Joyce Carol Oates on James Frey and Norman Mailer
Lili Anolik & James Frey Discuss Didion & Babitz
Author Talk with Lili Anolik & James Frey Elm Street Books
July 22 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Join us Tuesday, July 22nd at 6:00 PM for an author talk with Lili Anolik, here to share her book Didion & Babitz. Joining her in conversation will be local author, James Frey.
Ticket purchase required and includes a copy of Didion & Babitz. Copies of Next to Heaven by James Frey will also be available for purchase.
About the Book:
Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan? —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972
Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin, and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside, a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies and centered on a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood.
Least Favorites
James Frey
The infamous author, who is back with a new book, shares his least favorite things—excluding Oprah
James Frey knows what it is like to have been up and down and over and out. Ever since Oprah Winfrey publicly shamed him for fabricating parts of his 2003 memoir, A Million Little Pieces, he’s adopted a Sinatra-esque “That’s Life” attitude. He’s rolled with the punches of cancel culture—but 20 years later, he’s punching back. His new novel, Next to Heaven, centers on a swingers’ party and a murder. It’s sexy, funny, and unafraid to voice taboos—much like Frey’s early work. (Except, this time, there’s no need to call in a fact-checker.) To celebrate its release, the author shares his least favorite things. —Carolina de Armas
Money Addicts
Lalo Schifrin Gone
Lalo Schifrin, Acclaimed Composer of ‘Mission: Impossible’ and ‘Mannix’ Themes, Dies at 93
The Argentine native blended jazz and classical music, earned six Oscar noms and four Grammys and inspired a martial-arts legend.
BY MIKE BARNES
Lalo Schifrin, the six-time Oscar-nominated composer, pianist and conductor renowned for his electric, jazz-infused themes and music for Mission: Impossible, Mannix, Starsky & Hutch and Bullitt, died Thursday. He was 93.
Schifrin, who received an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards in November 2018, died of pneumonia at a hospital in Los Angeles, his son Ryan Schifrin told The Hollywood Reporter. He lived for the past few decades in a Beverly Hills home once owned by Groucho Marx.
A native of Argentina whose father was the Buenos Aires Philharmonic concert master for more than three decades, Schifrin was trained in the world of classical music before being hooked on American jazz when he was a teenager.
Time Sensitive James Frey (and other interviews)
from Time Sensitive with Spencer Bailey
James Frey on Designing Your Life to Bring Joy
In 2003, when the author James Frey published his first book, A Million Little Pieces—a gut-punch account of his experience with addiction and rehab—nobody could have expected what would come next. Thanks to an Oprah Book Club endorsement, A Million Little Pieces was instantly catapulted to bestseller status, but soon blew up in scandal after Frey admitted to having falsified certain portions of the book, which had been marketed as a memoir. The drama that ensued sparked a media controversy—one that now, around 20 years later, feels petty and misplaced, especially in the context of today’s cancel-culture climate. More than 10 million copies of A Million Little Pieces have sold since, and Frey is still at it, writing, publishing, and pushing the boundaries of his art. His latest novel, Next to Heaven, is a rollicking, raunchy, absurd-yet-not satire about money, murder, and the all-too-human desires for power, pleasure, and greed.
On the episode—our Season 11 finale, in which Frey sat lotus for the entire duration—he reflects on the A Million Little Pieces saga; his long-term study of Taoism; writing as a gateway to vulnerability; and why love, for him, is the greatest drug there is.
Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.
[ click to listen at Time Sensitve ]
OTHER INTERVIEWS
BBC Front with Tom Sutcliffe
Totally Booked With Zibby
Writer’s Ink from BookTrib
Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books
Mulder Questions Frey
Winged Victory of Samothrace
JAMES FREY LETS IT RIP
Inside the world of the notorious “A Million Little Pieces” author, who’s back in the spotlight with a pulpy new murder mystery.
Written by: Paul Thompson
The thing about working for magazines is you end up in lots of cars with men you’ve just met. And so by the time we pull up to the monolithic black house at the end of a long driveway in New Canaan, Connecticut, about an hour from our departure point in New York, the three of us—photographer Adam Powell; his assistant for the day, a contemplative musician whose high school girlfriend had once grown evangelical about this story’s subject; and myself—have already developed not only a plan for the shoot and interview but a shared set of crypticisms to track its progress. This is work. Still, when we step out of the car, we’re transfixed. Alone in the otherwise empty front lawn sits a replica of one of the most recognizable statues in the Western canon: Winged Victory of Samothrace, the goddess Niké missing her head and arms. We stare; we riff; we grow quiet again. Without us noticing, the house’s owner approaches from behind. “The real one is in the Louvre,” he says.
James Frey has lived in New Canaan for more than a decade, and in this house for about half that time, since the split from his wife of 20 years. The black exterior is in contrast with the floor-to-ceiling white inside. When I comment on the paint’s unusual texture (following Frey’s lead, I had removed my shoes and socks during our trek through the tall grass toward the pond in his backyard), he explains that this is what they use on the tops of skyscrapers. He believes it’s the only material that adequately reflects the sunlight that pours in through giant windows. His collection of art is expensive, abundant, indisputably cohesive. Almost as soon as we’ve finished discussing the real Samothrace’s prime placement in Paris—we are, ultimately, four people who can picture the Louvre—Frey is posing for photos in the nook of his living room where he writes, in the weeds outside his bedroom window, on rocks that jut from a creek near a friendly bobcat’s lair, face stoic, one or both of his middle fingers raised.This is early May. Almost exactly 22 years prior, Frey’s first book, A Million Little Pieces, was published to mixed, sometimes tortured reviews but achieved, over the next two-and-a-half years, supernova commercial success. If Frey’s name sparks even the vaguest jolt of recognition, you also likely remember the controversy over the revelation that parts of Pieces had been exaggerated, or fabricated entirely. The book was marketed as a memoir, and Frey had defended it in public as such. Oprah at first lavished him with praise, then later brought him on her show to excoriate him.Since the scandal began in earnest in 2005, Frey, now 55, has given vanishingly few interviews—even when he published Katerina, his first full, literary novel in a decade, in 2018. But he’s evidently reconsidered this approach. In the leadup to the publication of Next To Heaven, his pulpy new murder mystery about an upper-crust town not unlike New Canaan, he’s hired a renowned publicist; when I visit him, he’s in the middle of the long process of sitting for a New York Times profile. At one point, he requests that we go off the record so he can explicate why, exactly, he’s opening himself to this media attention and scrutiny. But what he tells me when my recorder is off is virtually identical to something he says when it’s switched back on: “I want my title back.”
Hot and Sweaty
The Hot and Sweaty Book Launch for James Frey
by DREAM BABY PRESS AND MATT STARR
Last Tuesday we hosted the book launch for James Frey’s new book Next To Heaven published by Authors Equity at Harper’s Gallery in NYC. I’ve been feeling sad recently so it was nice to read some new poems aloud, be around friends, hear some good stories and throw James a big book launch.
Gina Gershon, Carole Radziwill, Matt Starr (your trusted narrator), Lili Anolik, Annie Hamilton, Sarah Hoover, and Laura Desiree read before James came on at the end and closed the show. I’ll detail what each person read below.
The theme was love and sex.
Authors Equity NEXT TO HEAVEN
Let it rip.
On the release of Next to Heaven by James Frey
New Bethlehem is as beautiful and safe and perfect a town as exists in the United States, as beautiful and safe and perfect a town as exists anywhere in the world. But no beauty exists without flaws, however hidden. Absolute safety is but an illusion. No matter what we think or see or believe or feel, perfection isn’t real. And beneath the beauty and safety and perfection of New Bethlehem, there are secrets and there are lies, and there is sadness and there is rage, there is failure and there is desperation, betrayal and heartbreak, hate and violence.
And once or twice in a century, there is murder.
About a year ago, I was boarding a flight from LA to New York, bracing for six hours in a middle seat at the back of the plane. My phone pinged with a text flagging a priority submission. I downloaded, put in earphones to tune out seatmates, and settled in for the ride. And what a ride it’s been.
I had last encountered
James Frey a few decades earlier when I was the sales director for the imprint publishing his debut—a spectacular piece of writing that did spectacularly well until it became spectacularly controversial. Many people got very, very angry at the author.
I wasn’t one of them. To me, the whole thing seemed tragic and operatically fraught. Looking back on it now, compared to so many other literary controversies, this one makes 2003 feel, to me, like the Victorian age—long ago and far away in its earnest morality.
By the time I got off that plane in New York last spring, I knew I wanted to publish James’ new book.
Love & Hate
JAMES FREY’S LOVE/HATE LIST
40 Things James Frey Loves and Hates
Dream Baby Press asked James Frey for a list of 20 things he loves and 20 things he hates.
James Frey was called America’s Most Notorious Author by Time Magazine and a Literary Outlaw by The New York Times. He has written multiple global bestsellers, including A Million Little Pieces, Bright Shiny Morning, and The Final Testament of the Holy Bible. His books have sold more than thirty million copies, and his work has been published in forty-two languages. He lives in a small town in Connecticut.
His new book NEXT TO HEAVEN is out today. Get your copy now and wherever books are sold.
Follow James Frey on Instagram.
Follow Dream Baby Press on Instagram.
THINGS JAMES FREY LOVES:
- A passionate make out, heavy lips, heavy tongue, high school style.
- Cold sweet coffee
- A strong menthol cigarette, once or twice a month
- The joyful nothingness of a long meditation
- Warm swimming pools…
THINGS JAMES FREY HATES:
- Close talkers
- Spittle
- Drunk people
- Bills
- Slow drivers in the fast lane…
Peace in New Canaan
How James Frey Channeled Danielle Steel in Next to Heaven
The writer has a new novel out, and this time, the drama—set among Connecticut’s elite—is all on the page.
James Frey has found peace in New Canaan, Connecticut. In the decades since his memoir of rehabilitation A Million Little Pieces became the center of controversy in the publishing world—it initially found a place in Oprah’s book club before a number of exaggerations and falsehoods were exposed—he’s found a sanctuary away from the limelight.
When we speak, Frey has just returned from a college roadtrip with his son. It’s clear that while family time and a life away from the spotlight are determining factors in his transformation, it’s his home of more than a decade that seems most crucial to his calm attitude, a transformation from the early, irascible, years of his success. Looking out of the picture window in his living room in early April, he says, “It’s just the most beautiful place. It’s majestic.” It’s surprising then, that such an idyllic setting inspired Next to Heaven, his new tale of lies and deceit set among Connecticut’s one percent.
The novel centers on four couples in the town of New Bethlehem, a town which he describes as a “version” of New Canaan. Frey is quick to note, however, that it is his town, “not his neighbors,” that is mirrored in the book. The denizens of New Bethlehem, some new, others very old, shop at the same expensive supermarkets, send their children to the same prestigious school, and play tennis at the same exclusive country club. They also share secrets—financial turmoil, affairs, and drug problems—that threaten to ruin their artfully cultivated image of perfection.
NEXT TO HEAVEN Book Tour Dates
T&C: Best Reads of Summer 2025 w/ NEXT TO HEAVEN
The 46 Must-Read Books of Summer 2025
Buzzy novels, compulsively readable memoirs, and a few guilty pleasures.
BY DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH, EMILY BURACK AND ADAM RATHE
Next To Heaven
It’s as tale as old as time: dark secrets lurk behind artfully cultivated hedge roses. In James Frey’s latest novel, Next to Heaven, four couples in the wealthy enclave of New Bethlehem, Conn. (a fictionalized New Haven) find their lives upended after a swinging shindig held by local queen bees Devon McCallister and Belle Hedges Moore goes awry. As mysteries unfold, romances begin and end, and fortunes are made and lost, there’s only one possible conclusion: someone has been pulling the strings the whole time.
NEXT TO HEAVEN BOOK LAUNCH
James Frey’s NEXT TO HEAVEN Book Launch hosted by Dream Baby Press
Harper’s Gallery | 512 W 22nd Street, join Dream Baby and James Frey for the Next to Heaven launch party.
Date and time
Tuesday, June 17 · 7 – 9pm EDT
WSJ: Sizzling misdeeds
An Infamous Author Wrote a Novel About His Town. What Do the Neighbors Think?
Best known for the memoir ‘A Million Little Pieces’ and the ensuing controversy, James Frey now has a sizzling beach read about the misdeeds of the rich
James Frey’s book group was meeting to discuss the new novel by the notorious author James Frey.
Though he has written six books, Frey is best known for “A Million Little Pieces,” the 2003 bestseller about his drug-and-alcohol addiction. That title, marketed as a memoir, turned Frey into a pariah when it was revealed he falsified or exaggerated parts of his story. Oprah scolded him on TV. His agent dumped him.
Now he’s releasing a sizzling gossipfest about the misdeeds of the rich called “Next to Heaven,” which revolves around an elite swingers party in a town based on New Canaan, Conn., the moneyed enclave where the author lives. Against that backdrop, the book can seem like reality disguised as fiction, as opposed to the fiction disguised as reality that led to his literary scandal two decades ago.
“If I write a book that is published as nonfiction, everybody tears it apart trying to figure out what in it is not true,” the author, 55, said. “If I write a book that’s fiction, everybody tears it apart trying to figure out what is true.”
The New York Times (then and now)
Oprah Shamed Him. He’s Back Anyway.
Twenty years after “A Million Little Pieces” became a national scandal, James Frey is ready for a new audience.
By Sam Dolnick
James Frey was, for a time, one of the most famous nonfiction writers in America. And then someone checked the facts.
In 2005, Oprah Winfrey selected his memoir “A Million Little Pieces” for her book club, only to learn soon after that he had fabricated parts of his story about drug addiction and his time in rehab. She shamed Frey on national TV for betraying the American public, and his publisher offered refunds. He was branded a villain, a fraud — and became perhaps the first canceled man this century.
“Did I lie? Yup,” he told me. “Did I also write a book that tore people to shreds? Yeah.”
Today, lies are told with gusto, while facts are distorted and erased at the speed of tapping thumbs. Just scroll on X for a bit, and the Frey affair might look like a horse and buggy that was ticketed for trotting too fast.
As Frey sees it, the public has gotten increasingly comfortable with falsehoods, without getting fully comfortable with him. He finds it all a bit absurd. “I just sit in my castle and giggle,” he said.
VANITY FAIR: James Frey now and then.
James Frey Swears His New Book About Very Rich, Poorly Behaved People Isn’t Based on Anyone Real
Nearly 20 years post-Oprah debacle, the Million Little Piecesauthor talks to VF about his response to criticism, using ChatGPT, and his money-drenched sex-romp murder mystery, Next to Heaven.
BY KEZIAH WEIR
If James Frey’s road has been a rocky one, at least the bumps were diamonds. In the two decades since he got an Oprah dressing down when it turned out he’d fabricated parts of his mega-best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces, he founded and sold a booky content farm, dabbled as CEO of an esports company, and collaborated with Lena Waithe on the Queen & Slim story. Also in those years: the rise of autofiction, the death of truth, and a newly unslakable thirst for IP skewering (while sort of celebrating) the ultrarich.
Enter: Next to Heaven (Authors Equity), Frey’s first new book in six years, a Connecticut sex romp–cum–murder mystery with what he calls “big nods” to Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel, and Tom Wolfe. Accordingly, its characters would feel at home in the White Lotus extended universe: a cash-poor WASP art dealer, an aggro hedge funder, a Bitcoin-trading drug dealer who idolizes Eric Trump and Kanye West. That their physical descriptions read like a central-casting call sheet (the women: “tall, thin” or “thin, petite,” with “deep blue eyes” or “bright hazel eyes” or “big brown eyes like mudpies”) doesn’t really matter—and by the introduction of a “tall, buff, black-haired blue-eyed steaming hunk of Connecticut beefcake,” they ascend to something like camp.
The book, to which Frey sold TV rights before the actual manuscript, takes place in fictional New Bethlehem, which bears a striking resemblance to his current home of New Canaan. It has caused something of a stir among members of his social set. At a party, he says, one unwitting attendee whispered to his girlfriend (a countess and equine therapist) that they’d heard the novel was “all real.” He swears the characters aren’t based on actual people—although, of their art collections, “I’ve been in enough houses of hedge fund billionaires to know what they tend to buy.” (For other details he turned to ChatGPT, searching for “the most expensive scotch in the world, or most expensive silverware in the world.”)
Everybody wants a hug and a Pulitzer.
A Million Little Pieces Author James Frey Opens Up About Oprah Winfrey Controversy: ‘Brutal Hypocrisy’
In 2006 Winfrey called out the author when she learned that his memoir, which she chose for Oprah’s Book Club, was partly fabricated
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James Frey is speaking out about his infamous publishing controversy.
In an interview with The New York Times published on June 8, the author looked back on the publication of his 2003 book A Million Little Pieces. Originally marketed as a memoir, the book detailed the author’s experience with drug and alcohol addiction, as well as his subsequent rehabilitation. Oprah Winfrey chose the memoir for her book club in 2005, and it soon became a bestseller.
James Frey 805 Interview
Cancelling Winston
George Orwell estate accused of censorship after putting trigger warning at start of Nineteen Eighty-Four
By JADA BAS
George Orwell’s estate has been accused of censorship after a ‘trigger warning’ was added to his classic novel Nineteen Eighty Four.
The preface of the the 75th anniversary edition suggests Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith is ‘problematic’ and that readers may find his views on women ‘despicable’.
The introductory essay was written by US novelist Dolen Perkins-Valdez and critics claim it risks undermining the revolutionary novel’s warning against state control of thought.
Orwell’s dystopian hyperbolic future is set under an authoritarian regime, where citizens are punished by the ‘Thought Police’ for subversive thoughts.
It follows Winston Smith and a minor bureaucrat who secretly rebels against the regime with Julia, a fellow party member.
Astrocytes
from The Washington Post via MSN
Little-known cells might be key to human brain’s massive memory
by Erin Blakemore
A new model of memory — and a little-heralded type of brain cell — might explain why the human brain has such a huge storage capacity, researchers reported in the journal PNAS in May.
The study looks at astrocytes, star-shaped cells that interact with neurons in the brain.
The brain contains billions of astrocytes, and scientists have long known they play a part in cleaning up molecules within brain synapses, the junctions where neurons come together.
More recent research, though, suggests that astrocytes do more.
The new model suggests the astrocytes could also be used for computation, coordinating with neurons and connecting synapses in networks.
ESQUIRE Best Books of Summer – NEXT TO HEAVEN
The Best Books of Summer 2025
Recommendations from the people who knows books best: independent-bookstore owners.
Next To Heaven, by James Frey
… will be the novel on every beach towel this summer, all summer, everywhere. Because sex and murder, yes. And because Frey could always tell a great story.
Now 17% Off
$29 $24 AT AMAZON
$27 AT BOOKSHOP
$29 AT WALMART
Credit: Authors Equity
ispace moonbase
A private company wants to build a city on the moon. But it has to land a probe first
ispace will make its second attempt at an uncrewed moon landing Thursday.
A private space exploration company based in Japan, ispace, wants to see people living on the moon by 2040. They have plans to eventually build a city on the lunar surface that would house a thousand people and welcome thousands more for tourist visits.
But first, they need to land a probe on the Moon’s surface successfully. In April 2023, their first attempt fell short of that goal after they lost communication with their first lander during the mission’s final moments.
On Thursday at 3:17 p.m. ET, ispace will make its second attempt at an uncrewed moon landing with its lunar lander called Resilience.
NEXT TO HEAVEN – New Canaan Library w/ Gina Gershon
from Bedford and New Canaan Magazine
Author James Frey in Conversation with Gina Gershon
With biting wit and unflinching precision, James Frey takes readers on a satirical thrill ride through the dark heart of privilege in his latest novel, Next to Heaven. Fans of The White Lotus and Big Little Lies will be captivated by the twists and turns of a narrative that exposes the treachery behind the American Dream. Elm Street Books will be on site for book sales and signing.
Date: June 16
Time: 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Cost: Free
BUSTLE Most Anticipated 2025 Books – NEXT TO HEAVEN
Next to Heaven by James Frey
by Bustle Editors
Out June 17. Frey’s first adult novel in seven years follows four glamorous, miserable, and ultra-wealthy couples — a group whose glossy surfaces begin to crack when a swingers party ends in murder. With coke-fueled monologues, a surplus of extramarital sex scenes, and plenty of suburban ennui, Next to Heaven delivers a deliriously over-the-top portrait of decadence on the brink. — S.L.
Killing Death
‘Final Frontier In Medicine’ Unlocked? ‘Pausing’ Cell Death Could Slow Aging, Cancer, Brain Degeneration
Research led by Dr. Carina Kern, LinkGevity
LONDON — What if the secret to staying young wasn’t another costly cream or trendy supplement, but tamping down a messy kind of cell death that has flown under the radar? A new study argues that necrosis — the uncontrolled “bursting” of damaged cells — may be a major upstream driver of everything from cancer and heart attacks to kidney disease and even aging itself.
Your body constantly kills off old, damaged, or infected cells in a highly controlled process called apoptosis. Everything is carefully orchestrated to clear away cellular debris without damaging surrounding tissue.
Unlike this orderly process, necrosis is essentially cellular chaos: ruptured membranes spill enzymes, DNA fragments, and inflammatory signals onto nearby tissue. These spilled contents act like alarm bells that attract immune cells and trigger more inflammation.
Sheena & The Rockets
Dark Skies Tonight
These are the best stargazing sites in North America
These dark sky sanctuaries, reserves, parks, and trails invite you to immerse yourself in the wonders of our night skies. Here’s where to go.
By Amy Brecount White
Travelers are increasingly lifting their eyes to nighttime skies in search of impressive celestial phenomena and, perhaps, more. “Looking up at the night sky is sort of what makes us human,” says Ruskin Hartley, the executive director of DarkSky International, a nonprofit group based in Tucson, Arizona. “We have done it for millennia. Every single culture has told their first stories in the stars overhead, and they found meaning in the stars. Today, the vast majority of people are robbed of that.”
On a clear night last November, I spent over two hours in a dome atop nearly 7,000-foot-tall Kitt Peak, an hour outside of Tucson, peering through one of their 20-plus telescopes. The moonless night along with the high and dry climate enabled our guide to share bright and clear highlights, including the Andromeda galaxy, the ringed planet Saturn with several of its moons, and a globular cluster. Outside the dome, we simply marveled at the stunning clarity of our galaxy home, the Milky Way.
Deadlink
The sun is killing off SpaceX’s Starlink satellites
There have never been so many satellites orbiting Earth as there are today, thanks in part to the launch of mega constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink internet service – and now we are learning just how the sun’s activity can affect them
Eruptions from the sun are shortening the lives of satellites in Earth orbit, particularly large constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink – which could be both beneficial and a cause for concern.
The sun goes through an 11-year cycle of activity, peaking with a period known as solar maximum, which most recently occurred in late 2024. During these periods, increased eruptions from the sun can create geomagnetic storms that heat our planet’s atmosphere, causing it to swell outwards in size and increasing drag on satellites.