Unbridled Books
Unbridled Books

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined. - Mark Twain READ MORE

  • HOME
  • OUR BOOKS
  • AUTHOR EVENTS
  • OUR FAMILY
  • ABOUT US
  • CONTACT US

OUR BOOKS

See Complete On-Line Catalog"

Hollywood Boulevard

READER/BOOKSELLERS TOOLS

Take a look at our Bookseller Kits: marketing materials to help you display and/or to hand sell your favorite Unbridled titles, from reading guides to posters, and more!

Click here to download the Hollywood Boulevard Kit


Goodreads discussion LibraryThing discussion Shelfari discussion

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:

“In Janyce Stefan-Cole’s sure-handed debut, Tinseltown trickery animates an emotional journey that springs into a delectable suspense”  —V magazine

“A little bit quirky, a little bit noir…an intriguing crime novel with a pitch-perfect narration that sucks you right into the peculiar business that makes Hollywood what it is—and the equally peculiar business of finding one’s muse.”— Booklist

“Janyce Stefan-Cole has laced her witty, melancholy tale with Chandleresque bit players: philanderers, faded starlets, homicidal strippers and flouncy sex kittens. She knows how to tell a story. Read it to the end.”  — John Turturro, Actor, Director, Screenwriter

“The dialogue throughout the novel has the sharp edges of the dialogue of a Tarantino film, and Stefan-Cole cuts deftly from scene to scene. . . Hollywood Boulevard is itself an “architectural balancing act.” The intertwining of setting, character, and plot that constitutes this novel’s structure is a marvelous achievement. Taking on a milieu that—partly due to our fascination with films and our tabloid-fueled interest in the people who make them—is so much a part of our collective imagination, Stefan-Cole grasps the superficial celebrity skin of Hollywood and gives it a twist.” - Brooklyn Rail

Hollywood Boulevard is the finely wrought, noir-tinged tale of Ardennes Thrush, a “retired” movie actor. . . . [It] takes on L.A. culture and its real and metaphorical landscape with wit and conviction. . .  This novel is a page turner, more than anything because of the genuineness of the author’s own voice which gives endless satisfaction and propels the reader along with its consistently rich prose. A question haunting Ardennes is whether or not she should pursue her talent. In Janyce-Stefan Cole’s case, at least, the answer is a resounding yes and I can’t wait for more.— John Wynne, author of The Other World

JANYCE STEFAN-COLE

HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD

Ardennes Thrush is an award-winning movie star who suddenly and mysteriously quit acting at the height of her fame. She is in Hollywood now, at the Hotel Muse, visiting her husband Andre, a world-renowned director struggling through his latest film. Ardennes, a contemplative woman, is also something of a voyeur, and as she watches the comings and goings in the hotel she begins to fear that perhaps she is being stalked. Her period of anonymity ends after a box of dead roses is delivered to her suite. When a Beverly Hills detective comes to investigate, a powerful attraction turns unexpectedly unprofessional and quickly carnal.

When the stalker turns out to be real, Ardennes’s private journey escalates into real danger, and we watch rapt as she searches her past for the answer to how she brought herself here.

At once a noir novel and a psychological thriller, Hollywood Boulevard is the track of a very real emotional journey. With a deceptively simple style, the novel takes a compassionate look at a complicated character readers won’t be able to let go without regret.

BOOK INFORMATION

$25.95 / $26.95 CAN | Fiction Hardcover | 6x9 | 368 pages

April 2012

ISBN: 978-1-60953-075-4 | Carton Quantity: 24

EISBN: 978-1-60953-076-1

BUY NOW
BUY NOW



Barnes and Noble Buy Now

READ EXCERPT

See a Video Excerpt produced by RedCube pictures

The Hotel Muse is old by Hollywood measure, a nightclub originally, from the late forties, featuring acts better suited to a circus sideshow. The hotel was added later. Half way up the hill is the upper part where we are situated—modest cousin to the main hotel on the avenue. It’s the director’s whim that his wife and principal crew (mostly imports from the east coast) are installed up top, forming a kind of colony. Andre likes the availability of his people grouped together, but there are fewer amenities up top ... The lobby is small so most mornings internet users from uphill gather around the pool, rain or shine, chill or warm, huddling under patio umbrellas. I’ve noticed a number of German film types at breakfast.

They talked loudly on Skype as they pace, necks swathed in scarves, woolen caps pulled low. Andre’s quirks usually pay off. I like his crew, and the arty types up here, for once inheriting the earth—or the spectacular view, anyhow.

Our outsized, east-facing balcony overlooks a coral tree where wild green parrots squawk and screech each morning among the bright red flower petals. The landscape reminds me of the south of France, houses and villas tumbling steeply down the hills in a hodgepodge of styles, an architectural balancing act. The view to the right veers neurotically into L.A.’s urban sprawl and the sudden verticality of downtown. Straight ahead I can see the gray dome of the Griffith Observatory. On mornings when fog or the yellow brown curtain of smog lifts, the San Gabriel Mountains are visible, snow-capped and reassuring in the distance. Brown dotted hills segue into mountains in snow: urban and wild in the same snapshot.  I hear there are lions in those mountains. I look out each day and imagine the city living on borrowed time, that the earth under Hollywood will someday shift and shrug houses and people, the observatory, trees, birds, coyote, squirrels, cats, snakes and everyone’s dreams off the hills into the yawning abyss.

THE AUTHOR

Janyce Stefan-Cole

Janyce Stefan-Cole writes fiction, essay and freelance journalism. A finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, she is included in the Boston Globe bestselling anthology, Dick for a Day (Villard Books), The Healing Muse and Knock Literary Arts Magazine; a story will be published, January, 2012, in the Editions Bibliotekos anthology, Being Human: The Call of the Wild. A fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and resides with her husband in Brooklyn, NY, and Freedom, NH.

Author photo by Scott Neary.

AUTHOR LINKS

Janyce's Website

Janyce's Facebook Page

AUTHOR EVENTS

See all Unbridled Author Events


© Unbridled Books
2000 Wadsworth Blvd., #195, Lakewood, CO 80214
Email:
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Site Design:
Austin Computer