Escape Into Adventure, Romance, Suspense, and Magic This July

Find Your Perfect July Escape

Unleashed by the Guardian

by Kathy Lyons

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Dutton
September 2016
On Sale: August 23, 2016
304 pages
ISBN: 1101984996
EAN: 9781101984994
Kindle: B01AHKXIS8
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiona Davis

Fiona Davis
Author Book List

"The Dollhouse. . . . That's what we boys like to call it. . . . The Barbizon Hotel for Women, packed to the rafters with pretty little dolls. Just like you." Fiona Davis's stunning debut novel pulls readers into the lush world of New York City's glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women, where in the 1950's a generation of aspiring models, secretaries, and editors lived side-by-side while attempting to claw their way to fairy-tale success, and where a present-day journalist becomes consumed with uncovering a dark secret buried deep within the Barbizon's glitzy past.

When she arrives at the famed Barbizon Hotel in 1952,
secretarial school enrollment in hand, Darby McLaughlin is
everything her modeling agency hall mates aren't: plain,
self-conscious, homesick, and utterly convinced she doesn't
belong—a notion the models do nothing to disabuse. Yet when
Darby befriends Esme, a Barbizon maid, she's introduced to
an entirely new side of New York City: seedy downtown jazz
clubs where the music is as addictive as the heroin that's
used there, the startling sounds of bebop, and even the
possibility of romance.

Over half a century later, the Barbizon's gone condo and
most of its long-ago guests are forgotten. But rumors of
Darby's involvement in a deadly skirmish with a hotel maid
back in 1952 haunt the halls of the building as surely as
the melancholy music that floats from the elderly woman's
rent-controlled apartment. It's a combination too
intoxicating for journalist Rose Lewin, Darby's upstairs
neighbor, to resist—not to mention the perfect distraction
from her own imploding personal life. Yet as Rose's
obsession deepens, the ethics of her investigation become
increasingly murky, and neither woman will remain unchanged
when the shocking truth is finally revealed.