Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs. He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid the poetry, danger, and darkness that fueled his imagination, leading up to the moment he refers to as "The Big Bang": seeing Elvis Presley's debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. He vividly recounts his...

A biography of Kate Walker, one of the first women on the Eastern seaboard to be put in charge of an offshore lighthouse. When Kate Kaird immigrated with her young son Jacob from Germany to America in 1882, she couldn't have predicted the surprising turn her life would take. She soon met and married John Walker, keeper of the Sandy Hook Lighthouse. They moved to Robbins Reef Lighthouse in New York Harbor in 1885 and she became assistant keeper. At...

"Born into poverty in southern New Jersey and raised in a commune of single mothers, Mary Anna King watched her mother give away one of her newborn sisters every year to another family. All told, there were seven children: Mary, her older brother, and five phantom sisters. Then one day, Mary was sent away, too. Living in Oklahoma with her maternal grandfather, Mary gets a new name and a new life. But she's haunted by the past: by the baby girls she's...

The controversial former governor and presidential candidate traces his rise to power through the bare-knuckle politics of New Jersey, describes his long friendship with Donald Trump, and shares insights into the current administration.

"The riveting story of a mother who is separated from her newborn son and husband when committed to an involuntary psychiatric ward in New Jersey after a harrowing bout of postpartum psychosis"--

For more than 40 years, Richard "Ice Man" Kuklinski was a mob hit man, carrying out contracts for underworld figures such as Sammy "The Bull" Gravano and John Gotti...and yet his own family never suspected anything about his life as a contract killer.

"Can a single night define a man's life? From the summer of 1943 to early 1945, John Basilone was one of the most famous and admired people in America. As the first enlisted man to be awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II, for extraordinary bravery under fire at Guadalcanal, he toured the nation with movie stars, shared podiums with mayors and governors, shook the hands of thousands of citizens, and was even rumored to have made a romantic connection...

"It was the signature attraction of Atlantic City's Steel Pier from the 1930s to the 1970s, the golden age of "America's Favorite Playground"--Doc Carver's High Diving Horses. Four times a day, seven days a week, a trained horse wearing only a harness ran up a ramp; a diving girl jumped on its back, and both sailed forty feet through the air, plunging into a ten foot deep tank of water. Decades later, after cries of animal abuse, and changing times,...

"It's 1980. Ronald Reagan has been elected president, John Lennon has been shot, and a little girl in New Jersey has been hauled off to English classes. Her teachers and parents and tias are expecting her to become white--like the Italians. This is the opening to A cup of water under my bed, the memoir of one Colombian-Cuban daughter's rebellions and negotiations with the women who raised her and the world that wanted to fit her into a cubbyhole....