Susan Jane Gilman

"A deliriously, levitatingly funny memoir" -- Kirkus Reviews (starred).

Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress is a hilarious, nakedly honest memoir about growing up groovy and clueless
in New York City. This instant New York Times' Bestseller documents Gilman's spectacularly idiotic and unique
adventures in growing up -- being an uncool white kid in a tough Puerto Rican neighborhood, a teenager
throwing herself at a rock star, an ambitious cub reporter discovering that there's more to the world than her
own navel, and a feminist bride having a melt-down in David's Bridal Salon. These true stories are so
engaging, they read like the very best fiction. At turns heartbreaking, insightful, and screamingly funny,
"Hypocrite" uniquely chronicles a generation. A book that readers instantly want to read aloud to their friends.

UNDRESS ME IN THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN is a riveting, funny, but harrowing true story -- a modern-day heart of darkness full of Communist
operatives, backpackers, and pancakes. In 1986, Gilman and a friend planned an ambitious trek across the globe starting in the
People's Republic of China. At that point, China had been open to independent backpackers for roughly ten minutes.
Armed only with the collected works of Nietzsche and Linda Goodman's Love Signs, the two young women plunged into the dusty
streets of Shanghai. Unsurprisingly, they quickly found themselves in over their heads -- hungry, disoriented, stripped of everything
familiar, under constant government surveillance, and ensnared in rural China. What began as a journey full of humor, eroticism and
enlightenment grew sinister -- becoming a real-life international thriller that changed them forever.
Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven is a powerful, inspiring story for our times –a tale of being thoroughly humbled and helpless, yet
surviving. It is also a flat-out page turner told with Gilman's trademark compassion, lyricism, and wit.” (GCP)

"What's the Chinese word for irresistible, bittersweet page-turner? If there isn't one, they'll have to invent it,   for Susan Jane
Gilman has written a searingly honest, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny tale of innocence lost--and found--abroad. Gilman writes
with a keen and compassionate eye--the perfect companion on this fantastical journey deep into the heart of horniness and
hypochondria. Read this book and revel in your good fortune."     --Eric Weiner, bestselling author of The Geography of Bliss

Never have I felt in such honest company on a journey away from home and into our own messy hearts and minds.   With
her trademark intelligent, irreverent voice Gilman takes us on a journey that feels terrifyingly real, immediate and life-
threatening. The woman is no less than a godsend to a reading world that has become too used to lies,   half-truth and
spin."    --Alexandra Fuller, bestselling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

"Continuing with the singular voice she established in her first two books, Susan Jane Gilman has written a surprising, beautifully
suspenseful memoir about a common youthful dream: traveling the world with a backpack and a great deal of spunk. What
befalls her and her traveling companion is so unexpected and frightening, I read the entire second half of the book in one sitting.
Thank goodness she survived. Thank goodness she can tell a story so well." --Haven Kimmel, bestselling author of A Girl
Named Zippy

"UNDRESS ME IN THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN is such a page-turning, suspenseful adventure you wish you’d gone along, yet so
audaciously dangerous you’re grateful you didn’t. Both hair and consciousness-raising, Gilman’s writing is not only wise-
cracking but wise. It's suspenseful, dramatic, smart, fascinating, funny, heartbreaking. I loved it unreservedly." --Marc
Acito, author of How I Paid for College and Attack of the Theater People

More Praise for Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven

"This is riveting stuff: part coming-of-age story, part travel journal, part political thriller, and
completely unputdownable." -- O Magazine

"A standout" that "crackles with wit...the two travel to places never before visited by Westerners,
making for a trip neither will ever forget, and now, neither will Gilman’s readers." -- Booklist

"Packs the full wallop of disorienting, in-the-moment, transformative adventure."
-- Publishers' Weekly

UNDRESS ME “has an edge-of-your-seat quality not common to travel memoirs” and
“crosses into thriller territory.” -- USA Today

"Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven" is the kind of nearly irresistible title that makes you hope
desperately that the book lives up to it. And it does...
You'd think that you could see where this is going -- but you'd be wrong...the adventure continues
to unravel until it earns the description of "real-life international thriller" on the book jacket.
Not only did [Gilman] set out on this wild journey, but she hasn't wasted a single one of the life
lessons she came to get out of it. And then she turned it into a Great American Story.
-- The Ann Arbor News