Debut novel about a 1904 Hollywood feature picture that never got finished, its evil secret, and the tragic consequences for the film’s present-day producers — including wisecracking copywriter-heroine Binnie Bernhardt — who are all trying to bring the film to light, keep their grip on unimaginable power, and make real life act like a story.
In this multi-era historical novel, present-day ad copywriter Binnie Bernhardt, stalled in her career and unlucky in love, gets a career-changing development assignment at Paramount Studios. In typical romantic, unhinged Binnie fashion, she falls for the film’s 1904 Hollywood, New York and Berlin backdrops, not to mention its cast of characters, who are trying to: 1) make the first American feature picture and 2) perfect poison gas for the upcoming first world war. Except, not everyone knows about (2).
Even after a producer s murdered and the Paramount project falls apart, Binnie’s post-Paramount life brings her back to the locations of City of the Sun and the characters she can’t seem to let go of — all by way of a copywriting job in Berlin that has an ingenious method of revenge for Germany’s war crimes built into the job description.
As the story careens from corporate playgrounds to iconic film studios to ancient mansions, its spectacular disasters, often as funny as they are heartbreaking, are the essence of City of the Sun.
City of the Sun is about the picture business, but not the one we all know. The one before the beginning, when Hollywood was just empty sunlight and no one knew how to fill a screen. It’s about how pictures get made. And unmade. About who gets to tell a story and what has to be done to become that person. It’s about the true European aristocrats. The erotic glamor of corporate life. The sick appeal of murder. The dark heart in the back seat of a Mercedes S-Class 500. And the unquenchable lust for a great story.
- ISBN10 1685891756
- ISBN13 9781685891756
- Publish Date 11 February 2025
- Publish Status Forthcoming
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Melville House Publishing
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 320
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781685891756