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The Original: A Novel by Priya Parmar
In her latest offering, Priya Parmar affirms her skill with biographical novels and again succeeds in rendering a famous life in a style suited to the subject and the era. Katharine Houghton Hepburn’s earliest years in the midst of an elite family of progressives, eccentrics, and suicides reveal her stubborn sense of self, her boyishness, and the demons that plague her after leaving an uncomfortable Connecticut nest. Scarred by her brother’s death—self-inflicted, apparently caused by a crisis of sexual identity—she closes herself off even as she performs on the on the New York stage and weds the devoted and accommodating Luddy Smith, insurance salesman. Her marital status doesn’t preclude a relationship with wealthy Laura Harding, nor prevent her accepting a contract from David Selznick of RKO, although she maintains secrecy about her East Coast husband. Establishing herself in Hollywood challenges her nonconformist tendencies.
Though Kate is the primary focus of Parmar’s lens, it is the perspectives and experiences of others that reveal parallel themes of presentation and performance. Cary Grant, born Archie Leach from Bristol, England, a motherless escape artist, co-habits with fellow film actor Randolph Scott. To preserve their rising careers, both must conceal the true nature of the bachelorhood except with similarly closeted friends like director George Cukor—and Kate, who allows Laura to move in. Irene Mayer Selznick, daughter of one movie mogul and wife of another, is more perceptive than the powerful showmen she orbits. Agent Leland Hayward grapples with the management of Hepburn, his capricious client. Ultimately, aviator Howard Hughes enters the picture, an icon of flight who strive to tie Kate down, at a time when she becomes anathema to cinema audiences.
Brilliantly conceived and executed, an illuminating take on the Hollywood’s Golden Age, and the actress who was determined to manipulate her own existence and career, even at the cost of her popularity. (Ballantine, hardcover/ebook/audio, 384 pp., April 2026)
The Chateau on Sunset by Natasha Lester
In the late 1950s, the loss of both parents in a fire pitches young Aria Jones into the unique environment of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, where she joins Devine Rey, her movie actress aunt. She befriends and is befriended by a pair of starlets, Calliope Burns and Flitter Reeve, and becomes wary of Bob Ashenhurst, the king of the hotel and by reputation, all of Hollywood, whose sister died by jumping out of the turret. Seven years later, in the swinging 60s, deprived of her aunt’s companionship by drug dependence, Aria learns of the hotel’s purchase by world-famous singer-guitarist and recovering addict Theo Winchester. By hoarding her babysitting money, she had nearly accrued enough to fund her escape from near-confinement to the Chateau and neighboring Schwab’s. Despite her initial dislike of the new proprietor, in exchange for a salary and permission for her aunt to retain resident privileges, she volunteers herself as caretaker to his teenaged presumed daughter Adele, just one instance of the novel’s appropriation of Jane Eyre themes. Theo’s dog, like Mr. Rochester’s, is called Pilot. Fire breaks out in Theo’s bedroom. Aria, like Jane, encounters a fortune-teller.
As in the Bronte novel, romance develops between the sheltered young woman and the experienced, world-weary employer. When not lounging beside the pool or dashing off to parties, Calliope and Flitter pursue stardom, like so many Hollywood hopefuls, and one of them attains it. Meanwhile, in each of the novel’s timelines, mysteries swirl within the hotel. Aria harbors secret knowledge that makes her a target of malice and danger. There is a thwarted wedding. And a director is planning a film adaptation of Jane Eyre. But a betrayal of her trust forces Aria’s flight from California to Italy, where she forges a new future by exploiting aspects of her past. In so doing, she is able to support a friend, settle old scores, and battle the misogyny and predation endured by Hollywood actresses.
An engaging story with a well-earned resolution. A few anachronisms pop up in the 1960s chapters, but overall this is an entertaining read populated with vivid and memorable characters. (Ballantine, paperback/ebook/audio, 384 pp., June 2026)
Rules of the Heart by Janice Hadlow
This historical novel based on the tortured liaison between Harriet, Countess of Bessborough and her longtime lover Lord Granville Leweson-Gore could more accurately be titled Ruled by the Heart. The younger daughter of Lord and Lady Spencer (Princess Diana’s ancestors), she appropriately married another aristocrat—at that time possessing the title Viscount Duncannon but prematurely referred to as Lord Bessborough. As his wife she endured a rocky relationship that included his excessive gambling and increasing indebtedness, temper tantrums, insults, and accusations of infidelity. In her unhappiness, Harriet was susceptible to her admirer Richard Sheridan and others. Eventually, after her recovery from severe illness, she and her husband enter into a calmer period, but one devoid of the passionate, reciprocal love that Harriet longs to experience. During a stay in Naples to restore her health, she meets the handsome and attentive and much younger Lord Granville, ambitious and impecunious. Attracted to her, he makes no secret of his intentions, which she rebuffs in Italy, and after their return to England. The effect of his good looks and his blue eyes and the intensity of his passion overcomes her reluctance and her dread of more scandal. She enters into a long and harrowing affair destined to cause as much—if not more—agony than happiness.
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