Only the dead know Burbank : a novel
(Book)

"With Lon Cheney and Boris Karloff among its characters, this sweeping and stylish love letter to the golden age of horror cinema tells the wonderful, tragic story of Maddy Ulm. It takes readers through her rise from the complicated shadows of Berlin's first experiments with expressionist cinema to the glamorous deserts of Hollywood. For Maddy has a secret. A secret that has given her incredible insight into the soul of horror. A secret that has a terrible price as well. A young girl awakens in a hastily dug grave--vague memories of blood and fever, her mother performing a mysterious ceremony before the world went away. Germany has lost the first great war and Europe has lost millions more to the Spanish Flu epidemic. But Maddy has not only survived, she has changed. No longer does she eat, sleep, or age. No longer can she die. After taking up with a pair of street performers, she shocks and fascinates the crowds with her ability to survive outrageous traumas. But at a studio in Berlin, Maddy discovers her true calling: film. With her intimate knowledge of fear, death, and realms beyond the living, she practically invents the modern horror genre on the spot. Before long, she travels to California and insinuates herself in Hollywood as the genius secretly behind The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, and Frankenstein. And yet she must remain in the shadows--a chilling apparition suspended eternally between worlds. Clever, tragic, and thoroughly entertaining, Only the Dead Know Burbank introduces readers to one of the most unique, unforgettable characters in fiction"--,Provided by publisher.

"The original set of the 1925 production of The Phantom of the Opera still sits on the Universal lot in Hollywood. As legend has it, every time a crew has attempted to break it down, they've been met with freak accidents-as if some spirit still lingers in the old plywood and fading paint. Some say this spirit has manifested as a little girl that roams the lot after dark. She is waiting to tell the true ghost story behind the ones recorded on celluloid. It's a story that begins one hundred years ago-before Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff-with a German artist, his muse and the secret behind the birth of American horror. A young Maddie Ulm and her mother, cast out of their small German village due to her mother's dabbling in the occult, do their best to eke out a living. When Maddie is struck with the spanish flu, it's her mother's rituals that bring her back from death, but changed. Frozen at her young age and unable to die, Maddy fights for her place in the world. She starts to use her gifts as a sideshow attraction, dying and returning to life in increasingly elaborate ways. She quickly learns the value of her unique relationship with death, as she becomes involved in the nascent german film industry. Her talents are recognized, and she is invited to Hollywood, where she works with such greats as Lon Cheney and Boris Karloff, putting her mark on American Horror's foundational cinema, though her condition keeps her from achieving the credit and power she desires"--,Provided by publisher.