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The Lions of Fifth Avenue: A GMA Book Club Pick

by Fiona Davis

Two generations, one library, and a history of secrets

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Two generations, one library, and a history of secrets

Set in the New York Public Library in 1913 and 1993, Fiona Davis’s historical novel connects a wave of book thefts across two eras. In 1913, Laura Lyons balances family life with journalism studies and encounters a women’s group debating suffrage, birth control, and women’s rights. Eighty years later, her granddaughter Sadie Donovan is a curator facing disappearances from an exhibition in the library’s Berg Collection. As Sadie investigates, the family’s past becomes part of the mystery. The library is more than a backdrop: its collections, its place in the family’s life, and its changing role in both women’s stories link questions of ambition, inheritance, and truth.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in historical fiction set in the New York Public Library.
  • Readers who enjoy stories spanning generations and involving family secrets.
  • Readers curious about women’s rights debates and women’s professional ambitions.

Themes

Family legacy and inheritanceWomen’s ambitions and rolesSuffrage and women’s rightsLibraries, books, and cultural preservationTruth and secrecy

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

A Good Morning America Book Club Pick and a New York Times bestseller!

"A page-turner for booklovers everywhere! . . . A story of family ties, their lost dreams, and the redemption that comes from discovering truth."--Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Shoemaker's Wife

In New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis's latest historical novel, a series of book thefts roils the iconic New York Public Library, leaving two generations of strong-willed women to pick up the pieces.


It's 1913, and on the surface, Laura Lyons couldn't ask for more out of life--her husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building, and they are blessed with two children. But headstrong, passionate Laura wants more, and when she takes a leap of faith and applies to the Columbia Journalism School, her world is cracked wide open. As her studies take her all over the city, she is drawn to Greenwich Village's new bohemia, where she discovers the Heterodoxy Club--a radical, all-female group in which women are encouraged to loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women's rights. Soon, Laura finds herself questioning her traditional role as wife and mother. And when valuable books are stolen back at the library, threatening the home and institution she loves, she's forced to confront her shifting priorities head on . . . and may just lose everything in the process.

Eighty years later, in 1993, Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons, especially after she's 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's 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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