"You simply have to love show business to make the risk worthwhile."
~Sarah Vaughan
Hollywood writers and performers may be on strike, but that hasn’t stopped the publishing world from giving us show biz stories. If you need a theater fix, here are 8 novels and biographies that will satisfy your urge for theater time.
All you need is the popcorn.
Fiction
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
A comedy writer thinks she's sworn off love, until a dreamy pop star flips the script on all her assumptions.
Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch
Debut novelist Lindsay Lynch brings the golden age of Hollywood to glittering life, from star-studded opening nights to backlot brawls, on-location Westerns to the Hollywood Canteen.
The Brightest Star by Gail Tsukiyama
A magnificent historical novel based on the life of the luminous, groundbreaking actress Anna May Wong--the first and only Asian American woman to gain movie stardom in the early days of Hollywood.
The Spectacular by Fiona Davis
A thrilling story about love, sacrifice, and the pursuit of dreams, set amidst the glamour and glitz of Radio City Music Hall in its mid-century heyday.
Biographies
True West: Sam Shepard's Life, Work and Times by Robert Greenfield
A revelatory biography of the world-famous playwright and actor Sam Shepard, whose work was matched by his equally dramatic life.
Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman by Alan Rickman
Madly, Deeply is a rare invitation into the mind of Alan Rickman--one of the most magnetic, beloved performers of our time.
by Mary Rogers and Jesse Green
Both an eyewitness report from the golden age of American musical theater and a tale of a woman striving for a meaningful life, Shy is, above all, a chance to sit at the feet of the kind of woman they don’t make anymore—and never did. They make themselves.
The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary May by Paul Newman
The raw, candid, unvarnished memoir of an American icon. The greatest movie star of the past 75 years covers everything: his traumatic childhood, his drinking, his thoughts on acting, his greatest roles, and his most famous contemporaries, his intimate life with Joanne Woodward, his innermost fears and passions and joys.