The Mansions of Limbo

Book excerpt: Bestselling author Dominick Dunne, who chronicles the escapades, excesses, and eccentricities of high society for Vanity Fair, offers fifteen provocative portraits of some of the most luminous figures of the decade . . . profiles of the movie legend who remains the only divorced wife of a U.S. president; the pretty singing star who fell in love with a notorious mobster; the brilliant photographer who took Dunne's picture weeks before succumbing to AIDS . . . sketches that detail the lavish wedding-that-never-was between an heiress and a counterfeit prince; the incarceration of a high-flying financier; and the brutal slaying of a film mogul and his sife, allegedly by their own two sons. Filled with pathos and wit and the twenty-four-carat insight of a society insider, The Mansions of Limbo offers a peek into a rarified world there nothing is ever enough.