This story really sizzles.

Set in 1921, Alice James (nicknamed “Nobody”) has escaped the Harlem’s Mafia with a serious bullet wound. She arrives in Portland, Oregon and finds herself at the Paragon Hotel, an all-black hotel where she is cared for by the staff. An orphan child also being looked after by the staff disappears, and Alice searches not only for the boy but for the answers to the secrets held by her new friends. Told from Alice’s perspective, the story of her life, and why she left Harlem is revealed.

“My heart isn’t beating, it’s clenching its fist at me.”

“The Paragon’s dining room is fully as stately as Mr. Salvatici’s at the Hotel Arcadia. Eight crystal chandeliers in the shape of huge teardrops mourn over us in the dim. Between the six-foot-high window wells are panels with wall sconces, the wood patterned in byzantine splendour.”

“Mauro Salvatici was a deadly man. And a good guardian. I’d lived with those two truths for years. He trusted me and treated me well, and so it was as easy as shelling a peanut to trust him in turn.”

~Quotes from “The Paragon Hotel” by Lyndsay Faye

• Kirkus: “A riveting multilevel thriller of race, sex, and mob violence that throbs with menace as it hums with wit.”
• New York Journal of Books: “Lindsay Faye has written a crackling historical mystery in language that sings in its dialogue, description, and narrative.”

Author website: Lyndsay Faye