After writing The Jungle, his scathing indictment of the meatpacking industry, Sinclair turned his sights on the early days of the California oil industry in a highly entertaining story featuring a cavalcade of characters including senators, oil magnates, Hollywood film starlets, and a crusading evangelist. This lively and panoramic book, which was recently cited by David Denby in the New Yorker as being Sinclair's "most readable" novel, is now the...

"From Rodeo Drive to the French Riviera, Karin Tanabe's The Sunset Crowd is a tale of survival and reinvention, of faking it until you make it, and the glittering appeal of success and stardom, as it seeks to answer that timeless question-who gets to have the American dream? Money and fame: in 1970's Los Angeles, everyone is fighting to reach the top, but very few have the talent, ambition, and luck to get there. Meet LA darling Evra Scott. The daughter...

It is 1917, and President Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War. In California, a new industry is born that will irreversibly transform America. Caroline Sanford, the alluring heroine of Empire, discovers the power of moving pictures to manipulate reality as she vaults to screen stardom under the name of Emma Traxler. Just as Caroline must balance her two lives -- West Coast movie star and East Coast newspaper publisher and senator's...

"Vamp is a hot new Valentino mystery by Loren D. Estleman, the master of the hard-boiled detective novel and recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award. Renowned film detective Valentino is on a quest to help restore The Comet, an extinct drive-in movie theater, and his trail leads him to Leo Kalishnikov, who requests a favor first - rid him of a blackmailer from his shady past, and he'll gladly hand over the money...

Here are the excruciatingly funny adventures of Suzanne Vale - a young film star and drug addict - who survives a rehab clinic only to rejoin the equally harrowing world of Hollywood. Out there on the edge, despair flips into hilarity, and we're left laughing as Suzanne struggles to come to terms with her various fantasylands. This stunning literary debut - read by author and actress Carrie Fisher herself - evokes the deliciously irreverent humor...

"THE ASSISTANT" follows one day in the life of Jane (Julia Garner), a recent college graduate and aspiring film producer, who has recently landed her dream job as a junior assistant to a powerful entertainment mogul. Her day is much like any other assistant's - making coffee, changing the paper in the copy machine, ordering lunch, arranging travel, taking phone messages, onboarding a new hire. But as Jane follows her daily routine, she, and we, grow...