The #1 bestselling author of
Cooking for Picasso
and
The Godmothers
returns with
The Girl from the Grand Hotel
, a dazzling historical novel that brings readers into the glamorous world of the first (and doomed) Cannes Film Festival and the deadly atmosphere of Europe on the brink of war.
Summer 1939. The glittering Côte d’Azur is having a particularly brilliant season, as the world’s wealthiest vacationers collide with Hollywood’s illustrious movie stars for the first-ever film festival on the French Riviera.
Into this hothouse playground comes an American named Annabel Faucon. Having left a dead-end job and a broken heart back in New York, she’s escaped to a summer stint at the fabulous Grand Hotel, where her uncle is the manager. But when a major movie studio brings its flock of stars to stay at the hotel, Annabel is handpicked to “keep an eye on” two of the mysterious arrivals: a screenwriter who’s been “in his cups” and a renegade actor who keeps luring the studio’s female star into his independent productions.
The arrival of Nazi guests only intensifies the situation. Suddenly everyone is watching everybody else during this feverish last summer before the outbreak of World War II. Faced with international spies who will stop at nothing to get what they want, Annabel finds herself embroiled in murder, intrigue, and a race against the clock to disrupt a secret Nazi communications system.
Inspired by true events and the histories of three great hotels on the Côte d’Azur—with appearances by such real-life luminaries as Marlene Dietrich, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Cagney, and Mae West—
is a brilliant page-turner that is not to be missed.