The Glamorous Dead

The Glamorous Dead
Author: Suzanne Gates
Publisher: Kensington Books
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2017-10-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 149670813X

Set in the dream factory of the 1940s, this glittering debut novel follows a young Hollywood hopeful into a star-studded web of scandal, celebrity, and murder . . . The chipped pink nail polish is a dead giveaway—no pun intended. When a human thumb is discovered near a Hollywood nightclub, it doesn’t take long for the police to identify its owner. Miss Penny Harp would recognize that pink anywhere: it belongs to her best friend, Rosemary. And so does the rest of the body buried beneath it. Rosemary, with the beauty and talent, who stood out from all other extras on the Paramount lot. She was the one whose name was destined for a movie marquee—not for the obituaries. And for an extra twist, now an LAPD detective thinks Penny is the one who killed her . . . Penny is determined to prove her innocence—with a little help from an unlikely ally, the world-famous queen of film noir, Barbara Stanwyck. Penny met “Stany” on the set of Paramount’s classic comedy The Lady Eve, where the star took an instant liking to her. With Stany’s powerful connections and no-nonsense style, she has no trouble following clues out of the studio backlot, from the Los Angeles morgue to the Zanzibar Room to the dark, winding streets of Beverly Hills. But there’s something Penny isn’t telling her famous partner in crimesolving: a not-so-glamorous secret that could lead them to Rosemary’s killer—or send Penny to the electric chair . . . “Suzanne Gates hits the sweet spot at the corner of literary and genre with her exquisite writing. . . . A captivating story of star-struck dreams and redemption.” --Lissa Price, Internationally Bestselling Author of the Starters series

Dead Glamorous

Dead Glamorous
Author: Carole Morin
Publisher: Overlook Books
Total Pages: 189
Release: 1997
Genre: Journalists
ISBN: 9780879517502

The Scottish journalist describes her life in pursuit of glamour and luxury, including clothes, vacations, homes, and friendships with the rich and famous

Happy Hour

Happy Hour
Author: Marlowe Granados
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1839764031

With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados’s stunning debut brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City. Isa Epley, all of twenty-one years old, is already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. She arrives in New York with her newly blond best friend looking for adventure. They have little money, but that’s hardly going to stop them. By day, the girls sell clothes on a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave between Brooklyn, the Upper East Side, and the Hamptons among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, Internet entrepreneurs, stuffy intellectuals, and bad-mannered grifters. Resources run ever tighter and the strain tests their friendship as they try to convert social capital into something more lasting than precarious gigs as au pairs, nightclub hostesses, paid audience members, and aspiring foot fetish models. Through it all, Isa’s bold, beguiling voice captures the precise thrill of cultivating a life of glamour and intrigue as she juggles paying her dues with skipping out on the bill. Happy Hour is a novel about getting by and having fun in a system that wants you to do neither.

Dead to Me

Dead to Me
Author: Mary McCoy
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2015-03-03
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1484712153

"Don't believe anything they say." Those were the last words Alice's older sister, Annie, said to her before she turned her back on their parents and left home forever. Alice spent four years waiting and wondering when the impossibly glamorous sister she idolized would return to her--and what her Hollywood-insider parents had done to drive her away. Now it's 1948 and Alice isn't a kid anymore. When she gets the phone call from the hospital, she knows it's up to her to help Annie, in a coma after being beaten and left for dead in MacArthur Park. The search for Annie's attacker leads Alice into a dark and dangerous world of tough-talking private eyes, psychopathic movie stars, and troubled starlets--and onto the trail of a young runaway who is the sole witness to an unspeakable crime. What this girl knows could shut down a criminal syndicate and put Annie's attacker behind bars--if Alice can find her first. And she isn't the only one looking. Debut novelist Mary McCoy evokes the dangerous glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age, a corrupt world where the people who live in the nicest houses have the dirtiest secrets and no drive into the sunset can erase the crimes of past.

A Death of No Importance

A Death of No Importance
Author: Mariah Fredericks
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2019-03-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250306558

“A taut, suspenseful, and complex murder mystery with gorgeous period detail.”—Susan Elia MacNeal Through her exquisite prose, sharp observation and deft plotting, Mariah Fredericks invites us into the heart of a changing New York in her remarkable debut adult novel, A Death of No Importance. New York City, 1910. Invisible until she’s needed, Jane Prescott has perfected the art of serving as a ladies’ maid to the city’s upper echelons. When she takes up a position with the Benchley family, dismissed by the city’s elite as “new money”, Jane realizes that while she may not have financial privilege, she has a power they do not—she understands the rules of high society. The Benchleys cause further outrage when their daughter Charlotte becomes engaged to notorious playboy Norrie, the son of the eminent Newsome family. But when Norrie is found murdered at a party, Jane discovers she is uniquely positioned—she’s a woman no one sees, but who witnesses everything; who possesses no social power, but that of fierce intellect—and therefore has the tools to solve his murder. There are many with grudges to bear: from the family Norrie was supposed to marry into, to the survivors of a tragic accident in a mine owned by the Newsomes, to the rising anarchists who are sick of those born into wealth getting away with anything they want. Jane also knows that in both high society and the city’s underbelly, morals can become cheap in the wrong hands: scandal and violence simmer just beneath the surface—and can break out at any time.

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead
Author: Emily Austin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: FICTION
ISBN: 1982167351

"Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she's there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace. In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish tower in her crumbling apartment, Gilda strikes up an email correspondence with Grace's old friend. She can't bear to ignore the kindly old woman, who has been trying to reach her friend through the church inbox, but she also can't bring herself to break the bad news. Desperate, she begins impersonating Grace via email. But when the police discover suspicious circumstances surrounding Grace's death, Gilda may have to finally reveal the truth of her mortifying existence."--Amazon.

Dead Above Ground

Dead Above Ground
Author: Jervey Tervalon
Publisher: Beyond Words/Atria Books
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2000
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Lita Du Champ struggles to save her family from its own past in 1940s New Orleans.

The Glamorous Life of Emily's Failure

The Glamorous Life of Emily's Failure
Author: David J. Lythberg
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 750
Release: 2009-07-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1469106671

Race. God. Two forces that have oppressed David's life from the beginning. As he grows, they follow him, bearing down upon his neck like a yoke. But someone else follows him as well. There is an appointed time for them to meet. Race. God. Growing up biracial is hard for David, being the son of an overbearing black mother and a passive white father. They've pulled him from an all-black world into an all-white one. But someone is there also. There is an appointed time for them to meet. Race. God. David eventually learns to throw the shackles of both away, to lash out against anything racial, or religious. He changes. Grows angrier. hates more. Still, that someone is there, watching. Waiting. Emily. But Emily couldn't wait any longer. Her love for David couldn't be contained until that "appointed" time. She takes matters into her own hands, and makes her presence known. In an attempt to win his love, she dons his clothes and engages in his interests. But sadly, her plan backfires, and everything turns disasterous---and she is left, damaged and alone. Race. God. Emily. Years pass. Time shifts. When they do meet, it is a meeting like no other. The rapture they feel for one another surpasses the drudgedness of their station. For David, life couldn't be imagined without her; and at such a time as this, she is taken away from him. Is it a scrifice, or some unfortunate circumstance? She leaves someone in her stead, to continue with him where she left off. Someone who cares just as much as she had. Someone who loved him from the beginning, just as she had. God. It is only then that David realizes who Emily really was, and how much he'd failed to understand.

Don't Call Us Dead

Don't Call Us Dead
Author: Danez Smith
Publisher:
Total Pages: 101
Release: 2017-09-05
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1555977855

Digte. Addresses race, class, sexuality, faith, social justice, mortality, and the challenges of living HIV positive at the intersection of black and queer identity