of her journalism. Some of the stories are still lingering in my mind after reading the entire book." 4 OUT OF 4 STARS.- OnlineBookclub.org Praise for TSG's Women in Journalism Series:"The caliber of work makes The Stories We Tell a master class in long-form journalism."-Kirkus Reviews"It only took fifty years for the women of long-form journalism to really get their due in an anthology, the newly published The Stories We Tell . . . a feast of great writing by twenty journalists at the top of their game."- Harvard's Neiman Storyboard"Newswomen is an excellent start to catch us up on where the women are and what they've been doing all these years, namely, writing award-winning literary journalism that can inspire our students."-Literary Journalism Studies

Three days a week for more than 20 years, Mike Levine wrote newspaper columns that stood up for the little guy, celebrated the lives of everyday people and shined a light on the darkness of corrupt and inept public servants. <i>Words to Repair the World </i> represents a distillation of some of the best of those columns.Many knew Levine as a columnist for the <i>Times Herald-Record</i> in Middletown, N.Y., and later as executive editor of the newspaper. In life, Mike was a short guy, but in the world of journalism, he was a giant.His columns were filled with stories of parenthood and family and of living in the Hudson Valley. He wrote about his work as an editor and columnist and served as a watchdog that challenged the arrogance of the powerful and held them accountable.Equal parts preacher, mentor, comic and salesman, Mike sometimes talked about  <i>Tikkun olam </i>,  Hebrew for “repair of the world,” a concept that speaks to an aspiration to behave and act constructively and beneficially for the rest of the world. His work embraced that principle.Mike died in 2007 at the age of 54. He left this world too soon, but the legacy he left behind lives on in the hearts of many. <i>Words to Repair the World</i> is a tribute to that legacy.“Mike Levine was a wonderful human being and a great community newspaper editor who used his intuitive understanding of other people’s struggles with the difficulties of life to help his readers cope with and understand the complexities of the world’s problems. His columns were full of human kindness.” -- Jim Ottaway Jr., retired chairman of Ottaway Newspapers Inc.“Mike was the ultimate newspaper guy, from his looks to his speech to his unwavering ambition to stick up for the little guy. Every newspaper should be so lucky to have a Mike Levine writing and editing for it. His passion for newspapers and the good that could come out of them was unmatched.”— Jeff Cohen, former editor of the <i>Houston Chronicle</i>ABOUT THE EDITOR: Christopher Mele is a veteran newsman who, growing up in the Bronx, knew at the age of 11 that he wanted to cover the news. Over more than three decades, he's worked in newsrooms in New York and Pennsylvania and is currently a senior staff editor and weekend editor on the Express Team at <i>The New York Times</i>.

Mike Sager has been called "the Beat poet of American Journalism." Vetville collects the best his stories about the Marine Corps. Together this tetralogy of long form pieces charts a life story arc of the modern Devil Dog. It begins at Camp Pendleton, CA, on field exercises with Lieutenant Colonel Bob Sinclair and his BN One-Four-the 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment-as they prepare to invade Afghanistan, the first wave of American combatants sent to war after the deadly terrorist attacks of 9/11. "You realize that your country has been attacked," he says. "You wanna strike back."From there, we head to the Wounded Warriors Barracks at Camp Lejeune where we meet Ringo, Cebula, Wildman, Lieutenant Colonel Maxwell, and the rest of the men recuperating together at a unique barracks where wounded Marines harness their esprit de corps to help one another through emotional and physical recovery. We hear their battlefield stories of war and heroism. And their stories of injury and despair. And we discover the soft center that lives beneath the tough exterior shell of the Marine Corps mystique-a deep love of comrades and country. "Wounded Warriors" was awarded a number of awards, including The Military Writers Society of America Founder's Award.In "Vetville" we visit a small farm in the mountains of Tennessee, where a Marine sergeant, in an effort to save himself and others, has opened his doors to veterans whose deep wounds don't necessarily show. And, we catch up with John Cebula, one of the men encountered aboard the Wounded Warriors barracks. Without a supportive network around him, he has turned to drugs. Finally, in "Fifty Grand in San Diego," we focus on the return to civilian life after the corps, with a look at a modern version of the American Dream-an ex-Marine playing Mr. Mom and finding his silver cloud in a dirty diaper.Wounded Warriors was awarded: *The American Author's Association Golden Quill Award*The Military Writers Society of America Founder's Award"Entertaining and fascinating. At the end of the book, you will find yourself changed in some way. Call it empathy, or just a compassionate response to have seen and become aware of another man's pain and suffering; but you will remember these men that you read about long after putting this book to rest." --Military Writers Society of AmericaSager has written a gripping account of how these Marines are coping with their combat-altered lives. An experienced interviewer, he lets the Marines' stories speak for themselves…Powerful stuff." --Leatherneck, Magazine of the Marines

From ground zero of the deadliest wildfire in California history to the cozy living room of super-spokesmodel Brooke Burke; from the recording studio with gangsta-rap pioneer Ice Cube to the tour bus with the Satanic metal band Slayer; this tough but lyrical collection of seventeen stories, by award-winning Esquire and Rolling Stone writer Mike Sager, brings into sharp focus the rich but confusing state of modern American life- its values, virtues, obsessions, and hypocrisies. A second edition of the author's bestselling collection, with updated material and new author's note. Domestic Goddess Roseanne Barr battles Multiple Personality Disorder… Swingers attend a "fantasy weekend" in Pensacola… Twelve-year-olds joyride in stolen cars through the ruins of the Newark ghetto… Desmond the butler services the hoi polloi on Park Avenue… Football Hall-of-Famer Mike Ditka enjoys his summer vacation of golf, cigars, and private jets… Newly minted dot.com billionaire Mark Cuban buys himself an NBA basketball team…Deeply focused long-form narrative journalism from the writer who has been called "the Beat poet of American journalism- that rare reporter who can make literature out of shabby reality."

In Running With Ghosts, author Matt Tullis reminds us that surviving childhood cancer can be a challenge as formidable as fighting for your life—and more enduring. The eldest of three sons born to a trucker and an office-worker, who lived in the idyllic village of Apple Creek, Ohio, Tullis was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at age 15. In short order, the sports-mad teenager found himself on the cancer ward of Akron Children’s Hospital. One of the lucky ones, he walked out and kept on going.Years later, as a journalist and college professor, Tullis began to wonder about all the friends and caregivers he’d left behind on 4-North. As his curiosity intensified, he decided to seek them out. Running With Ghosts is about friendship, loss, triumph, and closure: one man’s effort to understand more fully a life shaped by a random mutation in the code of his DNA.Matt Tullis is an assistant professor of digital journalism and English at Fairfield University. He is the host and producer of Gangrey: The Podcast and is an associate editor for  River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative . He has an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and has been noted in The Best American Sports Writing  three times, and The Best American Essays  once. He lives with his wife and two children in Newtown, Connecticut.

The Stories We Tell celebrates the work of twenty women who have made major contributions to the canon of American magazine writing.While each has her own style, the women in these pages share the attributes of all good writers: meticulous research and reporting, attention to detail, a talent for choosing the perfect word. Above all, they are astute observers and sticklers for accuracy. Over the years, they have been both prolific and versatile, writing about a wide range of topics, including Joan Didion’s landmark story about a suburban California woman convicted of burning her husband to death in their family Volkswagen, Susan Orlean’s profile of a female bullfighter, Lillian Ross’s stylish Talk of the Town pieces, Janet Malcolm’s profile of the brilliant young pianist Yuja Wang, Gloria Steinem’s memorable piece about Jackie Kennedy after the death of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, and Robin Marantz Henig’s poignant account of the determination of one Alzheimer’s victim to end her life on her own terms.Stories by: Madeleine Blais, E. Jean Carroll, Joan Didion, Melissa Fay Greene, Lis Harris, Robin Marantz Henig, Gerri Hirshey, Elizabeth Kaye, Jeanne Marie Laskas, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Jill Lepore, Suzannah Lessard, Janet Malcolm, Susan Orlean, Lillian Ross, Susan Sheehan, Gloria Steinem, Mimi Swartz, Joyce Wadler, Isabel Wilkerson. The Stories We Tell is part of The Sager Group’s  Women in Journalism series, which honors the contributions women have made (and continue to make) to the evolution of graceful literary reportage  in America and around the world.“What a treasure trove! The fact that these stories are all written by women makes this book even more intriguing. How wonderful to be part of this vibrant and beautiful anthology.”–Susan Orlean, author of eight books, including The Orchid Thief. “This is the collection I wish I’d had when I was starting out as a writer. Back then, non-fiction was the purview of men; here’s an unequivocal affirmation that it no longer is.”–Elizabeth Kaye, author of six books, including Lifeboat No. 8. 

"In Stoned Again, Mike Sager refers to himself as a "drugs correspondent," but that's legitimately humble smoke that belies what's really going on here. While there's plenty of weed, heroin, ‘shrooms, and crack (not to mention plenty of Ricky James, bitch) in these pages, what is most evident on every page is the remarkable reporting, empathy, craftsmanship, and storytelling that have rightly placed Mike Sager among the journalistic legends of our time." --Maximillian Potter, author, Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World’s Greatest Wine From the brutal days and nights of life inside a crack gang in Los Angeles, to the artistic miseries of young heroin addicts on the ultra-hip lower east side of New York; from the Sonoran desert where Carlos Castaneda made his earliest shamanic discoveries, to the cell at Folsom Prison where the author first encountered the King of Funk, Rick James, to the modest headquarters of the Church of Realized Fantasies, where the Pope of Pot presided over the first highly organized marijuana delivery service, Stoned Again: The High Times and Strange Life of a Drugs Reporter takes you to places you didn’t necessarily want to go on your own. But with Sager as your guide, you can’t wait to head to the next destination. Sager has been called “the Beat poet of American journalism, that rare reporter who can make literature out of shabby reality.” Nowhere is that skill more in evidence than when he writes about the seamier sides of life. Kirkus Reviews called him “Virgil in the modern American inferno.” "Mike Sager is a journalistic icon and a literary force. A whole generation of writers has been shaped and guided by his work. This is a seminal collection by a master of the form." --Wil S. Hylton, author, Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II