Stars Screaming

"A cross between The Player, The Day of the Locust, and Sunset Boulevard . . . A gritty, bizarre, yet all-too-believable Tinseltown epic." — Detour   Ray Burk is a disillusioned network censor struggling to break into the business as a screenwriter. But it's the drama of his personal life that occupies him most—as his unbalanced wife Sandra and neglected son grow more and more detached from the real world. Trying to make sense of it all, Burk spends days on marathon drives through Los Angeles, cruising from one idea to the next in hopes of making it rich.   Then Ray crosses paths with a young victim of a Hollywood dream turned nightmare. Her story is one of vengeance and dark secrets, and Ray can't resist its infernal pull. But in a world of make-believe, his descent into the twilight underworld of the City of Angels may be too real to escape.   Taking us beyond the shimmering marquees of Hollywood into back streets strewn with the fallout of fame and fortune, " Stars Screaming is an astonishing debut. I couldn't put it down" (Anne Lamott, New York Times–bestselling author of Hallelujah Anyway).