From the publisher: "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 1950s 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." I've been meaning to read this (maybe as "a book you chose for the cover" in the Reading Challenge?), but just catapulted to the top of my TBR, because I just found out the author has a new book coming out in August (about the Dakota!)

From the author of The Dollhouse. Davis's new historical novel revolves around The Dakota, the most famous address in Manhattan, and tells two intertwining stories about the characters (and such characters!) who live there, set a hundred years apart.

From the author of The Dollhouse, a new historical novel with a fabulous setting. Few remember it now, but a thriving art school (the Grand Central School of Art) was housed for twenty years in the upper eaves of the east wing, beginning with its founding in 1924. The book switches back and forth in time between the art school years and 1974, when Grand Central Terminal was very nearly razed by developers in order to build a skyscraper. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (who briefly appears in the novel) led the fight to save the terminal by granting it landmark status. Davis has said that her new novel “touches upon issues dear to me: how women’s voices and agency have changed over time, the importance of the arts in our lives, and the hidden stories within New York’s historic skyline.”

The Chelsea Hotel is a long-time haven for creatives, making it the perfect setting for playwright Hazel Riley and actress Maxine Mead to use to their advantage. But as they work on bringing their show to Broadway, they find a roadblock in the Red scare targeting the entertainment industry. Fiona Davis brings the glitz, glam, and danger of 1950s New York to life with a revealing look at the toll of McCarthyism and the complications it brings to Hazel and Maxine's dreams and friendship.

This novel is a book lover’s dream. In 1913, Laura Lyons lives with her family in the New York Public Library, a perk of her husband’s job as superintendent of the grand building. Her dream to become a journalist conflicts with her husband’s desire to provide for his family himself. Eighty years later, in 1993, Sadie Donovan’s scored her dream job as an NYPL curator, landing a plum appointment on the team for the famed Berg Collection. But when valuable manuscripts start disappearing from under Sadie’s nose, she’s first scorned for her incompetence—and then suspected as a thief. Sadie suspects the theft traces back to her grandmother, the renowned feminist journalist Laura Lyons, but Sadie can’t imagine how. A literary mystery that’s full of surprises.

Fiona Davis builds intriguing novels based on true stories, with rich detail about the iconic buildings around which they take place. Our readers adored The Lions of Fifth Avenue and continue to gush about Davis’s absorbing historical settings with each new release. If you’ve ever visited the Frick Museum and gaped at the opulent rooms filled with Gilded Age art, you’ll want to pick up her latest story revolving around the Frick family and their high stakes drama. Weaving secret messages, murder, and museum curation together in dual timelines from 1919 and the 1960s, this book is a historical mystery lover’s dream.