as our new release of the week: It’s All True: A Novel of Hollywood, by David Freeman (Simon & Schuster). Freeman, a self-described “recovering screenwriter,” tells the story of Henry Wearie, a man with a brilliant future behind him. Henry is a down-and-out screenwriter making his big play to get back on top. “It’s All True, with a faint echo of Play It as It Lays, is not so much a Hollywood novel as a real novel that happens to be parked there,” writes Janet Maslin in The New York Times. “The ripples of regret and wry wisdom running through this story go beyond the borders of the screenwriting world.”

“The book, which has the familiarity of a roman à clef without the elbow-in-the-ribs obviousness, follows Henry past a cross section of Hollywood scenes and situations, as he tries to make sense of his own private failures… As he tells one producer, ‘I have been hot and cold more times than my oven.’ ” Read an excerpt here.

More Tinseltown tales: Browse these other recent Hollywood books: Down and Dirty Pictures, The Best Awful, Hollywood Interrupted, and Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood: Edie and Lew Wasserman and Their Entertainment Empire, which was featured in the Los Angeles Times this past weekend. “If Lew was the gold standard, Edie was a diamond — hard and outspoken…” says author Kathleen Sharp. “Edie was instrumental in shaping the Music Center, CalArts and Cedars–Sinai [Medical Center], helping to turn Los Angeles from a cow town to a cosmopolitan city. Yet she was content to stay out of the limelight and bask in her husband’s glory.”