Shortlisted in the 2010 NSW Premier's Literary Awards for both the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing.

Hollywood Ending is a thriller, a comedy about growing up, and a love-letter to Los Angeles.

Pink-haired Hilda and punk Benji haunt the places where Hollywood celebrities have died. In rundown Echo Park, once the hub of the movie business, they find a squalid apartment in which a second-rate silent movie star stabbed himself to death with nail scissors. Its current tenant is Hank, an old man with a mysterious past. While Benji dives deeper into the cult of celebrity death, Hank and Hilda make an unlikely pair. Then Jake the screenwriter turns up. What's his story?

Kathy Charles has written a debut novel to die for.

'Dark, funny, endlessly fascinating and beautifully human. I stayed up all night reading Hollywood Ending and then had crazy dreams.' Simmone Howell