August 1, 2021
Author of The Chocolate Maker's Wife, Brooks reimagines Geoffrey Chaucer's rollicking story of The Good Wife of Bath from its heroine's perspective, offering the nuanced tale of a girl married off at age 12 and learning to fight to survive. In Beautiful Little Fools, the USA Today best-selling Cantor reimagines the ending of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, with a diamond hairpin discovered near the scene of Gatsby's murder casting suspicion on three key women: Daisy Buchanan; her best friend, Jordan Baker; and Catherine McCoy, suffragette sister of Tom's mistress, Myrtle. In The Magnolia Palace, the New York Times best-selling Davis parallels the lives of two women: Lillian, a celebrated artist's model in New York who loses her mother to the 1918 influenza and ends up working as secretary to the industrialist Henry Clay Frick's imperious daughter, and Swinging Sixties English model Veronica, who discovers hidden messages while posing at the Frick Collection that lead her to a mystery surrounding the Frick family. From Harrigan, author of the New York Times best-selling The Gates of the Alamo, The Leopard Is Loose tells the 1952-set story of a five-year-old mourning the death of his fighter-pilot father, whose life is further upended when a big cat escapes from Oklahoma City's zoo. In The Siren of Sussex, from the USA Today best-selling Matthews, bluestocking Evelyn Maltravers--from a family that has seen better times--knows she can make a mark in Victorian society only through her great skill as an equestrienne, though she will need a striking riding habit. And that brings her happily to Anglo-Indian dressmaker Ahmad Malik. From Wallace, whose New York Times best-selling To Marry an English Lord inspired Downton Abbey, Our Kind of People tells the story of a slightly outr� family during New York City's Gilded Age, with the wife especially clinging to her status among the elite even as her husband bets all on an elevated railroad that he says will change the city.
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Starred review from October 11, 2021
Davis (The Lions of Fifth Avenue) returns with the captivating story of a missing diamond and the history of New York’s Henry Clay Frick House, before and after it became a museum. Veronica Weber travels from London to New York in 1966, where she works as a model on a photo shoot at the Frick Collection. After a spat with the photographer, Veronica fears she has ruined her chance for a lucrative modeling career. Then she discovers a set of papers in the museum that may provide clues to finding a rare pink diamond owned by Henry Frick, which went missing in 1919, and asks for help from archivist Joshua Lawrence. In a parallel narrative set in that year, Lillian Carter, a once sought-after artists’ model, takes a job as private secretary for Henry’s daughter, Helen, hoping to finance a move to Hollywood to work as an actor. As Veronica and Joshua continue their search for the missing diamond, Davis illuminates Lillian’s role in a long-kept Frick family secret. Davis smoothly combines fact with fiction, and offers beautiful descriptions of the family’s art collection. The colliding narratives and comprehensive descriptions of the historic mansion make for Davis’s best work to date. Agent: Stefanie Lieberman, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.
January 1, 2022
One of New York's most in-demand models, Lillian Carter has become used to men staring at her, to adopting different personas, and to gauging subtle shifts of power. But when she's erroneously connected to a murder in her apartment building in 1919, Lillian decides to flee. She ends up at the estate of Henry Clay Frick, a wealthy New York businessman, and is hired by his reclusive daughter as her private secretary. Immersed in the estate's household duties and insulated from the murder investigation, Lillian finds herself strangely drawn to the Fricks and their hangers-on. But when the patriarch dies under mysterious circumstances, all eyes turn to Lillian. Davis (The Lions of Fifth Avenue, 2020) embellishes the real lives of the Frick family and Audrey Munson, a sculptors' muse, in a tale that will thrill fans of Anna Pitoniak and Karen Harper. She also jumps skillfully between the Roaring Twenties and the Swinging Sixties as another model explores the Frick Collection decades later. Davis' insider's perspective on the esteemed Frick family gives equal weight to those who kept the family afloat.
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March 15, 2022
A tale of two models, decades apart, and the Frick museum. The latest in Davis' series celebrating New York City landmarks (following The Lions of Fifth Avenue, 2020) features not only the Frick Collection, but several exemplars of public art, all images of the same Gilded Age model. By 1919, Lillian Carter, under the name Angelica, has earned a degree of fame as the model for sculptures gracing the New York Public Library, the Plaza Hotel, and many other venues. Groundlessly suspected of murder, Lillian plans to flee New York for Hollywood and a movie career. Instead, a series of improbable events leads her to steel magnate Henry Clay Frick's mansion, where she's hired as personal secretary to Miss Helen, Frick's spinster daughter. In 1966, Veronica Weber, an ing�nue model from a working-class background in London, lands a potentially life-altering assignment--a Vogue photo shoot at the Frick mansion-turned-museum. But after rebelling at the sexism on set, Veronica is left behind, stranded in the Frick when a blizzard and a blackout descend simultaneously on the city. In the alternating 1919 timeline, Frick offers Lillian, who has quickly become a savvy family retainer, a bonus if she can help marry Helen off to Richard Danforth, a reluctant suitor. Abetted by Joshua Lawrence, a Frick intern, Veronica continues a scavenger hunt, left unfinished in 1919, devised by Helen to educate Danforth about the Frick masterpieces. Overshadowing the action is the horrific death of Helen's older sister and the brutality of Frick himself, who lays waste to his own family alongside other victims of his greed. Davis skillfully weaves these undercurrents into her parallel stories, which coalesce in a suspenseful search for a (fictitious) Frick heirloom: the pink Magnolia diamond. The motivations of the two protagonists are thin: Neither seems to have ambitions that can't be easily derailed by a man. Although her privilege certainly renders her more autonomous, Helen emerges as the true heroine here. Artfully meshes the educational with the sensational.
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Starred review from December 1, 2021
In Davis's (The Lions of Fifth Avenue) latest historical novel, dual timelines seamlessly connect the lives of two women at New York's Frick Collection. In 1919, Lillian Carter (based on the real-life artists' model Audrey Munson) is the supermodel of her day and the muse of classical sculptors; her face and figure grace hundreds of famous statues throughout New York City. When her landlord's wife is murdered, Lillian is sought as a person of interest and hides away by taking a job at the Frick mansion. There she works as private secretary to Helen Clay Frick and lives among the collection's masterpieces, including a portrait of herself. In 1966, British model Veronica Weber comes to the Frick mansion (now a museum) for a photo shoot and ends up being locked in during a storm. The two timelines meet when Veronica discovers secret messages among the Frick's masterpieces and uncovers a long-lost heirloom. VERDICT Davis adeptly interweaves two compelling story lines to shine a light on another NYC landmark (after novels set in the Chelsea Hotel and the New York Public Library). This is historical fiction at its best, with well-developed characters, detail, art history, and mystery.--Catherine Coyne, Mansfield P.L., MA
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