Delayed Rays of a Star

Named a most anticipated book of the summer by ELLE, USA Today, Thrillist, Kirkus, and LitHubA dazzling debut novel following the lives of three groundbreaking women—Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl—cinema legends who lit up the twentieth centuryAt a chance encounter at a Berlin soirée in 1928, the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captures three very different women together in one frame: up-and-coming German actress Marlene Dietrich, who would wend her way into Hollywood as one of its lasting icons; Anna May Wong, the world's first Chinese American star, playing for bit parts while dreaming of breaking away from her father's modest laundry; and Leni Riefenstahl, whose work as a director would first make her famous—then, infamous. From this curious point of intersection, Delayed Rays of a Star lets loose the trajectories of these women's lives. From Weimar Berlin to LA's Chinatown, from a...