HOBOKEN, N.J., Dec. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Tantor Media (www.Tantor.com), one of the nation's largest independent audiobook publishers, released its first non-fiction book in all three formats: print, e-book, and audio. The 12-year-old publisher – after releasing 2,700 audiobooks – launched its new print line  with a combination of fiction and nonfiction. Its debut book is the attention-getting Sinatra and Me: The Very Good Years by Tony Consiglio, as told to Pulitzer Prize-nominee Franz Douskey.

Recently featured on Imus, and in the New York Post and Publishers Weekly, it shares dozens of never-before-published photos of Sinatra, Consiglio, and many bold-faced names. It's an inside account of the prime years of one of America's greatest icons in music, film, television and radio. It takes an up-close and personal look into the exciting world of a man who was adored by the American public but who fiercely valued privacy.

Though Ol' Blue Eyes died 14 years ago (he would have been 97 December 12), his influence on American culture resonates today. This book offers, for the first time, an account from someone so close to Sinatra.

Consiglio knew Sinatra when the struggling singer was in New Jersey in the 1930's, through his "Bobby-Soxer" mega-star days of the 1940's, during the lean years when "The Voice" was struggling with a crumbling singing and acting career in the early 1950's.  Consiglio was there when Sinatra's star rose again, first winning an Academy Award for his role in From Here to Eternity in 1953 and recording several classic albums that returned Sinatra to the top of the charts in the late 1950's. 

Readers will learn:

• What was myth and what was true about the man who sold over 150 million albums and won 11 Grammy Awards.
• Of Sinatra's relationship with Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, Ava Gardner, Lou Gehrig, Grace Kelly, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, and Bing Crosby.
• What really went on in the Kennedy White House.
• Why Tony thought mafia boss Sam Giancana helped elect JFK, that Sam was hired by the CIA to kill Fidel Castro, and that Sam wanted to get rid of Bobby Kennedy.
• Whether rumors about Sinatra scoring cocaine for JFK are true.
• Who Sinatra's real loves were.

SOURCE Tantor Media