Dreamland

It’s 1911 New York. The wealthy move within a pampered, protective world, while the poor live five to a room.

Peggy Batternberg comes from one of the wealthiest families of all, and they’re forcing her to leave her job at a bohemian bookstore to join them for the summer at the grand Oriental Hotel, rising on the sea in Brooklyn.

Just one mile away from the hotel is raucous, uninhibited Coney Island, a place Peggy has been warned to stay away from. But the rebel heiress defies all the rules to explore America’s Playground, and in the dazzling park Dreamland, she meets Stefan, an artist who left his hate-torn Eastern Europe homeland in search of an American utopia.

But all is not well on the island that summer. Young women are showing up dead, and to Peggy’s horror, her love affair with Stefan throws suspicion his way. To clear his name, Peggy joins forces with allies in Dreamland to find the real killer. As that search increasingly leads back to the wealthy east end of the island, she discovers a hidden savagery that no one suspected.

Dreamland is a novel of suspense, inspired by the early life of Peggy Guggenheim and other real-life people from the tumultuous years between the Gilded Age and First World War.