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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher

SEARCHING FOR GRACE KELLY

Michael Callahan

SEARCHING FOR GRACE KELLY by Philadelphia magazine Executive Editor Michael Callahan is a shimmering first novel about three women who find their destiny in the most exciting city on earth. With deft strokes, he captures a sparkling bygone era with a story as compelling and shocking as it is timeless.

In 1955, New York City is full of post-war euphoria and glamour, and the Barbizon Hotel is the place young women from good families stay while they launch their careers and wait for Mr. Right to come calling with a dozen roses and a date night at El Morocco. Laura, a patrician beauty from Connecticut, arrives with a magazine internship and dreams of becoming a writer; Dolly, a sweetly plump small-town girl works the secretarial pool, hoping to find a guy who’ll fall in love with her plain looks and chatty personality; and Vivian, a redheaded bombshell with a British accent and a palpable disdain for rules, yearns to make it as a singer while working nights as a cigarette girl. The young women become friends as each of their lives gets swept into the exhilarating, heartbreaking maelstrom of New York City. Laura struggles with her attraction to two very different men and her desire to succeed in the publishing world; Dolly loses her heart and comes to the painful realization that girls like her are always wallflowers; and Vivian finds herself in an abusive relationship she is desperate to pull away from even as her hopes for a singing career seem just out of reach. Michael Callahan is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a former deputy editor at Town & Country and Marie Claire. His articles have been published in more than two dozen national magazines, including Men’s Health, Real Simple, Vibe, and Good Housekeeping. Searching for Grace Kelly is his first novel.

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Book Published 2015-01-27 by Mariner Books/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Comments

A fascinating joy-ride through 1955 Manhattan, Searching for Grace Kelly is the Mad Men of the world of the Barbizon.

US (HMH), UK (Sphere/Little Brown), Italy (Piemme), and Serbia (Laguna).

Deliciously stylish. Callahan suavely combines literary finesse and pulp fiction to create a fast-moving, heartwrenching tale of romance and tragedy.

Callahan has a knack for nailing the perfect detail to take a reader back to a particular time and place; this story of three spirited young women is full of the glamour of New York City's Barbizon Hotel in 1955. The dialogue sings, and the pacing was perfect. It's a gem of a story.

A wonderful champagne bubble of a book—glamorous, aspirational, and relatable! The fifties never seemed so fun! Wicked, naughty and clever.

Reading Searching for Grace Kelly is like watching your favorite old Hollywood movie, filled with colorful characters, funny moments, tender scenes and plenty of intrigue. I was completely charmed by this book!

This tale of big dreams, drop-dead glamour and fragile hearts will have you turning pages late into the night. Michael Callahan tells the timeless story of three very different young women on the cusp of discovering themselves, inventively set at that midcentury moment in New York City when what it meant to be a woman began to change in ways great and small. Suspenseful, sharp and romantic, I loved every minute of it.

film deals: Michael Callahan’s SEARCHING FOR GRACE KELLY was optioned by Endemol with Paula Mazur producing.