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The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis

August 2020

THE LIONS OF FIFTH AVENUE is the fifth Fiona Davis book that I have selected as a Bets On. It is set at the New York Public Library with two time frames, 1913 and 1993. The first revolves around a young family that lives in a seven-room apartment at the library. While I have spent many hours in the library, I confess to never knowing about this tidbit of history.

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Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin

August 2020

BRONTË’S MISTRESS is a brilliantly strong debut from an author you will want to keep an eye on. I confess to knowing much less about the Brontës than I feel that I should. Finola Austin’s novel was captivating from the opening pages.

It’s Yorkshire in 1843, and Lydia Robinson lives with her family in Thorp Green Hall. She’s dealing with two personal losses --- her mother and her daughter --- and a husband who has turned cold towards her. It’s not surprising that her son’s tutor, Branwell Brontë, catches her eye --- and suddenly she is wrapped up in an affair with a man who has a lot of baggage. It’s blissful for a while until things get out of control, and her regimented life is upended.

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Alice Feeney, author of His & Hers

When a woman is murdered in Blackdown, a quintessentially British village, newsreader Anna Andrews is reluctant to cover the case. Detective Jack Harper is suspicious of her involvement, until he becomes a suspect in his own murder investigation. Someone isn’t telling the truth, and some secrets are worth killing to keep.

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Finola Austin, author of Brontë’s Mistress

Yorkshire, 1843: Lydia Robinson --- mistress of Thorp Green Hall --- has lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-law scrutinizing her every move and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and yearning for something more. All of that changes with the arrival of her son’s tutor, Branwell Brontë, brother of her daughters’ governess, Miss Anne Brontë, and those other writerly sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Branwell has his own demons to contend with --- including living up to the ideals of his intelligent family --- but his presence is a breath of fresh air for Lydia. However, her new taste of passion comes with consequences.

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Kristin Harmel, author of The Book of Lost Names

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. It’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in 65 years: The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II --- an experience Eva remembers well --- and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an 18th-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. It appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from --- or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer. But will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?

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Fiona Davis, author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue

Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons, especially after she has wrangled her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library. But the job quickly becomes a nightmare when rare manuscripts, notes and books for the exhibit Sadie has been running begin disappearing from the library's famous Berg Collection. Determined to save both the exhibit and her career, the typically risk-averse Sadie teams up with a private security expert to uncover the culprit. However, things unexpectedly become personal when the investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage --- truths that shed new light on the biggest tragedy in the library's history.

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