Celebrities Books

The author keeps you turning pages with an incredible life, as fast as the company she keeps. I enjoyed this read, the author's no nonsense delivery, the woman's perspective, and the story told straight and true. If there are embellishments, you wouldn't know it as it's told. An excellent memoir.

Having lived in Rochester all my life, I recognized a lot of the names that Georgia wrote about, even remember her as the Kodak Summer Girl.
Excellent read

I have recommended Georgia Durante's The Company She Keeps to many of my clients who are recovering from being sexually, physically, or psychologically abused. Ms. Durante's story, her courage, and her subsequent success in a field dominated by men serves as a wonderful source of encouragement and inspiration. It is the true story of a very remarkable person who had many things to overcome, including not being taken seriously because she is so physically beautiful. When you read this book, you learn her inner beauty and strength.

Larry M. Raskin, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist
Louisville, Kentucky

This is a brave book. I can't imagine going through some of the things the author went through and not have a heart attack from fear! My sister loved the book too!

When I was in my last year at school I used to pass a life-size cardboard cut-out of Georgia Durante every day. It's hard for a man to remember exactly what he thought and felt when he was a boy of seventeen, but I do recall two things very strongly. The first thing was Georgia Durante as an icon of perfect pulchritude. The second thing was Georgia Durante as a person of considerable depth. At his first sight of the photograph any viewer will find his gaze ranging over the subject, but before long he will be drawn to the subject's eyes. If I didn't know exactly what those eyes were saying in 1969, they spoke to me obliquely of a profound personality. While they were not in any way sad, they were certainly not frivolous. There is a powerful innocence about the photograph, and in spite of the subject's costume and pose there is nothing coquettish or come-hither about it. The subject appears to be neither taut nor relaxed. She holds herself with an innocent pertness, as if to say that she is what she is and she doesn't really care if people want her to be something else. In short, the photograph remains one of the most powerful icons of the last half-century.

Reading Georgia's book has helped me to articulate the person behind that icon. She writes clearly and intelligently. While posssessing what sounds like a near-perfect memory, she never descends into triviality or inconsequence. Her book is a good read, unputdownable and entrancing. A great deal of it is related to unhappiness, but Georgia is artist enough to paint the unhappiness in a decorous manner. Self-pity is simply not there. She could easily have gone for the gutter vote by describing certain things in unedifying detail. Instead, she paints these things deftly with a few brush-strokes. A case in point is her description of the very worst thing that ever happened to her.

I see Georgia's book as far more than a good read. I see it as a tract for our times. To some extent it is a sermon against male conceit. While the excesses of the feminazis variously disgust and amuse me, I'm forced to concede that throughout human history men have treated many innocent women (like Lucretia) with terrible wickedness. There is something in the unregenerate male bully which enjoys causing pain to a woman. People need to be made aware of how common such bullies are.

Innocent womanhood has a tremendous gravity which seems to attract some of the worst and most dangerous elements of the unregenerate male character. Georgia's book demonstrates this fact more clearly than any other book that I have ever read.

Shakespeare wrote 'The Rape of Lucrece' ( = Lucretia). The author of II Samuel 13 wrote the story of Tamar. Georgia Durante has written her own tale, and it is an epic in its own right. She belongs in the company of Lucretia and Tamar.

'The Company She Keeps' is not a book for women. It is a book for men and women, and perhaps especially for men. Let me amplify something which I've said already. Over the last fifty years we have seen in the West the almost complete feminization of the male. An Absalom-like obsession with personal appearance goes hand in hand with a regime of no exercise and weak self-indulgence. When I was growing up I looked forward to acquiring a workshop full of good quality tools, but many of today's adolescents aspire only to a set of car-keys and a comb. By contrast, against that general background of wilful unmanliness there stands a substantial number of young men who model themselves neither on the American eagle, nor on the Brtish bulldog, but on the peacock and the rooster. They strut around in a haze of self-love and self-importance. Before long they begin to express their phoney 'virility' in gangsterism, hard drinking, dangerous driving, and immorality. Georgia's book is in some ways a case study of this pitiable kind of man. To that degree it may be construed as a salutary warning to the youth of today.

But don't listen to me. Buy the book, and read her story for yourself. Georgia has not written a sermon: she has written a tale, and told it well.

Out of all the Nora Roberts books I have read, this is my absolute favorite one!!!

It's no secret that NR rules. I bought this book when it first came out. I was on a road trip with my parents. I read this book cover to cover 7 times in a week. I'd start finish restart over and over. Most of NR books are great. This one, Private Scandals, Carolina Moon, & Montana Sky are my favorite of her older stuff. She has a wonderful way of inviting her readers along on the adventures with her characters. Some may feel like the've been seen before but somehow I don't care. I love authors that command my attention, whose voice I hear everytime I read their work, Linda Howard, Sharon Sala, Susan Andersen, Ann B. Ross to name several.

This book was not what I expected at all, not your typical romantic suspense it follows the life of rockstar Brian McAvoy, his band Devastation from the 60's to present time (1990) through the eyes of Emma. At three Emma is recued from her abusive alcoholic mother and drawn into Brian's world with a step mother and a new found family in his band 'Devastation'.

However at age 6 a single botched kidnapping attempt rips the new found family apart leaving Emma a traumatised and battered and broken.

However life goes and the book follows the nightmares and the struggle of the band family and their personal lives in order living in the public eye, and the equally determined efforts of the detectives put on the case which spans 20 years.

Nora Roberts created a wonderful enrapturing surrogate family in the members of the band for Emma, colourful flawed characters with real issues came through, they all shone brightly and there was fascinating character development in all characters.

I particulary liked the story from the point of view of Emma, Nora successfully captured the essence of a maturing woman from the ages 3 to 25, her choices that paved her path through the years. A inside view of drug addicted rockstars was also pushed forward and the sacrifices that the family had to pay that came with their success.

I guessed the ending... but that's nothing new for me. It was an absolute find and I recommend everyone should read it. It was so vivid and real- I had to stop myself from actually looking it up to see if it was based on a real band. REad this book, you won't regret it.

This is by far one of the very best books I have ever read. Nora Roberts certainly shows her talents as a writer with the character of Emma McAvoy taking the reader through a life-long journey of ups and downs in the pop music world. This story takes place over a 20+ year span as we meet little Emma, not quite 3 years old about to be rescued from her drug and alcohol-dependent mother by a father she has never met. We watch Emma grow amidst the money and madness of a Beatle-like group, her father, Brian, the lead with the other members of the band, Stevie, P.M., and Johonno (each with their own set of issues) taking on the role of surrogate fathers. Emma dreams of living "her" life, minus the security and bodyguards, only to find that there are people out there willing to kill to keep her from remembering a deep, dark secret buried within her soul. People like Drew Latimer, only wanting to be close to Emma to get to her father, were many. She needed to find the life she deserved with a man who would love her for herself and not because she was Brian McAvoy's daughter. Michael Kesserling seems to be just that man, however, there are many problems and mysteries to be solved within Emma herself before she can begin to live the life she so fully deserves. Without revealing the plot, I can only say that "Public Secrets" is a book no one should miss. It is Nora in her early years (1990) and definitely at her best!

PUBLIC SECRETS is an intriguing look into the lives of a little girl who grows up in the world of rock and roll, a life that will shape her future.

Emma McAvoy was barely three when she met her father for the first time and her life was changed forever. Everything was perfect; she had a nice home and lots of people who truly seemed to care about her. Then everything changed when her baby brother was murdered in a botched kidnapping attempt. But after years of living with nightmares, things are finally looking up for her. She's now a successful photographer and is in love for the very first time. Yet once again, Fate deals her a huge blow when the man she marries shows his true colors. Not only is she running away from a disastrous marriage, but also being haunted once more by the memory of her brother's murder.

While this book follows the life of Emma from the time her father plucked her out of poverty, to her awkward and sheltered teenage years where she develops her first crush on Michael (the son of the detective investigating her brother's murder), to the time she carves out a career and falls in love with an abusive musician, there are also subplots featuring her father and the three band members whom Emma grew up with that add some twists and turns to the story. In some ways, it was almost like watching (in this case, reading) a soap opera unfold. Nora Roberts has done well in describing the lives of the characters, including their lifestyle and indulgences - from drugs, alcoholism, infidelity and greed. In some ways I found that the middle of the book was dragged out unnecessarily and wished that more focus were given on the romance between Emma and Michael, and less on the secondary characters. Yet at the same time, we are given such lurid details about them that I couldn't help turning the pages to see what happens next.

As for the mystery part, although it isn't hard to figure out the huge secret, the few twists and turns are enough to hold your interest. I just really would have liked to see more development on the romance between Emma and Michael. I had such high hopes from the time they first met when they were very young and their succeeding meetings really had me excited for both of them.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the others.