Hokey Pokey, Kate Mascarenhas
February, 1929. The Regent Hotel in Birmingham is a place of deception and glamour. Behind its six-storeyed facade, guests sip absinthe cocktails on velvet banquettes, while the staff navigate the hotel's labyrinthine 'below stairs' to ensure the finest service is always at hand. In the early evening, psychoanalyst Nora Dickinson checks in under a false name. It's unlike Nora to deceive - her aversion to lying borders on the pathological - but she's travelling with an agenda. Having shadowed the famous opera singer, Berenice Oxbow, from Zurich, she's determined not to lose sight of her now.
But when a terrible snow storm isolates the hotel - and its guests - from the outside world, reality appears to shift. Nora's grip loosens, and the nightmares she's worked hard to control begin to bare their teeth.
Kate Mascarenhas reading from Hokey Pokey
A grand hotel, a famous opera star and a psychoanalyst with a hidden agenda. Our Book of the Week offers a glamorous, thrilling ride through murder, madness and the darkest recesses of the mind, set at Birmingham’s Regent Hotel in 1929, where guests sip absinthe cocktails on velvet banquettes and nothing is as it appears...
Hokey Pokey by Kate Mascarenhas is published by Apollo, an imprint of beloved publisher Head of Zeus, and available now. We recommend buying a copy from your local indie bookshop or you can get a copy from Bookshop.org.
Damian Barr’s Literary Salon is where the freshest debuts and the biggest bestsellers read for the first time from their latest greatest books and share their own personal stories.
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