Billie Holiday

Bailey Bender doesn't think of herself as a failure, more like a case of arrested success. She's fled an enviable career as a hot-shot investigative reporter, an admirable marriage, and a hectic, New York City life. Now she's living a quiet, simple existence on the wrong side of the social divide in the swanky Hamptons, working in a bookstore, and trying to figure out why she walked away. She knows the answer has something to do with the baby she gave up for adoption years ago. That's why she's begun to search for her child. She never dreams her quest will be related to a nineteen-year-old girl's tragic death at the seaside house of one of the summer celebrities, or to the charismatic twenty-something Charlie Prinze, who is charged with manslaughter in the case.

In a memoir that is as poignant, lyrical, and dramatic as her legendary performances, Billie Holiday tells her own story. She recalls a turbulent adolescence in Harlem during the 1920s, the excitement of working in New York City's famous jazz clubs with the musicians who brought jazz to the forefront of American culture, and her own dazzling rise to the top. The darker side of the Holiday legend is here too: the men who exploited her, the racial prejudice she encountered, and her harrowing struggle with heroin addiction. "Little in the striking opening of Lady Sings the Blues is factual, ... And no one who knew her can imagine Billie Holiday, even young, scrubbing steps - a favorite part of her myth of herself. Lady Sings the Blues is a faithful rendition of that myth. ..." Phyllis Rose in The Norton Book of Women's Lives

Storybook: A selection of timeless jazz dream songs that will lull babies into a sweet, blissful sleep. Lyrics and brief explanatory notes with whimsical, dream-like illustrations accompany each featured song. CD: Twelve popular standards from the gold age of jazz recorded by singing legends Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan and Chet Baker, amongst others.