The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis

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The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis

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The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis

Enter the lush world of 1950s New York City, where a generation of aspiring models, secretaries, and editors live side by side in the glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women while attempting to claw their way to fairy-tale success in this debut novel from the New York Timesbestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue.

"Rich both in twists and period detail, this tale of big-city ambition is impossible to put down."-People


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.

Fiona Davis is a cross-cultural historian and the coeditor of Founders, Firsts, and Feminists: Women Leaders in Twentieth-Century Australia. She is also the author of book chapters for Building White Australia and Outside Country: A History of Inland Australia.

SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9781101985014
ISBN 10 1101985011
Title The Dollhouse
Author Fiona Davis
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc
Year published 2017-07-11
Number of pages 368
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.