The Chrysanthemum Palace

The Chrysanthemum Palace
Author: Bruce Wagner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2013-03-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439129398

The Chrysanthemum Palace introduces Bertie Krohn, the only child of Perry Krohn, creator of TV's longest running space opera, Starwatch: The Navigators (which counts Jennifer Aniston and Donald Rumsfeld among its obsessed fans). Bertie recounts the story of the last months in the lives of his two companions: Thad Michelet, author, actor, and son of a literary titan; and Clea Freemantle, emotionally fragile daughter of a legendary movie star, long dead. Scions of entertainment greatness, they call themselves the Three Musketeers; between them, as Bertie says, "there was more than enough material to bring psychoanalysis back into vogue." As the incestuous clique attempts to scale the peaks claimed by their sacred yet monstrous parents over a two-week filming of a Starwatch episode in which they costar, Bertie scrupulously chronicles their highs and lows -- as well as their futile struggles against the ravenous, narcissistic, Convulsive and poignant, The Chrysanthemum Palace is a tragic tale of friendship and fate writ large -- a tour de force by a major writer whose narrative delivers devastating emotional impact.

The Chrysanthemum Palace

The Chrysanthemum Palace
Author: Bruce Wagner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2005
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

The New York Times Book Review has compared Bruce Wagner's prose to 'some unholy combination of Rick Moody, Anthony Lane, and the gossip columnist Richard Johnson.' Now, this quintessential L.A. storyteller spins his most ambitious and moving novel to date: a philosophical, heartbreaking tale of three friends lost in a California dream gone mad. THE CHRYSANTHEMUM PALACE introduces one Bertie Krohn, the only child of Perry Krohn, creator of TV's longest running space opera, Starwatch. Bertie recounts the story of the last months in the lives of his two friends: Thad Michelet, author, actor, and son of a literary titan; and Clea Freemantle, emotionally fragile daughter of a legendary film star. Scions of entertainment greatness, they call themselves the Three Musketeers. As they attempt to scale the peaks claimed by their sacred yet monstrous parents, Bertie chronicles their peculiar predicaments - as well as their futile struggle against the ravenous, narcissistic and addicted Hollywood that claims them. Convulsive and poignant, THE CHRYSANTHEMUM PALACE is a tragic tale of friendship and fate writ large - a tour de force by a brilliant writer whose storytelling delivers devastating emotional impact.

Princess Masako

Princess Masako
Author: Ben Hills
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2006-12-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1101216107

The tragic true story of Japan's Crown Princess-with a new afterword by the author. It's the fantasy of many young women: marry a handsome prince, move into a luxurious palace, and live happily ever after. But that's not how it turned out for Masako Owada. Ben Hills's fascinating portrait of Princess Masako and the Chrysanthemum Throne draws on research in Tokyo and rural Japan, at Oxford and Harvard, and from more than sixty interviews with Japanese, American, British, and Australian sources-many of whom have never spoken publicly before-shedding light on the royal family's darkest secrets, secrets that can never be openly discussed in Japan because of the reverence in which the emperor and his family are held. But most of all, this is a story about a love affair that went tragically wrong. The paperback edition will contain a new afterword by the author, discussing the impact this book had in Japan, where it was banned.

The Chrysanthemum Trilogy

The Chrysanthemum Trilogy
Author: Marshall E. Gass
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2014-04-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1493137859

Albert Manners is magnetised by the power, wealth and wisdom can bring. A descendant of poor immigrants, he works hard to build an empire that spans twenty countries. Power corrupts him with infidelity, arrogance, greed, and recklessness. Angelique, his wife, conquers loneliness and frustration with illicit affairs and an illegitimate child. Their only son, Mikhail, inherits paranoia and suspicion and is intent on erasing his fathers fortitude and resilience with his own brand of impotent management. The conflict that follows disintegrates the family in different directions and brings the company Chrysanthemum Coronet Inc., the company his father founded into disrepute. Who emerges from an unexpected quarter to take over the Company? Read the gripping story of wasted fortunes and follow Carol Markham as she discovers how the mantle of maturity finally comes to rest on her shoulders. Every page promises to keep you on this journey, right down to the last page. The Chrysanthemum Trilogy: Transition is the first part of a race from construction to destruction to reconstruction. From tragedy comes triumph. Or does it?

Still Holding

Still Holding
Author: Bruce Wagner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2013-03-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439129673

If there's an even darker side to Hollywood than the one America is familiar with, Bruce Wagner has found it. A twenty-first-century Nathanael West, he has been hailed for his powerful prose, his Swiftian satire, and the scalpel-sharp wit that has, in each of his novels, dissected and sometimes disemboweled Hollywood excess. Now, in his most ambitious book to date, Still Holding, the third in the Cellular Trilogy that began with I'm Losing You and I'll Let You Go, Wagner immerses readers in post-September 11 Hollywood, revealing as much rabid ambition, rampant narcissism, and unchecked mental illness as ever. It is a scabrous, epiphanic, sometimes horrifying portrait of an entangled community of legitimate stars, delusional wanna-bes, and psychosociopaths. Wagner infiltrates the gilded life of a superstar actor/sex symbol/practicing Buddhist, the compromised world of a young actress whose big break comes when she's hired to play a corpse on Six Feet Under, and the strange parallel universe of look-alikes -- an entire industry in which struggling actors are hired out for parties and conventions to play their famous counterparts. Alternately hilarious and heartfelt, ferocious and empathetic, Still Holding is Bruce Wagner's most expertly calibrated work.

I Met Someone

I Met Someone
Author: Bruce Wagner
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2016-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0399184007

I Met Someone is the story of Academy Award–winning actress Dusty Wilding, her wife Allegra, a long-lost daughter, and the unspeakable secret hidden beneath the glamour of their lavish, carefully calibrated celebrity life. After Allegra suffers a miscarriage, Dusty embarks on a search for the daughter she lost at age sixteen, and uncovers the answer to a question that has haunted her for decades. With masterful suspense, Bruce Wagner moves among the perspectives of his characters, revealing their individual trauma and the uncanny connections to one another’s past lives. I Met Someone plummets the reader down a rabbit hole of the human psyche, with Wagner’s remarkable insights into our collective obsession with great wealth and fame, and surprises with unimaginable plot turns and unexpected fate. Alternately tender, shocking, and poetic, this is Wagner’s most captivating and affecting novel yet.

The Dragon King's Palace

The Dragon King's Palace
Author: Laura Joh Rowland
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2007-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429908475

Once again, Laura Joh Rowland's dazzling combination of history and storytelling draws us into a sumptuous and treacherous world, in The Dragon King's Palace. On a whim of the shogun's mother, a procession has left the sweltering heat of Edo, bound for the cooler climate of Mount Fuji. Among her traveling companions are Reiko, the beautiful wife of Sano Ichiro, the shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People; Reiko's friend Midori, nine months pregnant; and Lady Yanagisawa, the deranged wife of the shogun's powerful second-in-command. None of them look forward to the trip. But their troubles have only begun when their procession is stopped suddenly on a deserted road. The entire retinue is viciously slaughtered and the four women are bound and taken away, imprisoned by a mysterious kidnapper. Sano now finds himself faced with the most important case of his career. The shogun demands quick action, and under the threat of death, Sano is forced to work with his bitter enemies---Chamberlain Yanagisawa and Police Commissioner Hoshina. The women are in imminent danger, and the delivery of a ransom note only complicates matters---forcing both Sano and Reiko to take desperate measures.

Force Majeure

Force Majeure
Author: Bruce Wagner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2024-11-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1648210546

Force Majeure was called a “smashing debut novel” by the Kirkus Reviews upon its original publication in 1991. A sardonic and absurdly dark, yet hilarious take on the “business as usual” of Hollywood’s twisted class system that proved Bruce Wagner was not just an author, but a cultural anthropologist. The perpetually up-and-coming Hollywood screenwriter, Bud Wiggins, drifts aimlessly in and out of the lives of others and from one script idea to another. Moonlighting as a limo driver to pay his bills, he finds himself immersed in a world of vanity and degradation. Wagner infuses his novel with the familiar archetypical characters of Hollywood—a nihilistic producer, an aging film star, an obnoxious mogul—and exposes the madness that drives them all.