Oprah Winfrey and Frank Sinatra biographer Kitty Kelley has landed a book deal to write about the women of the U.S. Senate. Publication has been set for Spring 2016.

The book will look at the 113th Congress, but focus on the “divinely diverse and one-fifth female” U.S. Senate. WSK Management CEO Wayne Kabak negotiated the deal with publisher Jamie Raab. Raab will also edit the book.

Kelley explained in the release: “As a woman who cheers the accomplishments of other women on both sides of the aisle, I come to this project with a positive bias, and I am eager to learn if the combined talents and collegiality of women will make a difference in the way our laws are made and the country’s business is conducted. More importantly, through in-depth reporting I will try to answer the question that so many are asking: can the presence of women break the ugly gridlock now choking Congress?”

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Novelist James Ellroy has published a $1.99 Byliner Fiction story about Fred Otash, a famous private detective and writer who made his reputation in Hollywood.

Follow this link to read an excerpt from “Shakedown,” Ellroy’s new story at Byliner Fiction. In the video embedded above, we interviewed Ellroy about his early writing career.

You can read the real-life Otash’s obituary at The Los Angeles Times: “Otash’s clients included entertainers Frank Sinatra, Errol Flynn, Edward G. Robinson, Judy Garland, Lana Turner and Bette Davis, well-known lawyers such as F. Lee Bailey, Jerry Geisler and Melvin Belli, and both major political parties. Otash prowled Hollywood by night in a chauffeured Cadillac full of women he called ‘little sweeties,’ and much like a fictional private eye conjured up by Raymond Chandler, drank a quart of Scotch and smoked four packs of cigarettes a day.”

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In 1988, Markson published the groundbreaking novel, Wittgenstein’s Mistress. Among his other books, he wrote Reader’s Block and Vanishing Point. His novel The Ballad of Dingus Magee was adapted into a film starring Frank Sinatra. This editor will always remember Markson’s two crime novels about a private detective named Harry Fannin–check out an excerpt from Epitaph for a Dead Beat at The Kenyon Review.

Here’s an inspired tribute from journalist Sarah Weinman: “Markson needed the Internet, or more accurately, vice versa, to find his rightful place in the literary world. Quotation appropriation, short declarative sentences, quick bursts with acres of thought, meditation on artists and writers at work, and a tremendous study of consciousness marked Markson’s output since WITTGENSTEIN’S MISTRESS (1988) opened with the phrase ‘In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.’ And as our collective attention spans decreased and dovetailed from mass-market pursuits, there was Markson to clue us in to something greater, more amorphous perhaps, but something that pinged the outer reaches of what he termed ‘seminonfictional semi-fictions.”

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But, at just 196 pages in, I felt like Kelley was editorializing a bit too much. So, I called her on it. Without interviewing Oprah herself, how do you know that your sources aren’t fudging the facts out of jealousy?

“Everybody has a motive. Everybody does. You have to give it to the reader honestly. You have to put it in context, and that’s really what I’ve tried to do,” said Kelley during our Media Beat interview. “This book is not a takedown of Oprah by any means. There are many, many people on the record talking about her in a most admirable fashion.”

Watch the video to find out what Kelley says she uncovered about Oprah’s now distant relationships with her family and several co-workers from The Color Purple, including Steven Spielberg, Alice Walker, and Whoopi Goldberg.

Part 2: Kitty Kelley Calls Oprah Herself ‘The Biggest Source’ for Bio

Part 3: Kitty Kelley Predicts the End of the Unauthorized Biography

RELATED: Attend Mediabistro Circus to hear from visionary women in media and tech.

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Here’s an excerpt: “In promoting this book, we have already been told by Barbara Walters‘s producer, No, you cannot be on The View, I cannot disrupt my relationship with Oprah. Joy Behar, the same thing. Charlie Rose; Larry King said, I will not do it, it might upset Oprah. Even David Letterman.”

UPDATE: A CNN insider told us this afternoon: “Larry King hasn’t spoken with Kitty Kelley in five years.”

Kelley’s 544-page biography of Winfrey’s life debuts on April 13. Kelley has written juicy books about the Bush family, Nancy Reagan, and Frank Sinatra and many other public figures. In mid-April, mediabistro.com will feature an exclusive Media Beat interview with the biographer about this book. In addition, here’s an old Larry King interview with the author.

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Following three years of research, Kitty Kelley‘s 544-page biography of Oprah Winfrey‘s life has been completed. Crown Publishers has set a first printing of more than more 500,000 copies, and the book debuts on April 13, 2010, in hardcover, audiobook, and eBook formats.

Kelley has written juicy books about the Bush family, Nancy Reagan and Frank Sinatra and many other public figures. For the Winfrey book she conducted 850 interviews.

Crown’s publisher Tina Constable had this statement: “Anyone who is a fan of Oprah Winfrey or who has followed her extraordinary life and career will be fascinated and newly informed by the closely observed, detailed, and well-rounded portrait of her provided by Kitty Kelley’s exhaustively researched book. Readers will come away with a greater appreciation of who Oprah really is beyond her public persona and a fuller understanding of her important place in American cultural history.”

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