A searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires and lies. Chase lives off residuals earned as a child star, living a life of cloistered ease, until a pop critic with a conspiratorial counter cultural savvy forces him to confront the answer to several mysteries tightly intertwined within the tragic fabric of the city itself.

"Determined to defeat her social anxiety, [powerhouse movie critic] Violet visits the Algonquin Hotel to pull strength from the hallowed dining room, where Dorothy Parker and so many other famous writers of the 1920s traded barbs. But she gets more than she bargained for when Dorothy Parker's feisty spirit rematerializes from an ancient guestbook and hitches a ride onto her life"--Dust jacket flap.

When a New York banker is discovered dead from an apparent morphine overdose in a Chicago hotel, the circumstances surrounding his untimely end are suspicious to say the least. The dead man had switched rooms the night before with a stranger he met and drank with in the hotel bar. And before that, he'd registered under a fake name at the hotel, told his drinking companion a fake story about his visit to the Windy City, and seemingly made no effort...

"Raphaël Jérusalmy's debut novel takes the form of the journal of Otto J. Steiner, a former music critic of Jewish descent suffering from tuberculosis in a Salzburg sanatorium in 1939. Drained by his illness and isolated in the gloomy sanatorium, Steiner finds solace only in music. He is horrified to learn that the Nazis are transforming a Mozart festival into a fascist event. Steiner feels helpless at first, but an invitation from a friend presents...

"A dark and stylish novel of psychological suspense about a young theater critic drawn into a dangerous game that blurs the lines between reality and performance. Vivian Parry likes the dark. A former actress, she now works as the junior theater critic at a major Manhattan magazine. Her nights are spent beyond the lights, in a reserved seat, giving herself over to the shows she loves. By day, she savages them, with words sharper than a knife. Angling...