Press & Media
Marshmallows Are Their Favorite
Undercover at a Primate Lab
A story about secrecy, deception, and what it costs to live a lie — set in a place most people don't know exists.
Lindsay Oliver is available for interviews, podcasts, panels, book clubs, keynotes, and signings.
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Digital copies are available now in EPUB or PDF. Print copies are available on request.
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Full media kit
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Photos are cleared for editorial use in coverage of Lindsay Oliver and her work. Additional book and author photography, and other formats or resolutions, are available on request — email media@lindsayoliver.com.
Praise for Marshmallows Are Their Favorite
"The routine acceptance of experimentation on monkeys has produced places that, unknown to the public, inflict misery and death on countless intelligent beings. Lindsay Oliver's brave and powerful book blows the cover off one of these institutions, documenting both the cruelty and the conflicting emotions of those whose job it is to obey orders. At this moment when even the US National Institutes of Health is recognizing that most of this research is pointless, Marshmallows Are Their Favorite needs to be widely read."
Peter Singer
Author of Animal Liberation
BookLife Reviews “Eye-opening book exposes animal abuse at research facilities.” — “A compelling memoir.”
"A thriller, an exposé, even a love story. But even more than that, it is an intensely personal and revealing journey of one woman willing to risk her own safety as she navigates two identities in an attempt to shine a light on the truth."
Ari Solomon & Mikko Alanne
Award-winning producers of The Animal People
"Unforgiving, empathetic, raw and real. An eye-opener. A broken system that is fundamentally cruel, crude, and irrelevant in these technological times."
Ingrid Newkirk
Founder and Principal, PETA, and author of numerous books, including Animalkind
"Lindsay Oliver's courageous work clearly and shockingly reveals that too often scientists neglect this basic responsibility to nature's sentient and vulnerable beings. This honest story must be told."
John Gluck, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, former animal researcher, and author of Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals
"If you care about animals and their treatment in laboratories, you need to read this very important book."
Robert Ingersoll
Primatologist, featured in Project Nim, and co-author of Primatology, Ethics, and Trauma & Trauma in Sentient Beings
About the Book
Short synopsis
One investigator. Four months undercover. Getting in was the easy part.
A suspenseful, unexpectedly funny true story about an investigation into a government-funded primate lab and the cost of living a lie long enough to tell the truth.
Full synopsis
One investigator. Four months undercover. Getting in was the easy part.
To her coworkers, Lindsay is an inexperienced new technician. To her friends and family, she's a travel photographer. In reality, she's a spy. The lab has another word for her.
Trusted with the keys and armed with covert cameras, she steps into a world the public isn't meant to see. Metal cages line the cinderblock walls, and the monkeys study her through the bars as intently as she studies them. Everyone else acts like it's just another Tuesday.
Getting caught isn't the only danger. The monkeys emerge as individuals, coworkers become friends, and a hallway flirtation turns into something she can't report—all under the shadow of an investigation only she knows exists. The deeper she goes, the more difficult it becomes to separate the people she's deceiving from the system she came to expose.
Marshmallows Are Their Favorite is a suspenseful, unexpectedly funny, and intimate true story about the animals and people inside a government-funded primate lab, the adrenaline of going undercover, and the cost of living a lie long enough to tell the truth.
Fast Facts
One of seven
This book draws on Lindsay's time at one of only seven US National Primate Research Centers.
Taxpayer-funded
These facilities receive substantial public funding through the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Over 100,000 primates in US labs
Primate research is largely out of public view, even though it uses over 100,000 monkeys and significant public investment.
90% failure rate
More than 90% of drugs that appear safe and effective in animals fail to receive FDA approval.
Wasteful research
Public dollars fund experiments involving diet pills, alcohol, and nicotine.
Scientific shift
The FDA and NIH are prioritizing human-relevant, non-animal methods.
Detailed findings from the investigation, including the specific studies documented inside the facility, are in the full media kit. Download the kit
Book Details
- Title
- Marshmallows Are Their Favorite
- Subtitle
- Undercover at a Primate Lab
- Author
- Lindsay Oliver
- Publisher
- Ender Press
- Publication date
- October 6, 2026
- Genre
- Undercover memoir / narrative nonfiction
- Page count
- 270
- Trim size
- 5.5 × 8.5 in
- LCCN
- 2026917379
- Hardcover
- $32.95 · ISBN 978-1-968504-00-7
- Paperback
- $19.95 · ISBN 978-1-968504-01-4 · coming soon
- eBook
- $9.95 · ISBN 978-1-968504-02-1 · EPUB
- Audiobook
- Coming soon
Order: lindsayoliver.com/book · Bookshop.org · Amazon · Barnes & Noble
From the Book
"It felt like such an anomaly in the midst of normalcy: once I turned the corner, away from the lab, I was smack dab in the middle of suburbia, USA. A Target on one corner, a Starbucks on another, and yet on another, thousands of monkeys locked in cages."
"As a lab worker, it's pretty ironic that you can't care about the animals too much. It's suspicious to other employees, particularly management and researchers. So, as a lab animal caretaker doubling as an undercover investigator, you really can't appear to care about the animals too much."
"I definitely didn't feel like a spy. Sure, I had some heart-pumping moments and I was consistently strapped with hidden cameras, but it wasn't like in the movies—it's living on the road, isolated from everyone you know while pretending you're someone else."
About Lindsay Oliver
Short bio
Lindsay Oliver is an award-winning undercover investigator and the author of Marshmallows Are Their Favorite: Undercover at a Primate Lab. Over the past two decades, she has personally conducted or overseen more than 100 investigations inside research labs, animal agriculture, zoos, circuses, and other industries that exploit animals. She is the Executive Director of Animals International US and the founder and CEO of Justify.
Long bio
Lindsay Oliver is an award-winning undercover investigator and writer who has spent more than two decades exposing some of the world's most hidden industries. She has personally conducted or overseen more than a hundred investigations across research laboratories, animal agriculture, zoos, circuses, and other systems that operate largely out of public view.
Her work has generated major media coverage, helped drive corporate and legislative change, and is featured in the documentary Eating Animals, produced by Natalie Portman. She is the Executive Director of Animals International US and the founder and CEO of Justify.
Her debut book, Marshmallows Are Their Favorite, draws on her time working undercover at one of only seven US National Primate Research Centers — a fast-paced true story about secrecy, deception, and the monkeys hidden behind locked doors.
Recent & Upcoming Appearances
To book an appearance, email media@lindsayoliver.com.
Interview & booking requests
For interviews, podcasts, panels, book clubs, keynotes, signings, and all media inquiries:
media@lindsayoliver.com