The Garden on Sunset - Martin Turnbull

HOLLYWOOD...as seen through the eyes of its most infamous garden. When Marcus Adler's father runs him out of Pennsylvania, he can think of only one place to go: 8152 Sunset Boulevard, the home of luminous silent screen star Alla Nazimova, who visited him on his sickbed when he was a child. But when Marcus gets to Hollywood, Madame Nazimova's home has been converted to a hotel. Marcus checks into The Garden of Allah and starts his new life. He soon finds friends in Kathryn Massey, who ran away from her overbearing stage mother to become a journalist, and Gwendolyn Brick, a hopeful actress from the Other Hollywood-Hollywood, Florida-who wants to try her luck in Glitter City. The three naive hopefuls band together to tread water against a tidal wave of threadbare casting couches, nervous bootleggers, human billboards, round-the-world zeppelins, sinking gambling boats, waiters in blackface, William Randolph Hearst, the Long Beach earthquake, starlets, harlots, Harlows and Garbos. But how will they get their feet inside Hollywood's golden door? THE GARDEN ON SUNSET is the first in a series of novels following Marcus, Kathryn and Gwendolyn as they leap and lurch, win and lose their way through Hollywood's golden years. If you love Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City books, you'll want to get lost in The Garden of Allah.