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Cover of The Lions of Fifth Avenue

Fiction · 2020 · PG-13

The Lions of Fifth Avenue

by Fiona Davis

Two women, eighty years apart, live inside the New York Public Library while rare books disappear from it.

"It's 1913, and on the surface, Laura Lyons couldn't ask for more out of life-her husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building, and they are blessed with two children. But headstrong, passionate Laura wants more, and when she takes a leap of faith and applies to the Columbia Journalism School, her world is cracked wide open. As her studies take her all over the city, she finds herself drawn to Greenwich Village's new bohemia, where she discovers the Heterodoxy Club-a radical, all-female group in which wome

For14+GenreFictionLength368 pagesRead time~8 hours

This analysis was generated by AI from publicly available reader reviews, literary criticism, and book discussions. It has not been verified by a BookLens community reviewer and may contain errors. Be the first to verify →

Content snapshot

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What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.

Violence

Some

The crimes are thefts, not assaults; the sharpest harm is a death by suicide referenced in the family history

Language

Some

Period-appropriate and restrained in both timelines

Sexual Content

Some

Laura's Heterodoxy Club circle brings a same-sex attraction and an extramarital involvement, handled with restraint rather than explicit description

Substance Use

Barely any

Village party drinking in the 1913 thread

Emotional Intensity

A lot

Study guides and reviewers flag death by suicide, child abuse and child neglect — the last in the specific sense of parents too preoccupied to notice their children

What this book is about

In 1913 Laura Lyons lives in an apartment within the library where her husband is superintendent, enrolls in journalism school, and watches valuable volumes vanish. In 1993 her granddaughter Sadie is the library's curator when a second wave of thefts begins. Davis braids suffrage-era Greenwich Village bohemia with a 1990s procedural.

Notes for sensitive readers

Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.

Death by suicide

Child neglect

Sexism and thwarted ambition

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