
The Chelsea Girls
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Kirsten Potter
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Hillary Huber
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By:
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Fiona Davis
About this listen
The bright lights of the theater district, the glamour and danger of 1950s New York, and the wild scene at the iconic Chelsea Hotel come together in a dazzling new novel about the 20-year friendship that will irrevocably change two women's lives - from the New York Times best-selling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue.
From the dramatic redbrick facade to the sweeping staircase dripping with art, the Chelsea Hotel has long been New York City's creative oasis for the many artists, writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers, and poets who have called it home - a scene playwright Hazel Riley and actress Maxine Mead are determined to use to their advantage. Yet they soon discover that the greatest obstacle to putting up a show on Broadway has nothing to do with their art and everything to do with politics.
A red scare is sweeping across America, and Senator Joseph McCarthy has started a witch hunt for communists, with those in the entertainment industry in the crosshairs. As the pressure builds to name names, it is more than Hazel and Maxine's Broadway dreams that may suffer as they grapple with the terrible consequences, but also their livelihood, their friendship, and even their freedom.
Spanning from the 1940s to the 1960s, The Chelsea Girls deftly pulls back the curtain on the desperate political pressures of McCarthyism, the complicated bonds of female friendship, and the siren call of the uninhibited Chelsea Hotel.
©2019 Fiona Davis (P)2019 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"A spell-binding tale of a decades-long friendship between two talented women, presented against a backdrop of political conspiracy, infused with the glamour of Hollywood and Broadway, and set in that ramshackle headquarters of New York bohemia, the iconic Chelsea Hotel. In Chelsea Girls, the spirits of America’s mid-century arts scene rise up to frolic again. Brava!" (Sherill Tippins, author of Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York’s Legendary Chelsea Hotel)
“The glitz and glamour of the Chelsea Hotel provides a perfect backdrop for Davis's story of friendship, ambition and behind-the-scenes theatrical intrigue. Hazel and Maxine are complex characters struggling with conflicting questions of loyalty, love and professional success in a turbulent time. Their story is both a sharp-eyed commentary on female friendship and a vivid glimpse into the life of a New York City icon.” (Shelf Awareness)
"Featuring vibrant, witty characters who not only weather but thrive in a dark period of American history, Davis’s tale of one friendship’s strength will stun and satisfy readers.” (Publishers Weekly)
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Story
When a chance encounter with Theodore Camden, one of the architects of the grand New York apartment house the Dakota, leads to a job offer for Sara Smythe, her world is suddenly awash in possibility - no mean feat for a servant in 1884. The opportunity to move to America. The opportunity to be the female manager of the Dakota. And the opportunity to see more of Theo, who understands Sara like no one else...and is living in the Dakota with his wife and three young children.
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Should be a movie!
- By Linda Slater on 10-19-17
By: Fiona Davis
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The Spectacular
- A Novel
- By: Fiona Davis
- Narrated by: Rachel L. Jacobs, Kimberly Farr
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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New York City, 1956: Nineteen-year-old Marion Brooks knows she should be happy. Her high school sweetheart is about to propose and sweep her off to the life everyone has always expected they’d have together: a quiet house in the suburbs, Marion staying home to raise their future children. But instead, Marion finds herself feeling trapped. So when she comes across an opportunity to audition for the famous Radio City Rockettes—the glamorous precision-dancing troupe—she jumps at the chance to exchange her predictable future for the dazzling life of a performer.
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Great story- strange narration
- By SL on 08-20-23
By: Fiona Davis
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The Stolen Queen
- A Novel
- By: Fiona Davis
- Narrated by: Linda Jones
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. That is until an unbearable tragedy strikes. New York City, 1978: Nineteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.”
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Unrealistic characters and dialogue.
- By 406Mum on 01-28-25
By: Fiona Davis
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The Magnolia Palace
- A Novel
- By: Fiona Davis
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Eight months since losing her mother in the Spanish flu outbreak of 1919, 21-year-old Lillian Carter's life has completely fallen apart. For the past six years, under the moniker Angelica, Lillian was one of the most sought-after artists' models in New York City, with statues based on her figure gracing landmarks from the Plaza Hotel to the Brooklyn Bridge
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This isn't my favorite but entertaining
- By Linda on 02-01-22
By: Fiona Davis
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A Point in Time
- One Moment Can Make History
- By: Martha Hall Kelly, Paula McLain, Olivia Hawker, and others
- Narrated by: Nina Yndis, Malcolm Hillgartner, Scott Lange, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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How quickly the ground shifts beneath our feet. We make choices—in the face of love, or violence, or necessity—and the effects ripple outward. In these moving short stories, acclaimed authors examine the foundations of the past, uncovering the irreversible decisions and life-changing encounters that mark the turning point between before and after.
By: Martha Hall Kelly, and others
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The Social Graces
- By: Renée Rosen
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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1876. In the glittering world of Manhattan's upper crust, women are valued by their pedigree, dowry, and, most importantly, connections. They have few rights and even less independence - what they do have is society. The more celebrated the hostess, the more powerful the woman. And none is more powerful than Caroline Astor - the Mrs. Astor.
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Disappointing Effort
- By HistoryNerd on 05-11-21
By: Renée Rosen
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Carnegie's Maid
- A Novel
- By: Marie Benedict
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Clara Kelley is not who they think she is. She's not the experienced Irish maid who was hired to work in one of Pittsburgh's grandest households. She's a poor farmer's daughter with nowhere to go and nothing in her pockets. But the other woman with the same name has vanished, and pretending to be her just might get Clara some money to send back home.
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Shallow
- By Mary Smiroldo on 06-26-18
By: Marie Benedict
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Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl
- By: Renée Rosen
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s 1938, and a young woman selling face cream out of a New York City beauty parlor is determined to prove she can have it all. Her name is Estée Lauder, and she’s about to take the world by storm, in this dazzling new novel from the USA Today bestselling author of The Social Graces and Park Avenue Summer.
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Lots of fun
- By Robin on 05-01-23
By: Renée Rosen
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The Golden Hour
- A Novel
- By: Beatriz Williams
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
The Bahamas, 1941. Newly widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the duke and duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? Or so Lulu imagines.
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Stick with it!
- By Colleen on 07-17-19
By: Beatriz Williams
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The Tiffany Girls
- A Novel
- By: Shelley Noble
- Narrated by: Caroline Hewitt
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Louis Comfort Tiffany, famous for his stained-glass windows, is planning a unique installation at the Paris World’s Fair, the largest in history. At their fifth-floor studio on Fourth Avenue, the artists of the Women’s Division of the Tiffany Glass Company are already working longer shifts to finish the pieces that Tiffany hopes will prove that he is the world’s finest artist in glass. Known as the “Tiffany Girls,” these women are responsible for much of the design and construction of Tiffany’s extraordinary glassworks, but none receive credit.
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So good
- By John on 07-02-23
By: Shelley Noble
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The Riviera House
- By: Natasha Lester
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Paris, 1939: The Nazis think Éliane can't understand German. They’re wrong. They think she’s merely cataloging art in a Louvre museum and unaware they’re stealing national treasures for their private collections. They have no idea she’s carefully decoding their notes and smuggling information to the Resistance. But Éliane is playing a dangerous game. Does she dare trust the man she once loved with her secrets, or will he only betray her once again?
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Intriguing story
- By Kristen on 10-11-21
By: Natasha Lester
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Night Music
- A Novel
- By: Jojo Moyes
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Knowelden
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Isabel Delancey, a classical violinist, has always taken her comfortable life for granted. But when her husband dies suddenly, leaving her with a mountain of debt, she and her two children are forced to abandon their home and move to the Spanish House, a now-dilapidated manor Isabel inherited in the English countryside. With the house falling down around them, and the last of her savings disappearing fast, Isabel turns to her neighbors for help, not knowing that her mere presence there has stirred up long-standing obsessions.
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This one took me a minute
- By Cialynne1 on 09-30-21
By: Jojo Moyes
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The Last Letter from Your Lover
- A Novel
- By: Jojo Moyes
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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A sophisticated, pause-resisting double love story spanning 40 years-an unforgettable Brief Encounter for our times. It is 1960. When Jennifer Stirling wakes up in the hospital, she can remember nothing-not the tragic car accident that put her there, not her husband, not even who she is. She feels like a stranger in her own life until she stumbles upon an impassioned letter, signed simply "B", asking her to leave her husband. Years later, in 2003, a journalist named Ellie discovers the same enigmatic letter in a forgotten file in her newspaper's archives.
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What's so Great About Jennifer?
- By FanB14 on 03-04-14
By: Jojo Moyes
Riveting
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A good lesson for our time
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Pro-Macarthyism?
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The voices were annoying.
The Chelsea Girls
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absolutely wonderful!
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Do Not Pass Up This One!!!
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Chelsea Girls
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It had me googling more information on the Chelsea Hotel, which for me is always a sign of a good HF book.
Narration was very well done.
Quite the surprise!
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Great plot
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Fascinating!
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