I’m shouting it out today for a new historical fiction novel that sounds really interesting, especially if you love the history of live entertainment as I do!

Entertainment history often focuses on the performers audiences recognized, while the people creating the spaces behind those moments disappear into the background. Susan Fenster’s Harry Altman: Buffalo’s Master Showman centers on one of those overlooked figures and the world that surrounded him.

Synopsis:
The rise of Harry Altman unfolded during a period when entertainment was changing rapidly and audiences were searching for something larger, louder, and more immersive than before. Through casinos, nightclubs, and performance venues, Altman became part of that transformation, helping shape experiences that kept crowds returning night after night.

What appeared glamorous from the outside carried enormous pressure behind the scenes. Success depended on constant movement, financial risk, and an ability to keep pace with an industry that rarely stopped changing. As public habits evolved and new entertainment models emerged, the structures Altman built began losing their footing.

Susan Fenster reconstructs this vanished world through archival discoveries, historical fragments, and surviving records that reveal how quickly influence can fade once an era passes. Rather than presenting a straightforward rise-and-fall story, the book examines the instability beneath visibility itself.

Harry Altman: Buffalo’s Master Showman explores memory, reinvention, and the uneasy reality that some people help define an era without remaining part of the story that survives afterward.

Author bio: 

Susan Fenster is a nonfiction author and historian whose work focuses on New York State and the evolving cultural life of the region.

With degrees in history and journalism from Buffalo State University, she brings together long-form research and narrative storytelling to examine how people, businesses, and communities shaped their time. Her work draws extensively from archival sources, including newspapers, business records, and local collections.

She has spent more than 30 years writing about the region and lives in Williamsville, New York.

Visit Susan at her website.

Amazon: https://bit.ly/4a8Qrsm (not affiliated with BBNB)

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/243895850-harry-altman