The Lions of Fifth Avenue

Laura's chapters explore the city before the First World War, the excitement of a woman discovering her own ambitions, and the strain this puts on her marriage and family. Her new friends challenge her to write about the injustices she sees, but the book thefts in the library place her family in a difficult position, and the choices she makes there will affect the generations that follow.

Eighty years later, Sadie Donovan is a curator at the library preparing an exhibition of its treasures, a dream job for a shy woman who loves books. When items from her exhibition start disappearing, she becomes a suspect and teams up with an insurance investigator to find the thief. As she digs into the case, she uncovers the truth about her grandmother Laura and the earlier thefts. The two stories echo each other, and the beautiful building, its reading rooms and its famous stone lions are almost characters themselves.

Warm, absorbing and full of bookish detail, with two heroines who must each decide what they are willing to risk for their families, their work and their own independence. About 384 pages in the Dutton paperback.