Fiona Davis, writer of The Dollhouse, returns with a compelling novel in regards to the skinny traces among love and loss, luck and damage, ardour and insanity, all hidden at the back of the partitions of The Dakota—New York City’s most famed residence.

After a failed apprenticeship, operating her manner as much as head housekeeper of a fancy London resort is greater than Sara Smythe ever suggestion she’d make of herself. but if an opportunity come across with Theodore Camden, one of many architects of the grand big apple residence condominium The Dakota, results in a task supply, her global is by surprise awash in possibility—no suggest feat for a servant in 1884. the chance to maneuver to the USA, the place somebody can upward thrust above one’s station. the chance to be the feminine supervisor of The Dakota, which delivers to be the best condo condo on the planet. And the chance to determine extra of Theo, who knows Sara like not anyone else...and resides within the Dakota together with his spouse and 3 younger children.

In 1985, Bailey Camden is determined for brand new possibilities. clean out of rehab, the previous social gathering lady and inside fashion designer is homeless, jobless, and penniless. generations in the past, Bailey’s grandfather was once the ward of famed architect Theodore Camden. however the absence of a genetic connection skill Bailey won’t see a dime of the Camden family’s immense property. as a substitute, her “cousin” Melinda—Camden’s biological great-granddaughter—will inherit virtually every little thing. So while Melinda deals to enable Bailey oversee the preservation of her lavish Dakota residence, Bailey jumps on the likelihood, regardless of her dislike of Melinda’s imaginative and prescient. The protection will remove all of the personality and background of the residence Theodore Camden himself lived in...and died in, after agony a number of stab wounds through a madwoman named Sara Smythe, a former Dakota worker who had formerly spent seven months in an insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island.

100 years aside, Sara and Bailey are either tempted by means of and fight opposed to the golden far more than their respective ages—for Sara, the opulence of an international governed via the Astors and Vanderbilts; for Bailey, the free-flowing beverages and cocaine within the nightclubs of recent York City—and take shelter and solace within the higher West Side’s gilded citadel. yet a development with a heritage as rich—and usually tragic—as The Dakota’s can’t carry its secrets and techniques without end, and what Bailey discovers in its basement might flip every thing she inspiration she knew approximately Theodore Camden—and the girl who killed him—on its head.

With wealthy old element, nuanced characters, and beautiful prose, Fiona Davis once more provides a compulsively readable novel that peels again the layers of not just a famed establishment, however the lives—and lies—of the thrashing hearts within.