New Releases by Joe McGinniss

Nick and Phoebe Maguire, a Southern California couple seeking a new start after a devastating loss, find themselves confronted by the economic recession and the consequences of a desperate plan to reclaim their middle-class status.

At thirty-nine, Nancy Kissel had it all: glamour, wealth and the royal lifestyle of the expatriate wife. Not to mention three young children and what a friend described as "the best marriage in the universe" to Robert Kissel, a hugely successful investment banker. But that marriage ended abruptly one November night in 2003 in the bedroom of their luxury apartment high above Hong Kong''s glittering Victoria Harbour. Hong Kong prosecutors, who charged Nancy with murder, said she wanted to inherit Robert''s millions and start a new life with her lover. She said she''d killed her husband in self-defence while fighting for her life against a brutal, cocaine-addicted husband. Her trial in 2005 captured attention worldwide, and less than a year after the verdict Rob''s brother Andrew, a real estate tycoon facing prison for fraud and embezzlement was also found dead - tied up and stabbed in the basement of his multi-million dollar home by person or persons unknown. Never Enough is the harrowing true story of Robert and Andrew Kissel, who wanted to own the world but instead wound up murdered half a world apart; and of Nancy Kissel, a riddle wrapped inside an enigma, for whom having it all might not have been enough.

The sordid, #1 New York Times bestselling true crime story of adultery, addiction, gambling debt, and murder in a privileged suburban town—from author and journalist Joe McGinniss. The Marshalls were the model family of Tom’s River, New Jersey, living the American dream and seemingly in possession of all that money could buy. Rob Marshall, a successful insurance broker, was the big breadwinner, king of the country club set. Maria Marshall was his stunningly beautiful wife and the perfect mom to their three great kids. Then one night while the couple drove home from Atlantic City, Rob, his head bloodied, reported Maria had been brutally slain. Sympathy poured in—until disquieting facts began to surface…and the true story of adultery, gambling, drugs and murder tore the mask off Rob Marshall and the blinders off the town that thought he could do no wrong.

The electrifying true crime story of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, the handsome, Princeton-educated physician convicted of savagely slaying his young pregnant wife and two small children—murders he vehemently denies committing... Bestselling author Joe McGinniss chronicles every aspect of this horrifying and intricate crime and probes the life and psyche of the magnetic, all-American Jeffrey MacDonald—a golden boy who seemed destined to have it all. The result is a penetration to the heart of darkness that enshrouded one of the most complex criminal cases ever to capture the attention of the American public. It is a haunting, stunningly suspenseful work that no reader will be able to forget. Includes photographs and a Special Epilogue by the author OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD

From the New York Times bestselling author of Fatal Vision comes a shocking true account of murder, family secrets, and final justice now available for the first time as an e-book... One hot summer night in 1988, Bonnie Von Stein''s second husband was murdered in their bed, Bonnie herself stabbed, beaten, and left for dead beside him. It looked like a brutal but tragically typical case: Von Stein was newly wealthy, and Bonnie''s troubled son Chris, seemed like the obvious suspect. But Chris turned out to have an air-tight alibi and new leads suggested the crime could be much more complex. The trail led to Chris’s two strange new friends from college and a real-life enactment of a bizarre Dungeons and Dragons fantasy adventure, and it implicated Bonnie''s teenage daughter as well. In Cruel Doubt, Joe McGinniss probes the dark heart of family life and small-town North Carolina society to uncover a fascinating and terrifying story that is at once a chilling murder mystery, a tense courtroom drama, and a heartbreaking account of a mother forced to doubt her own children.

After three years of research, McGinniss presents his already controversial and much anticipated investigative chronicle of Sarah Palin as an individual, politician, and cultural phenomenon.

"The big horse," in racing vernacular, is the animal that brings fame and fortune to a stable. He''s the heavyweight champion, the All-American quarterback, the four-legged Michael Jordan of the barn. Seabiscuit was once Tom Smith''s "big horse." A generation ago, Secretariat was Lucien Lauren''s. In 2003, Funny Cide was Barclay Tagg''s. In sixty years as a trainer, P. G. Johnson had never had one -- until Volponi. P. G. Johnson was a blue-collar wizard, a hardscrabble tough guy who had come east from Chicago, determined to make his mark on New York. And he did. He became leading trainer at all three New York tracks -- Saratoga, Belmont, and Aqueduct -- as well as at Florida''s Tropical Park. And he did it without ever winning a Triple Crown or Breeders'' Cup event, or having "the big horse." "I never knew how to kiss rich people''s asses, and I got too old to learn. If no owner was going to give me a big horse, I figured I''d have to find one myself," he said. He did that, in his seventies, buying a mare for $8,000, breeding her to a $20,000 stallion, and in 1998 producing Volponi, the horse that would change his life. In October 2002, weakened by surgery and radiation treatment for cancer, P. G. watched Volponi -- the longest shot in the field at 43 to 1 -- bring home more than $2 million by winning the Breeders'' Cup Classic, the richest race in America. The following summer at Saratoga, McGinniss -- journalist, investigative reporter, and horse racing obsessive -- began showing up, more Tuesdays with Morrie than Guys and Dolls, at P. G.''s barn in the predawn hours to listen to the inside racing stories and lore P. G. had gathered. McGinniss came to appreciate that Johnson was not only a stellar horseman but an American original whose wit and wisdom carried far beyond the confines of the racetrack. As for Volponi, the big horse had given P. G. the perfect Disney ending with the Breeders'' Cup victory, and, indeed, Disney soon bought film rights to P. G.''s life story. "He''ll be even better next year," P. G. had said, but by the time McGinniss got to Saratoga, Volponi had not won a race in nine months. His faith undiminished, P. G. continued to race Volponi against the best, at Saratoga and beyond, until in the end it came down to the 2003 Breeders'' Cup Classic in Santa Anita, a race only one horse in history had ever won twice. As fires burned in the Southern California hills, Volponi -- with Funny Cide''s jockey, Jose Santos, in the saddle -- ran the last race of his life. This book is about what happened that day, about what came after, and about much of what had come before. It''s the most exciting, rewarding, and heartwarming story about the world of horse racing that you''ll ever read, by one of America''s finest writers, at the top of his form.

“A gripping literary thriller and an auspicious debut” set against the surreal excess of Las Vegas from the author of Carousel Court (George Pelecanos, author and award-winning writer/producer of The Wire). After attending college in New York, Chase returns to Vegas and is drawn into the lucrative but dangerous world of a teenage call-girl service with his childhood friend Michele, a beautiful Salvadoran immigrant with whom he shares a tragic past. Over the course of one extraordinary summer, they will confront the violence and emptiness at the heart of the city and their generation. At once stark and electrically atmospheric, horrifying and hopeful, The Delivery Man is an ambitious literary novel as well as a fast and absorbing page-turner—and a powerful indictment of a society in which personal responsibility has been abandoned, lust is increasingly mistaken for love, and innocence is an anachronism. “A dead-of-night story surehandedly told in a pared-down, teeth-bared style reminiscent of Joan Didion.” —Janet Fitch, New York Times–bestselling author of White Oleander “[A] brisk, bleak debut novel . . . offers unflinching glimpses at mores in free fall . . . searing . . . memorable . . . not for the faint of heart.” —The New York Times Book Review “McGinniss offers a fresh take on the seamy side of Vegas by focusing on the wasted lives of burned-out teens hooked on drugs and money.” —USA Today “It’s sex, drugs, and a slew of lost souls . . . engrossing . . . Could The Delivery Man be this decade’s Less Than Zero?” —Marie Claire “Grim, convincing, and compelling . . . The Delivery Man really delivers.” —The Washington Post

Master storyteller Joe McGinniss travels to Italy to cover the unlikely success of a ragtag minor league soccer team--and delivers a brilliant and utterly unforgettable story of life in an off-the-beaten-track Italian village. When Joe McGinniss sets out for the remote Italian village of Castel di Sangro one summer, he merely intends to spend a season with the village''s soccer team, which only weeks before had, miraculously, reached the second-highest-ranking professional league in the land. But soon he finds himself embroiled with an absurd yet irresistible cast of characters, including the team''s owner, described by the New York Times as "straight out of a Mario Puzo novel," and coach Osvaldo Jaconi, whose only English word is the one he uses to describe himself: "bulldozer." As the riotous, edge-of-your-seat season unfolds, McGinniss develops a deepening bond with the team, their village and its people, and their country. Traveling with the miracle team, from the isolated mountain region where Castel di Sangro is located to gritty towns as well as grand cities, McGinniss introduces us to an Italy that no tourist guidebook has ever described, and comes away with a "sad, funny, desolating, and inspiring story--everything, in fact, a story should be" (Los Angeles Times).

" ... presents a portrait of a man at war with himself, doomed to live in the giant shadow of his brothers, longing to escape, yet afraid to try"--Page 4 of cover

From a drunken housewife who barely escapes being caught in adultery to the author''s soul-stirring encounter with one of the earth''s last scenes of natural splendor, Going to Extremes succeeds in encompassing the surreal qualities and mind-bending contradictions of Alaska today. What Joe McGinniss found on his extraordinary odyssey was a world of stark contrasts. He introduces us to the people-from pot-smoking high-school principals to TV-watching Eskimos-and their problems: rampant drinking, divorce, human disintegration, and the oil-inspired greed and waste. And he recaptures both the power and the beauty of a land still untamed and undefiled, and the endurance of a spirit of independence and adventure that finds Alaska its natural home. A deeply moving, personal book, in turns wry, witty, cutting and bedazzling, Going to Extremes is, quite simply, a thoroughly rewarding experience.