Throughout her life, Alexandra Penney's worst fear was becoming a bag lady. Even as she worked several jobs while raising a son as a single mother, wrote a multimillion-dollar best-selling advice book, and became editor in chief of Self magazine, she was haunted by the image of herself alone, bankrupt, and living on the street. She even went to therapy in an attempt to alleviate the nagging in her mind that told her that all she had worked for could crumble. And then, one day, that's exactly what happened.

Alexandra Penney had taken a friend's advice and invested nearly everything she had ever earned with Bernie Madoff. So one day she was successful and wealthy; the next she had almost nothing. Suddenly, at an age when many Americans retire, Penney saw her worst nightmares coming true.

Entertaining and inspiring, The Bag Lady Papers chronicles Penney's struggle to cope with the devastating financial and emotional fallout of being cheated out of her life savings, and traces her journey back to sanity and security. Her outraged blog postings about the Madoff scandal in The Daily Beast and her commentary on CNN have generated millions of hits and earned her a loyal following. How do you pick yourself up after your worst nightmare comes true? Penney shows us how.