Cheat and Charmer

"Cheat and Charmer is a big, ambitious, utterly gripping novel about Hollywood, screenwriting, marriage, sex, sisters, women in the l950s and, above all, the blacklist, which destroyed so many lives and corrupted so many souls. Against the background of the big studios, with their glamor and greed and powerbroking, Frank highlights the moral odyssey of one decent woman faced with a terrible choice. Dinah’s’s story is not only unputdownable, it’s unforgettable." — Katha Pollitt, author of Reasonable Creatures

“This magnificent novel will take a front seat in contemporary American writing.” — Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart

"Elizabeth Frank has worked a large canvas — Hollywood, the expatriate community in Paris, the inifnitely complex workings of marriage and adultery, sibling rivalry, betrayal and revenge — and made it real. Her grasp of the period detail achieves perfection, and her grasp of human nature is formidable. Cheat and Charmer is to the 1950s what The Sun Also Rises was to the 1920s: an indelible portrait of a generation." — James Atlas

"Cheat and Charmer begins with an act of betrayal that escalates with dazzling skill and moral complexity into every form of betrayal imaginable. The book is deeply felt, beautifully imagined, filled with memorable characters. The few times I put the book down to leave the house and do reality things, I found myself missing the world of this book and hurried happily back home to it. Elizabeth Frank has written the great Hollywood blacklist novel. I’d happily put Cheat and Charmer on a shelf with Day of the Locust and The Last Tycoon." — John Guare

"Cheat and Charmer is a magnificent novel. Elizabeth Frank captures the lives of artists and the elite world of Hollywood royalty with authenticity, brilliance, and heart." — Mia Farrow

"An irresistible Hollywood family saga of the McCarthy blacklist, which from the start thrusts the reader into the awful moral dilemma of naming names – even a sister’s – or losing everything; then it plays out the consequences against the backdrop of the 1950s, with a Dickens-like profusion of recognizable social types. It is an unrelenting pleasure to read." — Rock Brynner, author of Yul, The Man Who Would be King