The Last Narc: A Memoir by the DEA's Most Notorious Agent by Hector Berrellez
Renaissance Literary & Talent/Villa Romana Books, January 2021
In this explosive tell-all, highly decorated DEA special agent Hector Berrellez reveals his lifelong career in law enforcement, including his leading role in one of the most pivotal investigations in the history of federal law enforcement: Operation Leyenda. Launched by the DEA after the gruesome 1985 abduction, torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena by Mexican drug cartels, Leyenda was meant to find those responsible. But when Berrellez took over the investigation in 1989, what he uncovered was a tangled web of treachery and deceit.
The horrific murder of Camarena was the match that ignited the tinderbox of the War on Drugs, and even now, over 30 years later, the case pulses in international political quarters and in the hearts of citizens across the Americas. So much so, in fact, that the case and its key players remain the subject of folk songs and has been adapted into modern-day pop culture through the globally successful Netflix series Narcos: Mexico. But what has so far remained unknown about the tragic event are Berrellez’s stunning discoveries.
My Life in Dog Years by Rita Rudner
Renaissance Literary & Talent/Villa Romana Books, August 2022
Comedy legend Rita Rudner, known for her epigrammatic one-liners, has enjoyed a fifty-plus year career that has included dancing, singing, acting, creating award-winning TV specials, novels, essay collections, screenplays, theater plays, a musical and a syndicated TV series. In the middle of all that, she has somehow enjoyed a successful marriage and raised a daughter.
Rita started as a dancer on Broadway in such shows as Follies, Mack & Mabel and Annie. In the early 1980s she decided to switch from chorus lines to punch lines and was soon a regular guest on both Late Night with David Letterman and The Tonight Show. Eponymous cable TV specials followed, as she performed in theaters all over the world -- from the Palladium in London to Carnegie Hall in New York.
From a difficult childhood to dancing in New York at fifteen to becoming a Johnny Carson favorite to headlining in Las Vegas to motherhood, Rita wittily explains her eventful life journey. The one constant in her life has been her dogs -- Tiny, Agatha, Bonkers, Twinkle and Betsy. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll scratch your ear. You’ll get your tummy rubbed. You’ll enjoy reading Rita Rudner: My Life in Dog Years.