Running With Scissors

The #1 New York Times Bestseller An Entertainment Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year Now a Major Motion Picture This is the true story of a boy who wanted to grow up with the Brady Bunch, but ended up living with the Addams Family. Augusten Burroughs's mother gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa Claus and a certifiable lunatic into the bargain. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients and a sinister man living in the garden shed completed the tableau. In the perfect squalor of their dilapidated Victorian house, there were no rules and there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer and Valium was chomped down like sweets. And when things got a bit slow, there was always the ancient electroshock therapy machine under the stairs... 'This is the Brady Bunch on Viagra... it is impossible not to laugh at all the jokes; to admire the sardonic, fetid tone; to wonder, slack-jawed and agog, at the sheer looniness of the vista he conjures up' -- Rachel Cooke, Observer

Augusten Burroughs is the author of Running with Scissors (Atlantic 2004), Dry (Atlantic 2005), Magical Thinking (Atlantic 2005) and Possible Side Effects (Atlantic 2007), all of which have been New York Times bestsellers and are published around the world. A film version of Running with Scissors starring Annette Benning and Gwyneth Paltrow was adapted for the screen by Ryan Murphy. Augusten has been named one of the fifteen funniest people in America by Entertainment Weekly.Sellevision is his latest book. He lives in New York City and western Massachusetts.