What is Renée Rosen reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Renée Rosen, author of Dollface, A Novel of the Roaring Twenties.

Her entry begins:

Two really wonderful novels that stand out in my mind are In Need of a Good Wife by Kelly O’Connor McNees and Astor Place Vintage by Stephanie Lehmann. In Need of a Good Wife is about a mail order bride service after the Civil War. In a lot of ways it was the precursor to Match.Com and the online dating world that exists today. And oddly enough...[read on]

About Dollface, from the publisher:

America in the 1920s was a country alive with the wild fun of jazz, speakeasies, and a new kind of woman—the flapper.

Vera Abramowitz is determined to leave her gritty childhood behind and live a more exciting life, one that her mother never dreamed of. Bobbing her hair and showing her knees, the lipsticked beauty dazzles, doing the Charleston in nightclubs and earning the nickname “Dollface.”

As the ultimate flapper, Vera captures the attention of two high rollers, a handsome nightclub owner and a sexy gambler. On their arms, she gains entrée into a world filled with bootleg bourbon, wailing jazz, and money to burn. She thinks her biggest problem is choosing between them until the truth comes out. Her two lovers are really mobsters from rival gangs during Chicago’s infamous Beer Wars, a battle Al Capone refuses to lose.

The heady life she’s living is an illusion resting on a bedrock of crime and violence unlike anything the country has ever seen before. When the good times come to an end, Vera becomes entangled in everything from bootlegging to murder. And as men from both gangs fall around her, Vera must put together the pieces of her shattered life, as Chicago hurtles toward one of the most infamous days in its history, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Learn more about Dollface at Renée Rosen's website, blog, and Facebook page.

Renée Rosen is a former advertising copywriter who always had a novel in her desk drawer. When she saw the chance to make the leap from writing ad copy to fiction, she jumped at it. A confirmed history and book nerd, Rosen loves all things old, all things Chicago and all things written. Her previous book is Every Crooked Pot.

The Page 99 Test: Every Crooked Pot.

My Book, The Movie: Dollface.

Writers Read: Renée Rosen.

--Marshal Zeringue