Julia Scheeres - Editor

Review fiction and nonfiction for the New York Times Book Review. (I have been doing this since 2006, but the Reedsy software won't allow me to change the year, for some reason.)

I've written two critically-acclaimed narrative nonfiction books and have worked with dozens of other writers on their own projects. Some have landed contracts with major publishers, some with indie presses, and yet others have self-published.

My speciality is story development - helping authors tell their stories in the most compelling way possible. This means nailing down theme, character and narrative arcs, creating tension, and writing in a clear and concise fashion.

Wrote stories on Internet culture, including an applauded series on child pornography and another on a chat room for folks wanting to commit suicide.

Reporter for the nation's largest daily paper, writing everything from features stories to breaking news pieces.

Reporter for Mexican daily, writing and reporting in Spanish on topics ranging from immigration to maquiladoras.

The Wild Oats Project: One Woman's Midlife Quest for Passion at Any Cost

Robin Rinaldi

What if for just one year you let desire call the shots?The project was simple: Robin Rinaldi, a successful magazine journalist, would move into a San Francisco apartment, join a dating site, and get laid. Never mind that she already owned a beautiful flat a few blocks away, that she was forty-four, or that she was married to a man she'd been in love with for eighteen years. What followed—a ye... read more

What if for just one year you let desire call the shots?The project was simple: Robin Rinaldi, a successful magazine journalist, would move into a San Francisco apartment, join a dating site, and get laid. Never mind that she already owned a beautiful flat a few blocks away, that she was forty-four, or that she was married to a man she'd been in love with for eighteen years. What followed—a ye... read more

Good Cop, Bad Daughter: Memoirs of an Unlikely Police Officer

Karen Lynch

Good Cop, Bad Daughter’s Karen Lynch was raised by a counter-culture tribe in summer of love Haight-Ashbury, where she was taught to despise “The Man.” But when the San Francisco Police Department was court ordered to hire women, she found herself compelled to prove to the world that women could cut it as cops, a betrayal that caused her police-loathing mother to brand her a Nazi. Lynch reflec... read more

Good Cop, Bad Daughter’s Karen Lynch was raised by a counter-culture tribe in summer of love Haight-Ashbury, where she was taught to despise “The Man.” But when the San Francisco Police Department was court ordered to hire women, she found herself compelled to prove to the world that women could cut it as cops, a betrayal that caused her police-loathing mother to brand her a Nazi. Lynch reflec... read more

Dodging Machetes: How I Survived Forbidden Love, Bad Behavior, and the Peace Corps in Fiji

Will Lutwick

WINNER OF THE 2012 USA BEST BOOK AWARD FOR MULTICULTURAL NON-FICTION FINALIST IN THE 2013 ERIC HOFFER BOOK AWARDS AND THE INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDSFEATURED IN ROBERT MCKEE'S BYLINE --- THE LEGENDARY MCKEE IS THE GURU OF HOLLYWOOD'S TOP SCREENWRITERS.Strap yourself in for a wild ride! "Dodging Machetes" is sometimes dramatic and thrilling, other times flat-out funny. And it's always compelling!... read more

WINNER OF THE 2012 USA BEST BOOK AWARD FOR MULTICULTURAL NON-FICTION FINALIST IN THE 2013 ERIC HOFFER BOOK AWARDS AND THE INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDSFEATURED IN ROBERT MCKEE'S BYLINE --- THE LEGENDARY MCKEE IS THE GURU OF HOLLYWOOD'S TOP SCREENWRITERS.Strap yourself in for a wild ride! "Dodging Machetes" is sometimes dramatic and thrilling, other times flat-out funny. And it's always compelling!... read more

Jesus Land: A Memoir

Julia Scheeres

Julia and her adopted brother, David, are sixteen-years-old. Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid-1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother—more involved with her church’s missionaries than her own children—and a violent father. In this riveting and heartrending m... read more

Julia and her adopted brother, David, are sixteen-years-old. Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid-1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother—more involved with her church’s missionaries than her own children—and a violent father. In this riveting and heartrending m... read more

A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown

Julia Scheeres

“A gripping account of how decent people can be taken in by a charismatic and crazed tyrant” (The New York Times Book Review).In 1954, a past or named Jim Jones opened a church in Indianapolis called Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church. He was a charismatic preacher with idealistic beliefs, and he quickly filled his pews with an audience eager to hear his sermons on social justice. As Jones’s be... read more

“A gripping account of how decent people can be taken in by a charismatic and crazed tyrant” (The New York Times Book Review).In 1954, a past or named Jim Jones opened a church in Indianapolis called Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church. He was a charismatic preacher with idealistic beliefs, and he quickly filled his pews with an audience eager to hear his sermons on social justice. As Jones’s be... read more

The Ponzi Princess

Mark Morewitz

Recently married and settling in to a new home in Brooklyn, Mark Morewitz feels something is missing from his life. He is intrigued when his neighbors introduce him to Laurie, the charismatic entrepreneur from Long Island helping them earn enough money to buy and renovate their huge home. Soon the Long-Island fairy-godmother gives Mark an opportunity to invest in her high-return deals and then... read more

Recently married and settling in to a new home in Brooklyn, Mark Morewitz feels something is missing from his life. He is intrigued when his neighbors introduce him to Laurie, the charismatic entrepreneur from Long Island helping them earn enough money to buy and renovate their huge home. Soon the Long-Island fairy-godmother gives Mark an opportunity to invest in her high-return deals and then... read more

Veiled and Unveiled in Chechnya and Daghestan

Iwona Kaliszewska, Maciej Falkowski

Offering an unflinching portrait of life in Daghestan and Chechnya and focusing on its girls and women, this book presents the north Caucasus today through the eyes of two Poles, an anthropologist and a journalist, who travelled there amid a locally rooted but newly assertive Islamic revivalism. Shadowed by Russian secret police, the authors participate in Muslim rites in villages which penali... read more

Offering an unflinching portrait of life in Daghestan and Chechnya and focusing on its girls and women, this book presents the north Caucasus today through the eyes of two Poles, an anthropologist and a journalist, who travelled there amid a locally rooted but newly assertive Islamic revivalism. Shadowed by Russian secret police, the authors participate in Muslim rites in villages which penali... read more

The Fifth Sister: From Victim to Victor - Overcoming Child Abuse

Laura Landgraf

Laura was ten, crouched outside her parents' bedroom, when she overheard that her father had made her oldest sister pregnant. For the next eight years, she and her four sisters struggled to survive the nightmare of sexual and emotional abuse.As an adult, she buried memories of her family's dysfunction and tried to build the most perfect life she could imagine. But when she discovered that her ... read more

Laura was ten, crouched outside her parents' bedroom, when she overheard that her father had made her oldest sister pregnant. For the next eight years, she and her four sisters struggled to survive the nightmare of sexual and emotional abuse.As an adult, she buried memories of her family's dysfunction and tried to build the most perfect life she could imagine. But when she discovered that her ... read more

Those Who Eat Like Crocodiles

Laura Fitzgerald

Those Who Eat Like Crocodiles is for anyone who has tried tounderstand - and be understood - in an alien environment. It is foranyone who knows what it’s like to reach a crossroads in life andrealise that, somewhere along the way, the rules of the gamechanged and you weren’t notified. It’s for anyone who has had toconfront an unwelcome and disappointing discovery: that you maynot be the person... read more

Those Who Eat Like Crocodiles is for anyone who has tried tounderstand - and be understood - in an alien environment. It is foranyone who knows what it’s like to reach a crossroads in life andrealise that, somewhere along the way, the rules of the gamechanged and you weren’t notified. It’s for anyone who has had toconfront an unwelcome and disappointing discovery: that you maynot be the person... read more