Sunday, June 24, 2012

Pg. 69: Frances Osborne's "Park Lane"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Park Lane by Frances Osborne.

About the book, from the publisher:
The bestselling author of The Bolter returns with a delicious novel about two determined women whose lives collide in the halls of a pedigreed London town home.

When eighteen-year-old Grace Carlisle arrives in London in 1914, she’s unable to fulfill her family's ambitions and find a position as an office secretary. Lying to her parents and her brother, Michael, she takes a job as a housemaid at Number 35, Park Lane, where she is quickly caught up in lives of its inhabitants--in particular, those of its privileged son, Edward, and daughter, Beatrice, who has just returned from America after being unceremoniously jilted by her fiancé. Desperate to find a new purpose, Beatrice joins the radical suffragist movement and strikes up an intriguing romance with an impassioned young lawyer. But unbeknownst to both of the young women, the choices they make will connect their chances at future happiness in dramatic and inevitable ways.
Learn more about the book and author at Frances Osborne's website.

Osborne was born in London and studied philosophy and modern languages at Oxford University. Her other books include Lilla’s Feast and The Bolter, a San Francisco Chronicle's Book of the Year and No.1 bestseller in the UK.

The Page 99 Test: The Bolter.

The Page 69 Test: Park Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue