It’s hard to believe that something as benign as an art exhibit entitled Women of the Dutch Golden Age could be the nexus for such widespread themes as art history, abandonment, love, grief, forgery, and intrigue, but in Dominic Smith’s new novel The Last Painting of Sara de Vos it is. Eleanor Shipley is an esteemed professor at Sydney University and a well-known ... Read More...
The Swans of Fifth Avenue
Once upon a time there was a group of very special women who lived in New York City. They were icons of fashion and social arbiters of everything that was right about high society. It was the 1950s and they were Babe Paley, Slim Keith, Gloria Guinness, Pamela Churchill, and Marella Agnelli and they were The Swans of Fifth Avenue. So named by the small, witty, ... Read More...
White Collar Girl
Jordan Walsh comes from a family of writers. Her father is a well-known journalist in Chicago, her mother is a poet and up until his death two years ago, her brother Eliot was poised to carry on the family legacy. Now, it is left to the young Jordan to both fulfill her dreams of becoming a reporter and to try and heal the wounds left behind by her brother’s mysterious ... Read More...
The Hours Count
Lately, I’ve fallen into a literary rabbit hole of fiction about the 1950s, which is interesting as it’s a time period I’ve never paid much attention to, but is popping up all over the fictional world. The Hours Count is Jillian Cantor’s novel about one of America’s darkest times of political intrigue—when the hunt for Communists meant it seemed difficult to know who ... Read More...
All the Stars in the Heavens
After being a novitiate at a San Francisco convent for six years Alda Ducci is told that she is not suited to be a nun. Sent by her family from Italy to escape disgrace, returning home is not an option. Then, a friend of the mother superior gets her a job as a secretary to Loretta Young, the Hollywood star, and Alda’s life changes in ways she could never have imagined. ... Read More...
Is This Tomorrow
In 1956 there was plenty to worry about- the Communists and nuclear missiles, but missing children were an anomaly. In Waltham, Massachusetts, the setting for Is This Tomorrow, people didn’t even lock their doors and children moved from one house to another, playing and eating snacks until the call home for dinner. When twelve-year-old Jimmy disappears one afternoon this quiet ... Read More...
