“When Women Were Dragons,” by Kelly Barnhill. (Doubleday, $28.) Dragons! Dragons! Dragons! What could be bad about that? Well, as it turns out, plenty, when women in 1950s America and
In 1926 London, there’s still a mood of giddy survival underlaid by terrible loss. A notorious businesswoman she runs nightclubs is freed from prison; meantime, young women are disappearing, and turning up dead. Two detectives, one old-school and one new, join forces. This tale, Kate Atkinson's latest, gets a big thumbs up from reviewer Colette Bancroft.
Set in 1926, featuring Nellie Croker, grand dame of London’s Soho who runs an empire of nightclubs and bars, based on Kate Meyrick who was fictionalized as Ma Mayfield in