Oscar Season » (Reprint)

Mary McNamara has worked for the Los Angeles Times for seventeen years, writing extensively about the inner workings of Hollywood. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children. The Starlet is her second novel.

Hollywood is about to get
its wake-up call.

Everyone goes a little crazy during Oscar Season — the campaigns, the parties, the seductions, the paybacks. Hollywood is never so cutthroat as it is at the turn of each year, when celebrities and their millions of fans across the globe begin their weeks-long, exclusive obsession with the Academy Awards. With so much money, so much power, so many egos, and so much to hide, how surprising is it when Industry players begin turning up dead?

At the heart of Los Angeles Times reporter Mary McNamara's novel, Oscar Season, is the Pinnacle Hotel, the hub of the Oscar maelstrom. Everyone who's anyone winds up under its luxe care and the watchful eye of its PR director, Juliette Greyson. When Juliette begins to suspect that conspiracy,nrather than coincidence, links what some are calling an Oscar Curse, more than just her job is threatened.

But this is Hollywood after all — and during Oscar season it's almost impossible to know what is real and what is staged. Even when it comes to murder. Who is lying and who is merely acting? When does murder stop being murder and start becoming really good publicity?

Erudite and whip smart, suspenseful and sexy, Oscar Season is the perfect read to sneak in between red carpet interviews.

Publishers Weekly

Agatha Christie meets Hollywood Squaresin journalist McNamara's glitzy debut, a crime novel set in and around Los Angeles during the weeks leading up to the Academy Awards. Juliette Greyson, the director of public relations at the swanky Pinnacle Hotel, is preparing for another wild Oscar season (the month between the nominations announcement and the awards ceremony) when someone murders her ex-husband, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Josh Singer. With a reporter and a young starlet nominated for best actress already dead, Greyson and cancer-ridden megastar Michael O'Connor join forces to uncover the mastermind behind what the media is calling the "Oscar curse." Featuring a plethora of self-absorbed actors, comedians, publicists and producers as possible suspects, McNamara's self-assured, tabloid-fueled narrative-simultaneously sexy, scandalous and suspenseful-will appeal to fans of authors like Jackie Collins and Harold Robbins. McNamara insightfully portrays life on the other side of the velvet rope-and it's far from glamorous. Gift bag with complimentary supply of Xanax not included. (Feb.)