David Miscavige

Many writers have specialties: mystery, romance, true crime, even vampires. But Lisa Pulitzer has developed a curious subgenre that she has nearly all to herself: the escape story.

Ms. Pulitzer specializes in writing books with women who have abandoned groups that include, from left, a polygamous sect, a vehemently anti-homosexual Baptist church and the Church of Scientology.

Ms. Pulitzer helps young women who have fled religious sects or cultlike organizations give their accounts in compelling, often best-selling prose. “I’m now the official cult gal,” she said.

British publisher Transworld has canceled its plans to publish "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief" by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright. The book will be published in the U.S. by Knopf on Jan. 17.

The reason Transworld dropped the book has attracted attention, according to the Telegraph. "The decision not to publish in this country has prompted questions, particularly as Transworld had previously agreed to it," the paper says. "It seems likely that the threat of libel action in the UK may have contributed to the decision."

The writer Lawrence Wright doesn’t seem at all the sort of person you’d find in public wearing a black cowboy shirt emblazoned with big white buffalos. He’s shy, soft-spoken, a little professorial. But as if he didn’t have enough to do, besides working on three plays simultaneously and getting ready to publish a new book in two weeks, Mr. Wright has been taking piano lessons with Floyd Domino, the two-time Grammy winner, and on a recent Saturday, in his buffalo shirt…

William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, today announced plans to publish Jenna Miscavige Hill’s headline-making memoir about her life inside the Church of Scientology. The book, entitled Beyond Belief: My Secret Life inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape, will be published on February 1, 2013. In her memoir, Jenna--the niece of the church’s leader, David Miscavige--tells the dramatic and bizarre true story of growing up in Scientology and how she ultimately was able to break away from the church

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