“A close look at how show business power corrupts . . . The dishiest read of the year.” – Janet Maslin, “Ten Favorite Books of the Year,” New York Times “Here’s Johnny!” Probably everyone in America knows the phrase, whether they watched every episode of The Tonight Show or none because they had to go to bed early on school nights. From 1962 to 1992, Johnny Carson and his Tonight Show dominated the American consciousness. Henry Bushkin was Carson’s best friend and lawyer during that period, and his book is a tautly rendered and remarkably nuanced portrait of Carson, revealing not only how he truly was, but why. Bushkin explains why Carson, a voracious (and very talented) womanizer, felt he always had to be married; why he couldn’t visit his son in the hospital and wouldn’t attend his mother’s funeral; and much more. Johnny Carson is by turns shocking, poignant, and uproarious — written with a novelist’s eye for detail, a screenwriter’s ear for dialogue, and a knack for comic timing that Carson himself would relish. “A fascinating book about a complex man.” — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Like The Tonight Show, the book has many a merry moment . . . [Johnny Carson] was also one of a kind, and is missed. This book brings a bit of him back.” — St. Louis Post-DispatchA People magazine Top Ten Book of the Year

A gripping look at the life of the seventeenth-century sea captain and the never-before-told story of his hunt for the ruthless pirate Robert Culliford.“A richly detailed nautical thriller . . . combines exciting escapism with thought-provoking history.” —James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace and Body of SecretsA Time Magazine Best Book of the YearCaptain Kidd has gone down in history as America’s most ruthless buccaneer, fabulously rich, burying treasure up and down the eastern seaboard. But it turns out that most everyone, from novelists to scholars, has the story all wrong. Captain Kidd was no career cutthroat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates in the 1690s. His three-year odyssey aboard the aptly named Adventure Galley would pit him against arrogant Royal Navy commanders, jealous East India Company captains, storms, starvation, angry natives, and above all, flesh-and-blood pirates. Captain Kidd himself facing a long-forgotten rogue by the name of Robert Culliford, who lured Kidd’s crew to mutiny not once, but twice.Through painstaking research, author Richard Zacks has pieced together the never-before-told story of Kidd versus Culliford, of pirate hunter versus pirate, as they fought each other in an unscripted duel across the oceans of the world. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter delivers something rare: an authentic pirate story for grown-ups.“Zacks’s detective work here is thoroughly convincing. In addition, he sets the suspenseful tale of Kidd’s downfall within its larger historical context, in a manner reminiscent, at times, of Defoe, vividly illustrating the brutalities of life on a seagoing vessel and the chaos of urban society at the end of the seventeenth century.” —The New Yorker“Entertaining, richly detailed and authoritatively narrated, Zacks’s account of the life of legendary seaman William Kidd delivers a first-rate story. . . . The book is cogent and replete with supporting evidence without the heavy-handed feel of some scholarly work. What really sets the book apart is Zacks’s gift as researcher and storyteller. . . .  Zacks's book is a treasure, indeed.” —Publishers Weekly

Philosophy in Greece is not dead. It is alive and well through the musings of writer and thinker, Peter Barber. Peter is the author of the bestselling “Parthenon” series and his home is mostly on a sleepy Greek island. He is proud to share his musings between drafting his books.Peter is married to Alex, a fiery, loving, unpredictable Greek. It is a marriage made in comedy heaven. Join him for a year of observations and philosophy from a Greek village. Read on and smile.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved memoir of self-discovery set against the spectacular Tuscan countryside that inspired the major motion picture starring Diane Lane—now in a twentieth-anniversary edition featuring a new afterword “This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy, loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food, would make a perfect gift for a loved one. But it’s so delicious, read it first yourself.”—USA Today For more Frances Mayes, including a tour of her now iconic Cortona home, Bramasole, watch PBS’s Dream of Italy: Tuscan Sun Special!   More than twenty years ago, Frances Mayes—widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer—introduced readers to a wondrous new world when she bought and restored an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole. Under the Tuscan Sun inspired generations to embark on their own journeys—whether that be flying to a foreign country in search of themselves, savoring one of the book’s dozens of delicious seasonal recipes, or simply being transported by Mayes’s signature evocative, sensory language. Now with a new afterword from Frances Mayes, the twentieth-anniversary edition of Under the Tuscan Sun revisits the book’s most popular characters.