She was the angel of Swinging London. Her first song, "As Tears Go By," written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, was a huge international hit. Dylan wooed her. The Rolling Stones courted her. She had talent, charm, intelligence and beauty, and when she settled into a love affair with Mick Jagger, her life looked like a rock 'n' roll fairy tale.

Except it was Keith Richards she really wanted. And she was already married, with a young son. And her affair with Mick grew alongside a passion for drugs that increasingly dominated her life. The fairy tale masked intrigues, affairs and dangerous games that finally brought Marianne's whole world crashing down.

In this spirited memoir, Marianne Faithfull tells of a life lived on the edge, and offers a unique woman's look inside the male-dominated rock 'n' roll world. She reveals the shattering contradictions of life as a "star," first as the pop confection she was initially packaged as, and later as the hard-edged artist who coauthored "Sister Morphine" and shocked the world with "Broken English." She describes life with Mick Jagger in all its early bliss and later complexity, from making love during the breaks in recording "Between the Buttons," through the horrors of the Redlands drug bust and her subsequent infamy as the "girl in the fur rug," and down to the final parting as her attachment to drugs surpassed her love for Mick.