In one of her most ambitious works, Joyce Carol Oates boldly reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker--the child, the woman, the fated celebrity, and idolized blonde the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe. In a voice startlingly intimate and rich, Norma Jeane tells her own story of an emblematic American artist--intensely conflicted and driven--who had lost her way. A powerful portrait of Hollywood's myth and an extraordinary...

"[Vaudeville actress turned Hollywood insider] Jessie's thrilled when Bruno Heilmann, a movie studio bigwig, invites her to a party. Shes even more delighted to run into a face from her past at that party. But the following day, Jessie learns that sometime in the wee hours of the morning both her old friend and Bruno Heilmann were brutally murdered. She's devastated, but with her skill as an actress, access to the wardrobes and resources of a film...

Jonathan Craine has left his old life in Hollywood behind him, content to live out his days on a farm in rural California with his teenage son. But when infamous mobster and Las Vegas founder Bugsy Siegel is killed at his home in Beverly Hills, Craine is forced to face his past once again. Summoned to Las Vegas to meet mob head Meyer Lansky, Craine is given the impossible task of finding Siegel's murderers. He has no access to crime reports, no police...

"Disillusioned with what the American film industry had become by the 1970s, Bette Davis remembered a time when "women owned Hollywood." This book is their story. Historian J.E. Smyth challenges the belief, reinforced in too many histories and public comments, that feminism died between 1930 and 1950, that women were not important within the Hollywood studio system, that male directors called all the shots, and that the most important Hollywood writer...

"PI Savannah Reid has delved into the ugly side of SoCal's celebrity culture more than once. But the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency may have bitten off more than they can chew when a Hollywood legend makes a deadly comeback... It will be a cold day in San Carmelita before Savannah skips over a high-profile homicide case, especially one attached to a tasty reward. But when 90-year-old former silver screen siren Lucinda Faraday is murdered inside...

"In 1945, Velva Jean Hart is a bona fide war heroine. After a newsreel films her triumphant return to America, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer promises to make her a star. They give her a new life story and a brand new name. As 'Kit Rogers,' she navigates the movie sets, recording sessions, parties, staged romances, and occasional backstabbing that accompany her newfound fame. She also navigates real-life romance, finding herself caught between a charismatic...

In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.

For ninety years, Hollywood's brightest stars have favored the Chateau Marmont as a home away from home. An apartment house-turned-hotel, it has been the backdrop for generations of gossip and folklore: 1930s bombshell Jean Harlow took lovers during her third honeymoon there; director Nicholas Ray slept with his sixteen-year-old Rebel Without a Cause star Natalie Wood; Anthony Perkins and Tab Hunter met poolside and began a secret affair; Jim Morrison...

"In 1938, China City opened near downtown Los Angeles. Featuring a recreation of the House of Wang set from MGM's The Good Earth, this new Chinatown employed many of the same Chinese Americans who performed as background extras in the 1937 film. Chinatown and Hollywood represented the two primary sites where Chinese Americans performed racial difference for popular audiences during the Chinese exclusion era. In Performing Chinatown, historian William...

"It's 1950 and Loretta Reynolds is newly arrived in Hollywood, fresh off a con that brought her from England to the sunny shores of California. She's running away from rumors and towards her ambition to become a makeup artist to the stars. But when her new aspiring-actor husband takes her to a sex-fueled Hollywood party on their wedding night hoping to trade her to a powerful director for a favor, she discovers the darker side of Tinseltown and sets...