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The Briar Club: A Novel: A Thrilling and Powerful Story of Female Friendships and Secrets
by Kate Quinn

Published: 2024-07-09T00:0
Hardcover : 432 pages
7 members reading this now
47 clubs reading this now
2 members have read this book
Recommended to book clubs by 1 of 1 members
“Quinn evocatively balances the outward cheerfulness of the 1950s with historical observations exploring racism, misogyny, homophobia and political persecution in this sharply drawn, gripping novel.” - People Magazine

The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and ...

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Introduction

“Quinn evocatively balances the outward cheerfulness of the 1950s with historical observations exploring racism, misogyny, homophobia and political persecution in this sharply drawn, gripping novel.” - People Magazine

The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.

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What recipe is your favorite
Which tenet was your favorite
by lizblair (see profile) 11/14/24

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by Pamela H. (see profile) 12/01/24

 
  "The Briar Club cook book "by Liz B. (see profile) 11/14/24

The story as told by each tenant of the boarding house on the corner of Briar and Wood streets. And recipes included. Not sure about format of the mystery in between the chapters . All in all a good book... (read more)

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