The wicked city

After Ella catches her husband in the act, as the saying goes, she moves to a funky apartment building on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. There she spies a bricked-up entrance to what was once an old speakeasy, and Ella swears she can hear the jazz combo that once entertained the flappers and swells who frequented the place. She may even hear the voices of the flappers themselves. Does the ghost of Ginger Kelly still haunt that spot, where she was nabbed in a Prohibition raid? Quite possibly, for Ginger was coerced into helping federal agent Oliver Anson catch her abusive stepfather, Duke Kelly, an Appalachian hillbilly turned slick businessman, whose bootlegging operation illegally supplied half the East Coast with home-brewed hooch. As she returns to the setting of A Certain Age (2016), Williams deftly weaves together Ginger's Jazz Age woes with Ella's contemporary troubles, though Ginger steals the show. An otherworldly atmosphere, pulse-raising tension, and swoonworthy romance all provide a stellar foundation for what will become a series starring the dame-with-a-heart Ginger and her stalwart swain, Oliver Anson.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2016 Booklist

In 1998, after six years of marriage, Ella Hawthorne walks out after catching her husband cheating. Finding a pleasant and affordable apartment on Christopher Street in New York's Greenwich Village feels lucky until building super Hector warns her that at night the basement sounds like a jazz club no longer there. Back in 1924, Geneva "Ginger" Kelly flees to New York City from the hills of western Maryland to escape her abusive stepfather Duke Kelly. Approaching the flapper in the Christopher Club, Special Agent Oliver Anson wants Ginger's help in breaking Duke's network of bootleg whisky; Ginger knows what she needs to do. Best-selling author Williams (A Certain Age; A Hundred Summers) again shows her mastery of creating two stories in distinct time periods. The dual time line, with connecting threads, builds suspense while readers get acquainted with key, and charming, characters. Historically accurate and entertaining details of the Roaring Twenties might outshine the more recognizable Nineties, but both tales provide an intriguing mystery and a budding, swoon-worthy romance. Not all questions are answered, leaving the possibility of a series wide open. Verdict A smart suggestion for fans of strong female characters, historical fiction, and family sagas. [See Prepub Alert, 8/1/16.]-Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The first volume of Williams' planned series introduces two women who occupy the same Greenwich Village apartment seven decades apart.In a 1998 frame for the main Roaring '20s story, Ella, a forensic accountant by trade, has just left her investment-banker husband after catching him with a prostitute. She moves into a studio apartment, 4D, at 11 Christopher St. One of her first encounters, in the basement laundry room, is with Hector, who shares her interests and her talent for music. In the same laundry room, late at night, Ella hears jazz riffs seeping through the wallodd, because the adjacent building is unoccupied. Cut to 1924, when Ginger Kelly, a typist who fled her Appalachian village for New York after her stepfather sexually assaulted her, occupies the same building, in that era a boardinghouse, and the same flat. Ginger frequents the neighboring cellar speak-easy (which features a jazz band) and, after being swept up in a raid, meets handsome Prohibition agent Oliver Anson. Returning briefly for her mother's funeral, Ginger observes that her stepfather, Duke Kelly, once a feckless barfly, has transformed his own fortunes and those of Ginger's hardscrabble hometown, River Junction, Maryland, with his bootlegging operations. The G-men are hot on Duke's trail, and Ginger is enlisted to act as a double agent, delivering packages for Duke and reporting to Anson. Will Anson prove to be as upstanding as he seems, and as hunkish? Very intermittently we return to Ella, who, after rebuffing her husband's apologies and getting in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commision, is revealed to be a Schuyler, that clan of Manhattan blue bloods that has anchored so many Williams novels. The parallels between the two heroines are underdeveloped, and Ginger's story is stalled by excessive verbiage designed, apparently, to showcase the author's fluency in Runyon-speak. Even for a series launch, too much is left dangling. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.