Showing results for "Hollywood" in Historical

Los Angeles. August 4, 1962. The city broils through a mid-summer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker's looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash. The freewheeling Freddy O. Tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim "Opportunity is Love." Freddy gets to work.

Hedonistic socialite turned undercover detective and poster girl for the war effort, Fancy Anders is back to solve another case. The Hollywood Canteen has just opened as a refuge and nightclub to give enlisted men some nights they will never forget as they prepare to head into war. With Hollywood elite cooking food and tending bar, with beautiful young actresses and starlets serving as hostesses and dance partners, the Canteen is a wonderland indeed. But when a young hostess dies in a car accident, the entire club—and possibly the entire American military service—is in jeopardy.

Blanche Tucker longs to escape her drop-dead dull life in tiny Boynton, Oklahoma. Then dashing Graham Peyton roars into town. Posing as a film producer, Graham convinces the ambitious but naive teenager to run away with him to a glamorous new life. Instead, Graham uses her as cruelly as a silent-picture villain. Taking charge of her life, she makes it to Hollywood. Six years later, Blanche has transformed into the celebrated Bianca LaBelle, the reclusive star of a series of adventure films, and Peyton's remains are discovered on a Santa Monica beach. Is there a connection?

Perhaps the best place in 1943 Hollywood to see the stars is the Hollywood Canteen, a club for servicemen staffed exclusively by those in show business. Murder mystery playwright Annie Laurence, new in town after a devastating breakup, definitely hopes to rub elbows with the right stars. Maybe then she can get her movie made. But Hollywood proves to be more than tinsel and glamour. When despised film critic Fiona Farris is found dead in the Canteen kitchen, Annie realizes any one of the Canteen's luminous volunteers could be guilty of the crime.

When local baseball player Junior Jones receives death threats over the color of his skin, the team's wealthy owner hires Sam Rockwell to solve the case and stop a murder before it happens. Sam goes undercover as a minor league pitcher to strike out the culprit. Follow the clues along with Sam's curmudgeonly ghost of a father Frank Rockwell, and Sam's wife Amelia, who holds a secret that will forever change the lives of the entire Rockwell family. It's another laugh-filled, madcap mystery in the warm, witty 1950's Hollywood-style of author Jason Anspach.

Before I Die: Or Trapped in 1937 Hollywood is the story of Thomas Trueman, a writer of fiction novels who finds himself sucked into a dark hole/wormhole and tossed back in time to 1937 Hollywood. A covert team of government scientists secretly attempts to find a way to bring him back to his correct timeline. And a television paranormal investigator assisted by a local police detective partner together to solve his mysterious disappearance.

Spinster Nettie Soards goes missing. Ten days later her body is found in Dead Man’s Canyon, and the next day an unidentified man is found dead not far away. The coroner rules spinster died accidentally from falling off a cliff and dead man was shot through the heart. Reports in the newspapers disagree with the coroner’s verdict about the cause of death for Miss Soards and his dismissal of further investigation into the death of the identified man. Outraged by the coroner’s decision, Maisy Malone and her best friend Mabel Normand decide to look into the spinster’s death.

Hollywood, 1947. Jack Shannon, a former actor whose promising career was interrupted by the war and ended by a facial scar sustained in combat, is now a studio publicist. He jokes that the only thing he knows about publicity is how to suppress it, but that, in fact, is his real job. He’s a fixer who babysits the studio’s stars and covers up their bad behavior. Everything changes for Jack when Savannah Stevens enters his life.

It’s 1955, and Hollywood’s Golden Age is in full swing. Lily Valentine never ventured far from the Missouri farm town where she grew up, unlike her older, headstrong sister Iris, who set out for Tinseltown the first chance she got. When Iris gets a job at Desilu Studios, she draws Lily to Hollywood with the promise of introducing her to the biggest star on television. Together, Lily and her best friend Dawna Parker arrive in Hollywood with little more than their suitcases and a promise to Lily’s dying grandmother to return a long-lost piece of family history to Lucille Ball.

Costumer Joey Jessop is working on a movie set in 1930s Hollywood and starring two of the world’s biggest stars. The male lead is also a dedicated social activist, and the female lead, Gillian Best, is known for her lifestyle brand. After a hit-and-run near the set, Joey realizes that the car involved belongs to Gillian, and she begins to wonder if the actress has more to hide than her Botox appointments. Her suspicions deepen when Gillian’s personal assistant, Rita, vows to get revenge for Gillian replacing her and is found dead shortly after.

Los Angeles 1986: When Deirdre Unger makes the drive from San Diego to Beverly Hills to help her father put his dilapidated house on the market, she is expecting to deal with his usual kvetching and dark moods. But in a cruel Sunset Boulevard-ian twist, Deirdre arrives home to find her father face down in his too-small swimming pool—dead. At first, Deirdre assumes her father's death was a tragic accident. But the longer she stays in town the more Deirdre begins to suspect that this is merely the third act in a story that has long been in the making.

Newlyweds Cora and Archie set out on their honeymoon to Los Angeles in 1926. A Londoner, Archie has a love for American films, especially if they include archeology, his specialty. Cora’s passions are adventure and jumping in with both feet. During a tour of a movie studio, Cora gets the harebrained idea for Archie to use his amateur acting skills to pretend he is a famous English actor in order to finagle an in-depth tour of the studio. While touring an active movie set for a western film, they witness an actor walk off the set, leaving the director in a bind.

Ein Juwelendiebstahl, ein Hollywood-Drama und ein (beinahe) filmreifer Tod, Nach Amerika führt der neue Cosy-Krimi von New-York-Times-Bestsellerautorin Rhys Bowen. England, 1934. Lady Georgies Mutter hört wieder einmal Hochzeitsglocken. Alles scheint perfekt im Leben der schönen Schauspielerin, wäre da nicht ihr letzter Ehemann, von dem sie sich zuerst scheiden lassen muss. Deshalb reist sie zusammen mit Georgie kurzerhand nach Amerika, um einen Strich unter ihre vorherige Ehe zu setzen.

It’s Christmastime, but one old movie studio watchman won’t be celebrating. It’s now up to two patrolmen to solve the case in this murder mystery set in 1943 Hollywood. Murder On Santa Claus Lane was adapted from a pulp-fiction story by William G. Bogart, first appearing in G-Men Detective magazine.