The Dollhouse - Paperback

by Fiona Davis (Author)

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 Times bestselling 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.

Author Biography

Fiona Davis is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels, including The Dollhouse, The Address, The Masterpiece, The Chelsea Girls, The Lions of Fifth Avenue, and The Magnolia Palace. She lives in New York City and is a graduate of the College of William & Mary in Virginia and the Columbia Journalism School.