The Harpy

The year is 1924 and young Clifton Henry has ventured to Hollywood from Texas, with stops along the way at the Battle of the Argonne, the Jazz clubs of Paris and the footlights of Broadway. But his year in Tinseltown has produced little to show for it, except for a couple of minor roles in Basil Montrose films.

Things begin to look up when Basil takes him to an Alla Nazimova party at her famous 'Garden of Allah'. It's there he meets the recluse Rose McQueen, better known to her audience as 'The Harpy', titular star of the #1 film of 1916. The night gets better as Rose insists on his company for the evening, introducing him to stars and clinging to his arm. At the party's end she leads him upstairs for a night of pleasure.

What starts off as routine quickly becomes anything but, as Rose convinces Clifton to star in a short film with her: a 'stag' film devoted solely to Rose's pleasure. Later that week she invites him to a film premiere in her mansion in Beverly Hills, a premiere that only the most elite of Hollywood attend by invitation, and only a select few can afford to pay the ticket price.

Clifton's star will begin a meteoric rise the more he submits to the whims and direction of Rose. But when he finally lands the lead in a major motion picture, will he be able to leave the clutches of Hollywood's premiere purveyor of carnal desires or will he submit once and for all to the possession of The Harpy?

"In terms of narrative and storytelling, you.. have an incredibly powerful historical romance with all the tension and thrills of the era... Barrett knows how to craft convincing characters, and he knows how to tell a story. He draws the reader into the Jazz Age, invites us into Hollywood, and leaves us almost shocked every time we close the book and return to the present."