Hollywood Fiction
Discover the best Hollywood fiction books! Explore captivating stories set in the glamorous world of Tinseltown, from blockbuster tales to behind-the-scenes drama. Find your next read today.
Book
It's All True
by David Freeman
Veteran Hollywood insider and acclaimed author David Freeman offers a slyly satirical and thoroughly engaging portrait of a down-and-out screenwriter making his big play to get back on top.
Book
Dangerous Company
by Peter Bart
In Hollywood, reality always teeters on the verge of fiction. Outlandish paydays encounter outsize egos; fading beauties fight desparately to retain an illusion of youth; moguls plot and feud while bitter enemies air-kiss over lunch at the Ivy. The stakes are higher than anywhere else, and the dreams are crazier. No one else can capture the insanity like Peter Bart, editor-in-chief of the showbiz bible, Variety. And just to keep readers on their toes, he throws in a few clues that may lead us to believe that what we're reading is perhaps not fiction after all.
Book
I'm Losing You
by Bruce Wagner
Chosen as a "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year, "I'm Losing You" is set in cordless and unplugged Hollywood a land of H.I.V.I.P.s, porn stars, scheming dermatologists, and cell-phone conversations that never connect. Bruce Wagner charts the morbidity and mortality of our culture's, depicting the national obsession with fame and fortune truth and consequence as never before.
Book
On Spec
by Richard Rushfield
A brilliant, dead-on debut about what it takes to make it in today's Hollywood. On Spec follows the paths of six Hollywood hopefuls--a screenwriter, an agent, a development girl, an actress, a studio chef, and an aspiring producer--as they experience the pitfalls and payouts of life on the hollwood fast track. More than just a novel about the entertainment industry, On Spec is a parody of modern life, where winner takes all and the losers are tossed to the wayside without a second thought.
Book
The Little Sister
by Raymond Chandler
The renowned novel from crime fiction master Raymond Chandler, with the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times), Philip Marlowe • Featuring the iconic character that inspired the film Marlowe, starring Liam Neeson. In noir master Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister, a movie starlet with a gangster boyfriend and a pair of siblings with a shared secret lure private eye Philip Marlowe into the less than glamorous and more than a little dangerous world of Hollywood fame. Chandler's first foray into the industry that dominates the company town that is Los Angeles.
Book
My Last Movie Star
by Martha Sherrill
Allegra Coleman is young, beautiful, and destined for stardom. Clementine James is a jaded journalist who has been persuaded to write one last celebrity profile, a piece on Allegra for Flame magazine. But when their road-trip interview ends in a car crash, Allegra vanishes into thin air, and America goes into a frenzy of round-the-clock TV coverage, candlelight vigils, and miraculous sightings. Clementine becomes a celebrity by proxy--and while recovering from her injuries, she receives a series of ghostly visits from Natalie Wood, Clara Bow, Myrna Loy, Loretta Young, Gloria Swanson, and other screen sirens of the past. As Tallulah Bankhead tells her, "It's agony, darling...bitter agony--watching everything slip away. Your looks. Your dough. Your mind. Your ass." Has the missing Allegra escaped such a fate? To find out, Martha Sherrill takes Clementine on a riotous, often hilarious journey inside the hideaways of Hollywood stars and the hangouts of Manhattan's power editors. Along the way, Sherrill captures the erotic jolt of celebrity and the way it affects the celebrated. My Last Movie Star is both a parody and parable of Hollywood, at once absurdly funny and weirdly plausible.
Book
The Kid Stays in the Picture
by Robert Evans
The motion picture producer describes his early career as an actor, liaisons with actresses, rise to powerful studio executive, time in a mental institution, drug use, loss of status in Hollywood, and rise back to power.
Book
Kid Is Still in the Picture
by Robert J. Evans
The Kid is Still in Pictures fills in the gaps where The Kid Stays in the Picture left audiences thirsting for more! Packed with more juicy stories from Hollywood giant and legendary bad boy Robert Evans, this is the full account of his rise, fall, and rise again in show business. The only actor ever to run a studio, Evans took Paramount from the basement to the penthouse with such movies as The Odd Couple, Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, The Godfather, and Chinatown. An extraordinary reconteur, Evans again spares no one, least of all himself. From Errol Flynn, Ava Gardner, and Jimmy Cagney to Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, and Sharon Stone, here are more Hollywood revelations from the notorious Hollywood honcho. Laced throughout are his fascinating liaisons with some of the world's most beautiful women, including his marriage and divorce to Ali MacGraw and Phyllis George. The Kid is Still in Pictures is the unforgettable and complete life story of a producer's producer; a remarkable man who has seen and done just about everything.
Book
The Deal
by Peter Lefcourt
Washed-up Hollywood producer Charlie Berns has mailed in his updated obit and is about to suck his Mercedes tailpipe and fade to black when a miracle materializes: his nephew, a wannabe screenwriter from New Jersey, has scripted the life story of Queen Victoria's prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, which Charlie manages to turn into a hot property that reinstates him as a player. But as the deal heats up, a few conceptual changes morph the project into Lev Disraeli: Freedom Fighter, an action thriller with a black Jewish superstar, a Yugoslavian location, a mad Polish director, and even a real-life kidnapping. Is Charlie Berns being eaten alive by the system? Or is he giving the Hollywood hotshots a run for their money? Peter Lefcourt's hilarious satire proves the old adage that in Hollywood you're never quite as dead as people give you credit for.
Book
Secret Celebrity
by Carol Wolper
Can a girl in Hollywood ever trust her girlfriends not to sleep with her famous boyfriend? What's the fastest route out of a slump for girls who've done a decade in "the business"? Wolper answers these and other questions in this sharp-eyed, sly novel, the follow-up to her bestselling "The Cigarette Girl."
Book
The Other Side of Mulholland
by Stephen Randall
The Other Side of Mulholland is: "a frothy, fast-paced exploration of the dichotomies between the two distinct sections of Los Angeles: upper L.A. with 'all the glitz and the big houses and beautiful women and BMWs, and lower L.A., the suburbs 'too dull to be the subject of a TV show or a Joan Didion novel.'"-Washington Post The Other Side of Mulholland is: everything the image-makers of Los Angeles want to keep under wraps: the tract housing, the car dealerships, and the parents' place with its wet bar and kidney-shaped pool. The Other Side of Mulholland is: "a wise exploration of how, for many of us, family ties can not only bind, but gag."-Laura Zigman, author of Animal Husbandry The Other Side of Mulholland is: the cord that tethers twin brothers Perry and Tim Newman to their shared past when the present-with Perry a sleek television producer and Tim a lowly journalist-feels as competitive as Hollywood itself. The Other Side of Mulholland is:"a hugely readable debut by a terrific new voice in American fiction."-Jerry Stahl, author of Plainclothes Naked A Los Angeles Times Book Review Best Book of 2001
Book
The Player
by Michael Tolkin
A senior vice president of production at a major Hollywood studio receives a death threat from a rejected writer, plunging him into a nightmare that threatens both his life, his job, and the woman he loves in this devastating portrait of contemporary Hollywood.
Book
San Remo Drive
by Leslie Epstein
Depicts a Los Angeles family during the 1950s and in 2000 from the perspective of the eldest son, who articulates the past through memories of his Hollywood family and of the Californian political, social, and physical landscape.
Book
The Day of the Locust
by Nathanael West
West fictionalizes the working class of Tinseltown, in this novel that studies several men working at the peripheral edge of the movie industry and their mutual obsession with a daydreaming girl.
Book
What Makes Sammy Run?
by Budd Schulberg
The classic book that shaped two generations’ view of the movie business and introduced the archetypal Hollywood player Sammy Glick. He’s got a machete mouth and a genius for double-cross. As Budd Shulberg—author of the screenplay On the Waterfront—follows Sammy’s relentless upward progress, he creates a virtuoso study in character that manages to be hilariously appalling yet deeply compassionate. “Sammy Glick remains at the top of the Hollywood sleaze heap, a hustler nonpareil…. What Makes Sammy Run? Is still the quintessential novel about “the all-American heel.’” – Moredcai Richler, GQ
Book
Valley of the Dolls
by Jacqueline Susann
Three women seek escape as they learn about the bitterness, corruption, and falsehoods of the show-business world.
Book
Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls
by Rae Lawrence
The ultimate beach read is now in paperback! Based on Jacqueline Susann's own ideas, this sizzling sequel to her classic "Valley of the Dolls" picks up where the original left off, plunging readers back into the lives of Anne Welles, Neely O'Hara, and Lyon Burke.
Book
Once is Not Enough
by Jacqueline Susann
A young woman obsessed by her love for her movie-producer father is forced to face the reality that they each must lead their own lives.