About The Garden on Sunset:
Have you ever wanted to climb into a time machine and visit Hollywood during its heyday?
Right before talking pictures slug Tinsel Town in the jaw, a luminous silent screen star converts her private estate into the Garden of Allah Hotel. The lush grounds soon become a haven for Hollywood hopefuls to meet, drink, and revel through the night. George Cukor is in the pool, Tallulah Bankhead is at the bar, and Scott Fitzgerald is sneaking off to a bungalow with Sheilah Graham while Madame Alla Nazimova keeps watch behind her lace curtains.
But the real story of the Garden of Allah begins with its first few residents, three kids on the brink of something big.
Marcus Adler has a lot to prove after his father catches him and the police chief’s son with their pants down. He flees Pennsylvania for Hollywood with his mouth shut and his eyes open, and begins to write the lines all those starlets will say out loud. Can a smart, sensitive guy find his own voice in a town that’s just learning to talk?
Kathryn Massey’s childhood was a grinding routine of auditions, but she couldn’t care less about being a movie star. When she takes off with her typewriter, determined to become a newspaper reporter, she finds that breaking into the boys’ club is tougher than breaking free of her bossy mother. To make it in this town, she’ll need some serious moxie.
Gwendolyn Brick is a sweet Southern beauty who’s come a long way to try her luck on the big screen. She’s hoping the same succulent lips the guys want to kiss will land her more than a bit part on a casting couch. She’s going to need some help keeping everyone in line.
Nobody gets a free pass in Hollywood, but a room at the Garden on Sunset can get your foot in the door.
The Garden on Sunset is the first in Martin Turnbull’s series of historical novels set during Hollywood’s golden age.
Hollywood’s Garden of Allah novels:
Book 1 – “The Garden on Sunset”
Book 2 – “The Trouble with Scarlett”
Book 3 – “Citizen Hollywood”
Book 4 – “Searchlights and Shadows”
Book 5 – “Reds in the Beds”
Martin Turnbull’s Garden of Allah novels have been optioned for the screen by film & television producer, Tabrez Noorani.
Buy the book, and follow the author on social media:
Learn more about the writer. Visit the Author’s Website.
Buy the Book On Amazon.
Visit the Facebook Fan Page.
Visit the Twitter page.
Author Bio:
Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Martin Turnbull moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s where, after a long stint in the travel industry, he worked as a private tour guide showing both locals and out-of-towners the movie studios, Beverly Hills mansions, Hollywood hills vistas, and where all the bodies are buried.
He worked for a summer as a guide at the Warner Bros. movie studios in Burbank showing movie fans through the sound stages where Bogie and Bacall, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, and James Cagney created some of Hollywood’s classic motion pictures.
For nine years, he also volunteered as an historical walking tour docent with the Los Angeles Conservancy.
From an early age, Martin was enchanted with old movies from Hollywood’s golden era, and has spent many a happy hour watching the likes of Garland, Gable, Crawford, Garbo, Grant, Miller, Kelly, Astaire, Rogers, Turner, and Welles go through their paces.
When he discovered the wonderful world of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs, his love of reading merged with his love of movies and his love of history to produce a three-headed hydra gobbling up everything in his path.
In 2009, he came across an online article about the Garden of Allah Hotel, which stood at the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights Boulevards at the start of the Sunset Strip from 1927—the dawn of the talkies—to 1959—the dusk of the studio system. He recognized it as a potentially rich field for storytelling, and was amazed to discover nobody had done anything with it. Almost immediately, he conceived writing a series of novels set in and around the Garden of Allah chronicling the unfolding evolution of Hollywood’s golden era through the lives of its residents.
In 2012 he published the first book, The Garden on Sunset.
A year later, he released the follow-up, The Trouble with Scarlett
In 2013 he published book three, Citizen Hollywood.
In 2015 he published the 4th book in the Holywood’s Garden of Allah series: Searchlights and Shadows, set in and around Los Angeles and Hollywood during WWII.
In 2016, he published The 5th book in the series – Reds in the Beds , which is set against the post-war era of anti-Communist hysteria and resulting infamous blacklist.