The Day of the Locust is a novel about Hollywood and its corrupting touch, about the American dream turned into a sun-drenched California nightmare.

Nathanael West's Hollywood is not the glamorous "home of the stars" but a seedy world of little people, some hopeful, some despairing, all twisted by their own desires. From the ironically romantic artist narrator, to a macho movie cowboy, a middle-aged innocent from America's heartland, and the hard-as-nails call girl would-be-star whom they all lust after.

An unforgettable portrayal of a world that mocks the real and rewards the sham, turns its back on love to plunge into empty sex, and breeds a savage violence that is its own undoing, this novel stands as a classic indictment of all that is most extravagant and uncontrolled in American life.

Standing up for what you believe in is hard for any teenager in the battleground known as high school. It's even harder in the world of Hollywood, which is where sixteen-year-old June Laurie dreams of being.

Thanks to the constant training from her agent/grandmother and the support of her best friend Joseph, June is positive she's ready. But is an innocent little Mormon girl like June ever really ready to be cast as the love interest for the country's hottest star, Lukas Leighton?

When June lands a role in Hollywood's most popular crime drama, Forensic Faculty, she finds herself caught off-guard by the fast-paced world of tabloids and paparazzi, and swept off her feet by her gorgeous co-star.

Now June must decide what she's willing to give up to achieve the title of Hollywood starlet—or more importantly, what's too sacred to lose.

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.

Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

Blonde is a fictional recreation of the life of the iconic Marilyn Monroe. This novel recounts the tale of her rise to stardom, offering a unique perspective from Marilyn's own point of view.

Joyce Carol Oates boldly reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker—the child, the woman, the fated celebrity, and idolized blonde the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe. In a voice startlingly intimate and rich, Norma Jeane tells her own story of an emblematic American artist—intensely conflicted and driven—who had lost her way.

A powerful portrait of Hollywood’s myth and an extraordinary woman’s heartbreaking reality, Blonde is a sweeping epic that pays tribute to the elusive magic and devastation behind the creation of the great 20th-century American star.

Los Angeles is all about the sweet life: hot clubs, cute guys, designer...everything. Nineteen-year-old Jane Roberts can't wait to start living it up. She may be in L.A. for an internship, but Jane plans to play as hard as she works, and has enlisted her BFF Scarlett to join in the fun.

When Jane and Scarlett are approached by a producer who wants them to be on his new series, a "reality version of Sex and the City", they can hardly believe their luck. Their own show? Yes, please!

Soon Jane is TV's hottest star. Fame brings more than she ever imagined possible for a girl from Santa Barbara—free designer clothes, the choicest tables at the most exclusive clubs, invites to Hollywood premieres—and she's lapping up the VIP treatment with her eclectic entourage of new pals.

But those same friends who are always up for a wild night are also out for a piece of Jane's spotlight. In a city filled with people chasing their dreams, it's not long before Jane wakes up to the reality that everyone wants something from her, and nothing is what it seems to be.

Toby Temple is a superstar, the world's funniest man. He gets any woman that he wants, but under the superstar image is a lonely man. Jill Castle is a sensuous starlet. She has a dark and mysterious past and an ambition even greater than Toby's. Together, they rule Hollywood.

From humble beginnings, Toby Temple became a superstar. Jill Castle found breaking into Hollywood as an actress impossible without auditioning on the directors' infamous casting couches. But, with one glance, Toby falls for Jill's beauty and sweeps her out of obscurity to stardom by his side.