All That Glitters

Description for ALL THAT GLITTERS by Thomas Tryon:

Like his best-selling CROWNED HEADS, this dazzling new book by Thomas Tryon brings together a group of brilliant novellas about Hollywood's great and near-great---characters whose real lives vie with their screen images in glamour, drama, and fascination. Here are five actresses who have in common the legendary agent (and lover) Frankie Adano, actresses whose lives come to stand for exalted success and desperate failure, for excess and illusion, for all the rituals of royal Hollywood:

BABE---the outrageous honky-tonk blonde whom Frankie discovers in a third-rate Broadway show and turns into the toast to two continents. Other stars come and go, tastes change, movies give way to TV, but Babe is eternal...

BELINDA---she went from an adorable kid star to a very gown-up sex goddess: a legend living out her life in newspaper headlines of scandal and disaster; a woman whom everybody loves---in one way or another...

APRIL---the beautiful young girl with the classic American looks who never even wanted to be an actress, let alone a star. Frankie's great love---and the greatest tragedy of his life...

MAUDE---the Grande Dame of the Early Days, now in her eighties, yet still possessed of the charm, beauty, and style that made her name an international byword and her home the rival of Pickfair. She's seen it all---but nothing has been so terrible as the drama of envy and rage that now centers on her movie-star daughter-in-law and her desperate granddaughter....

CLAIRE---the Star of Stars whose face, whose liaisons, whose legendary life, could easily stand for "Hollywood Movie Queen." She's lasted the longest, but now she's old, sick, ugly---and unforgiving.

Five women-each seductive in her own way, each a part of a world as glittering---and grimy---as anything we can (or can't) imagine, each consummately drawn by a writer whose own background as a leading Hollywood actor makes him the perfect teller of these rich and fascinating tales.