PLAYGROUND: A Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion

On her first visit to the Playboy Mansion, six-year-old Saginor happened across John Belushi having sex with a Playmate. What was a child doing alone in such a place? Saginor's dad, a "fitness" doctor liberally prescribing weight loss and other prescription pills to show-biz types, sports figures and Playmate wannabes, had became one of Hugh Hefner's cronies, with his own quarters at the Mansion. Divorced from Saginor's mother, he took his daughter everywhere and let her run wild once there. Saginor grew to love the Mansion, her own "magical kingdom" with constant attention from servants and Playmates, where she never had to follow her mother's boring rules. As soon as she could, she asked to be in her father's custody, though she feared his bipolar rages, aggravated by compulsive promiscuity and the ubiquitous drugs of the 1970s and '80s. Predictably, as she grew older she joined the nonstop party; as a high school sophomore in 1985, she dated both an older soap-opera actor and, surreptitiously, Hef's own "girlfriend." Names have been changed throughout this made-for-daytime-talk memoir, except for walk-on celebrities (who misbehave only when safely dead, like Belushi), but readers seeking colorful general-issue dish, sleaze and bad behavior will find it in spades. Agent, Jennifer Joel. (June 14)