The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a spellbinding story about two gifted orphans, in love with each other since they can remember, whose childhood talents allow them to rewrite their future. It is a love story with the power of legend, an unparalleled tale of charismatic pianos, invisible dance partners, radicalized chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians, brooding clowns, and an underworld whose economy hinges on the price of a kiss.
Two babies are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage in the winter of 1910. Before long, their talents emerge: Pierrot is a piano prodigy; Rose lights up even the dreariest room with her dancing and comedy. As they travel around the city performing clown routines, the children fall in love with each other and dream up a plan for the most extraordinary and seductive circus show the world has ever seen.
Separated as teenagers, sent off to work as servants during the Great Depression, both descend into the city's underworld, dabbling in sex, drugs, and theft in order to survive. But when Rose and Pierrot finally reunite beneath the snowflakes after years of searching and desperate poverty, the possibilities of their childhood dreams are renewed, and they'll go to extreme lengths to make them come true.
Soon, Rose, Pierrot, and their troupe of clowns and chorus girls have hit New York, commanding the stage as well as the alleys, and neither the theater nor the underworld will ever look the same. With her musical language and extravagantly realized world, Heather O'Neill enchants us with a novel so magical there is no escaping its spell.
Tommy Zane hates lions, a major obstacle in a family of lion tamers. But Tommy's dreams, and talent, fly higher, up in the rigging with the trapeze. When rising star Mario Santelli offers him flying lessons, it looks like the start of a wonderful new life. To Tommy's surprise, his relationship with Mario deepens even as his skill soars in the rigging.
But life in the 1940s forces them to keep their love a secret, and the stress pushes both Tommy and Mario to a precipice. As Mario flies higher and higher, Tommy begins to wonder if it will always be his role to catch Mario as he falls.
A tremendously moving tale, a rich family saga, a wise and compassionate portrait of a special love in a cruel world.
Is Sophie Fevvers, toast of Europe's capitals, part swan...or all fake? Courted by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg, and Siberia.
This enchanting journey takes readers on an intoxicating trip through a world so magical that only Angela Carter could have created it.