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The Magnificent Esme Wells

April 20, 2018

esme

Esme Silver is the flaxen haired, china doll, daughter of a Busby Berkley dancer and a handsome, low level grifter. They live in Los Angeles where her parents are certain her mother’s big break into movies is always only a day away. Except the only thing that is ever a day away is them being kicked out of their apartment because her father blew the rent money at the track. ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1950s, childhood, Harper, Las Vegas

I Was Anastasia: A Novel

March 28, 2018

anastasia

I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon achieves quite a feat—taking a subject about which there is no longer any mystery and making it mysterious. Thanks to DNA testing, it is now known that Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia died with the rest of her family in the summer of 1918, slaughtered by the Communists in the basement of a house in the town of Ekaterinburg. But, for ... Read More...

10 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 20th century, Doubleday, historical fiction, mystery, Russia

The House of Impossible Beauties

March 9, 2018

house

“Passing is an art form, darling. It’s a craft. And just like any craft, the artistic ideal is always impossible to achieve. We can try and try and try as hard as possible to pass as a woman, but if I’m a biological man, I can only go up to a certain point. The rest is all imagination.” John Cassara pumps up the beat from the very beginning of his debut novel, The House of ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: coming-of-age, contemporary life, ecco, New York City, social issues

White Houses

March 7, 2018

white

Lenora Hickok was a formidable woman for her time. In fact, she’d probably still be considered a formidable woman. From a childhood of deprivation and abuse she went on to become a renowned reporter, which in the 1930s, was a huge achievement in and of itself. In 1928 she interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt for Life magazine, went on to cover Eleanor’s part in her husband’s 1932 ... Read More...

11 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1940s, historical fiction, Random House, women

Hollywood Women: The Girls in the Picture

February 7, 2018

hollywood

  Mary Pickford was one of the first Hollywood stars, having acted from the time she was a child to not only maintaining her film career when silent moves became ‘talkies’, but going on to create her own studio, giving her and her partners the creative control actors didn’t have at the time. Frances Marion was a screenwriter, one of the first women in the business, who ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Hollywood, pop culture, women

Hollywood Women: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

February 5, 2018

hollywood

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is catnip to anyone who loves old movies. In Evelyn, Taylor Jenkins Reid has created an amalgam of all the old glamor girls: Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor for their multiple marriages and off-screen shenanigans, Joan Crawford’s ruthlessness, Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra…if you’ve read as many biographies of Hollywood stars as I have there ... Read More...

11 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Feature, Fiction Tagged: Atria Books, Hollywood, pop culture, women

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