The Jazz Palace begins with a tragedy, the sinking of the SS Eastland while it was still tied to the dock in the Chicago River. The boat was full of workers for a local company headed out for a day of picnicking when the top heavy ship rolled over on it’s side trapping and killing 844 people. In this way author Mary Morris introduces us to Chicago in the early 1900s and ... Read More...
The Other Typist
Suzanne Rindell sets her novel The Other Typist in 1920s New York City where Rose is one of a new kind of working woman, earning her living as a typist for the police department. She is an orphan living a quiet simple life despite working in a job that exposes her to some of the roughest men in the city. When Abolition begins, the department needs additional typists as ... Read More...
Fallen Beauty
Fallen Beauty is the story of a lovely young woman, Laura Kelley, who pays the price for one night of passion by becoming pregnant. It’s 1928 in upstate New York and her decision to keep her child, despite the father’s unwillingness to acknowledge her, changes the course of her life. Both her parents are dead and so, at age nineteen, she is left to run their dress shop alone ... Read More...
Sweet Thunder
In Sweet Thunder, Morrie Morgan and his new wife Grace are still on their year-long honeymoon when they get called back to Butte, Montana. A former boss is giving them his home, a grand old mansion. The only caveat is that he, Sam Sandison, is now their tenant in this massive new home. For Morrie, a wandering sort of fellow who won his fortune betting against the White Sox in ... Read More...
Shorecliff: A Novel
The present then is so thrilling that it is impossible to reflect on it; one can only wait, panting, for the future to unfold. Like almost any child, Richard is looking forward to summer, but as an only child, three months spent with ten cousins is almost too much excitement to bear. It’s 1928 and for the first time in years the entire Hatfield family will be gathering ... Read More...
Call Me Zelda
With another film version of The Great Gatsby coming out this week, now is the perfect time for new fiction about the life of the Fitzgeralds or, more specifically, Zelda Fitzgerald. There are many stories circulated about her outrageous behavior but it is much like the paparazzi today—what is real and what is exaggerated or fabricated? In her new book, Call Me Zelda, Erika ... Read More...
