Excerpt from The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

If I'd wanted to get storked, I could have done it when I was seventeen. I wear a rubber womb veil, thank you-all the fast girls do, and the careless ones have been more than once to the lady doctor who solves their problems. She takes a vacation every Christmas to shore up her energies for the post-New Year's stampede. No kidding. A lot has changed since the War. Since Prohibition.

Since six days ago.

If I must die, let it be in a city. Nobody dead nowhere is too much punishment. So let it be in Portland, I decide, wondering how far I can make it until dissolving into ocean foam like some mermaids of note who weren't loved in return either.

When we arrive, itÕs still dark.

Clash-ring. Grate-scrape. Whistle blast.

Now my head is pounding, and I dread what happens next with all that's left of my heart.

Here's mud in your eye.

Sitting up, I use my arms mainly, and I don't shriek over the sensation. Markedly unpleasant though it is.

"Well, you simply must contact me when you're feeling better, Miss James," Mrs. Snider fusses. "I think we could be great friends despite the difference in our ages. My husband, Fred, is a member of the Arlington Club, and you seem of such good stock, I imagine he must know your parents already. Which is their congregation?"

"Oh ... my parents are poor farmers some sixty miles outside the city. I send them whatever I can from my own income as a music teacher. In fact, I'm still very new to Portland. I miss them, and the farm, just ... just terribly."

When she raises her eyebrows, it's as if a cardboard box lifted its lid. "You dear, sweet soul. Please look me up-the right connections mean everything. And there are a great many young bachelor gentlemen of our acquaintance with sober and pleasing ways! Here is my card-"

As I'm taking it, resenting the extra weight of carrying so much as her printed name, a polite knock sounds.

By now my pulse is too feeble to blaze up into genuine panic and gives a flicker of dismay instead. But it's Max again. He's wearing a chocolate-brown hat that suits his lighter complexion and a beige trench that matches the pale leather of his luggage. His eyes dart, identify the olive coat I'd hung and forgotten, and he snatches it up, draping it respectfully over my shoulders.

Excerpted from The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye. Copyright © 2019 by Lyndsay Faye. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.