Hollywood Fiction
These novels illuminate the glamour - and the seedy underbelly - of Hollywood and the film industry.
The beautiful people : a novel
Gable, Michelle, author.
2024
It's 1961, and for Margo Hightower, everything is about to change. She's just been hired as assistant to photographer Slim Aarons - famous for his vibrant pictures of high society, royalty, and Hollywood stars - and she knows this opportunity is her ticket to something better. But when they land in Palm Beach, the lines between work and play begin to blur. As Margo becomes swept up in the city's social circle, the golden life seems increasingly in reach. Until she finds herself entangled in a complicated web of loyalties and secrets that could bring it all crashing down.
Blonde : a novel
Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938-
2000
Fictionalized account of the life of Marilyn Monroe.
The brightest star : a novel
Tsukiyama, Gail, author
2023
At the dawn of a new century, America is falling in love with silent movies, including young Wong Liu Tsong. By eleven, Wong Liu is determined to become an actress and has already chosen a stage name: Anna May Wong. At sixteen, Anna May leaves high school to pursue her Hollywood dreams. Though she suffers professionally and personally, Anna May fights to win lead roles, accept risqué parts, financially support her family, and keep her illicit love affairs hidden - even as she finds freedom and glittering stardom abroad, and receives glowing reviews across the globe.
Delayed rays of a star : a novel
Lee Koe, Amanda, 1987- author
2019
"At a chance encounter at a Berlin soirée in 1928, the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captures three very different women together in one frame: up-and-coming German actress Marlene Dietrich, who would wend her way into Hollywood as one of its lasting icons; Anna May Wong, the world's first Chinese American star, playing bit parts while dreaming of breaking away from her father's modest laundry; and Leni Riefenstahl, whose work as a director of propaganda art films would first make her famous--then, infamous. From this curious point of intersection, Delayed Rays of a Star lets loose the trajectories of these women's lives. From Weimar Berlin to LA's Chinatown, from a seaside resort in East Germany to a luxury apartment on the Champs-Élysées, the different settings they inhabit are as richly textured as the roles they play: siren, muse, predator, or lover, each one a carefully calibrated performance. And in the orbit of each star live secondary players--a Chinese immigrant housemaid, a German soldier on leave from North Africa, a pompous Hollywood director--whose voices and viewpoints reveal the legacy each woman left in her own time, as well as in ours. Amanda Lee Koe's playful, wry prose guides the reader dexterously around murky questions of ego, persona, complicity, desire, and difference. Intimate and raw, Delayed Rays of a Star is a visceral depiction of womanhood--its particular hungers, its calculations, and its eventual betrayals--and announces a bold new literary voice."-- Provided by publisher.
Do tell : a novel
Lynch, Lindsay, 1990- author.
2023
Character actress Edie O'Dare long supplemented her income moonlighting for Hollywood's reigning gossip columnist, providing her with the salacious details of every party and premiere. When an up-and-coming starlet hands her a letter alleging an assault from an A-list actor, Edie helps get the story into print and sets off a chain of events that will alter the trajectories of everyone involved. But Edie quickly learns that publishing the secrets of those former colleagues she considers friends has repercussions. And when she finds herself in the middle of the trial of the decade, Edie is forced to make an impossible choice with the potential to ruin more than one life.
From dust to stardust : a novel
Rooney, Kathleen, 1980- author.
2023
Chicago, 1916. Doreen O'Dare is fourteen years old when she hops a Hollywood-bound train. Within a decade, her trademark bob and insouciant charm make her the preeminent movie flapper of the Jazz Age. But her success story masks one of relentless ambition, tragedy, and the secrets of a dangerous marriage. A sweeping journey from the dawn of the motion picture era through turbulent twentieth-century America, this is a breathtaking novel about one determined woman navigating change, challenging the price of fame, and sharing the gift of real magic.
The queen of Sugar Hill : a novel of Hattie McDaniel
Tate, ReShonda, author.
2024
The first African-American woman to win an Academy Award, Hattie McDaniel, when the Oscar curse sets in, is thrust in the middle of two worlds--black and white--and is not welcomed in either but, through it all, continued her fight to pave a path for other Negro actors.
Stardust : a novel
Kanon, Joseph
2009
A mesmerizing tale of Hollywood, post-war political intrigue, and one man's determination to learn the truth about his brother's death.
