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.

Open to the public, the homes and studios of eight celebrated nineteenth-century painters—Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Gustave Courbet, Eug�ne Delacroix, Gustave Moreau, Rosa Bonheur, Jean-Fran�ois Millet, and Charles-Fran�ois Daubigny—provide intimate insights into their work and personalities as well as pleasurable day-long itineraries in and around Paris. A writer and a photographer, both of whose work appears frequently in Architectural Digest, present sumptuous portraits of these painters’ lives and times. Travel information includes discriminating hotel and restaurant recommendations; sites of related interest; excursions to nearby ch�teaux and medieval fortress towns; directions for travel by car and train; museums in Paris with works by each artist; phone and fax numbers and email addresses for all listings.

Finding work in a today's changing times is like fighting a war. The "winning side" in this "war" is the one that knows how to positions itself where it has the advantage, the "ground of its own choosing."