8 Fascinating Books That Will Take You to Hollywood's Golden Age

Old Hollywood is so fascinating with its flashing lights, silent movies, original cinema stars, fame, and controversy. See our selection below if you enjoy reading about glitz and glamour. You’ll be enthralled by these 8 books inspired by the bygone golden period of Hollywood, which range from daring historical fiction to memoirs by celebrities who graced those early films.

The Blue Butterfly

Leslie Johansen Nack

New York 1915, Marion Davies is a shy eighteen-year-old beauty dancing on the Broadway stage when she meets William Randolph Hearst and finds herself captivated by his riches, passion and desire to make her a movie star. Following a whirlwind courtship, she learns through trial and error to live as Hearst’s mistress when a divorce from his wife proves impossible.

A baby girl is born in secret in 1919 and they agree to never acknowledge her publicly as their own. In a burgeoning Hollywood scene, she works hard making movies while living a lavish partying life that includes a secret love affair with Charlie Chaplin.

Release Date: May 3, 2022

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The Second Life of Mirielle West

Amanda Skenandore

Based on the true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West brings vividly to life the Louisiana institution known as Carville, where thousands of people were stripped of their civil rights, branded as lepers, and forcibly quarantined throughout the entire 20th century.

For Mirielle West, a 1920’s socialite married to a silent film star, the isolation and powerlessness of the Louisiana Leper Home is an unimaginable fall from her intoxicatingly chic life.

Release Date: July 27, 2021

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When She Dreams

Amanda Quick

Maggie Lodge, assistant to the reclusive advice columnist known only as Dear Aunt Cornelia to her readers, hires down-but-not-quite-out private eye Sam Sage to help track down the person who is blackmailing her employer. Maggie and Sam are a mismatched pair. As far as Sam is concerned, Maggie is reckless and in over her head. She is not what he had in mind for a client, but he can’t afford to be choosy. Maggie, on the other hand, is convinced that Sam is badly in need of guidance and good advice. She does not hesitate to give him both. In spite of the verbal fireworks between them, they are fiercely attracted to each other, but each is convinced it would be a mistake to let passion take over.

Release Date: May 3, 2022

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Inventing the It Girl

Hilary A. Hallett

Unlike typical romances, which end with wedding bells, Elinor Glyn’s (1864–1943) story really began after her marriage up the social ladder and into the English gentry class in 1892. Born in the Channel Islands, Elinor Sutherland, like most Victorian women, aspired only to a good match. But when her husband, Clayton Glyn, gambled their fortune away, she turned to her pen and boldly challenged the era’s sexually straightjacketed literary code with her notorious succes de scandale, Three Weeks (1907). An intensely erotic tale about an unhappily married woman’s sexual education of her young lover, the novel got Glyn banished from high society but went on to sell millions.

Release Date: July 26, 2022

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Speaking of Harpo

Susan Fleming Marx

Susan Fleming appeared in three Broadway shows and twenty-eight films before she turned her back on a show business career she never really enjoyed or wanted. The role of her lifetime came when she married Harpo Marx in 1936. Together, they raised four adopted children and enjoyed one of Hollywood’s happiest and most successful unions. But their twenty-year age difference made Susan a young widow in 1964.

On her path to Hollywood, Susan worked in Broadway musicals produced by Florenz Ziegfeld and George White and befriended a young dancer who would later be known as Paulette Goddard.

Release Date: July 15, 2022

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Thank Your Lucky Stars

Martin Turnbull

After waving her sweetheart, Luke, off to war, Nell Davenport encounters an unexpected entanglement that will change Hollywood forever. With combat raging across Europe and the Pacific, jobs of all kinds are now open to women on the home front. Nell sets her sights on the publicity department of the Warner Bros. movie studios as she develops a surprising bond with Humphrey Bogart.

But when a captivating 19-year-old is cast opposite Bogie in To Have and Have Not, the newcomer’s arrival will alter the course of Nell’s blossoming friendship. When momentous news arrives, Nell must track down Luke—a seemingly impossible feat in wartime.

Release Date: June 18, 2022

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Miss del Río

Bárbara Mujica

1910, Mexico. As the country’s revolution spreads, Dolores, the daughter of a wealthy banker, must flee her comfortable life in Durango or risk death. Her family settles in Mexico City, where, at sixteen, she marries the worldly Jaime del Río. But in a twist of fate, at a party she meets an influential American director who recognizes in her a natural performer. He invites her to Hollywood, and practically overnight, the famous Miss del Río is born.

Dolores’s star quickly rises, and her days become a whirlwind of moviemaking and glamorous events. Swept up in L.A.’s glitzy inner circle, she takes her place.

Release Date: October 4, 2022

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A Front Row Seat

Nancy Olson Livingston

From her idyllic childhood in the American Midwest to her Oscar–nominated performance in Sunset Boulevard (1950) and the social circles of New York and Los Angeles, actress Nancy Olson Livingston has lived abundantly. In her memoir, A Front Row Seat, Livingston treats readers to an intimate, charming chronicle of her life as an actress, wife, and mother, and her memories of many of the most notable figures and moments of her time.

Entertaining and engrossing, A Front Row Seat deftly interweaves Livingston’s life with her observations of the artists, celebrities.

Release Date: November 22, 2022

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