The Library of Lost Dollhouses [Audiobook]
By (Author) Elise Hooper
HarperCollins
HarperCollins
1st April 2025
Audiobook
United States
General
Fiction
Contemporary lifestyle fiction
Narrative theme: Love and relationships
Historical fiction
CD-Audio
""This beautiful page-turner kept me reading all night." --Janet Skeslien Charles, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library
When a young librarian discovers historic dollhouses in a hidden room, she embarks on an unexpected journey that reveals surprising secrets about the lost miniatures.
Tildy Barrows, Head Curator of a beautiful archival library in San Francisco, is meticulously dedicated to the century's worth of inventory housed in her beloved Beaux Art building. She loves the calm and order in the shelves of books and walls of art. But Tildy's life takes an unexpected turn when she, first, learns the library is on the verge of bankruptcy and, second, discovers two exquisite never-before-seen dollhouses.
After finding clues hidden within these remarkable miniatures, Tildy sets out to decipher the secret history of the dollhouses, aiming to salvage her cherished library in the process. Her journey introduces her to a world of ambitious and gifted women in Belle poque Paris, a group of scarred World War I veterans in the English countryside, and Walt Disney's bustling Burbank studio in the 1950s. As Tildy unravels the mystery, she finds not only inspiring, overlooked history, but also a future for herself--and an astonishing familial revelation.
Spanning the course of a century, The Library of Lost Dollhouses is a warm, bright, and captivating story of secrets and love that embraces the importance of illuminating overlooked women.
Elise Hooper, though a New Englander by birth (and at heart), lives with her husband and two young daughters in Seattle, where she teaches history and literature. Caroline Hewitt loves reading and imagining. Since she couldn't figure out a way to actually jump inside a novel, acting and adapting are the closest, and most satisfying, ways she has found to inhabit stories--like narrating audiobooks and adapting novels into plays. Emily Janice Card has read a number of audiobooks, including Ben Bova's The Aftermath, Orson Scott Card's Ender in Exile, Lisa Gardner's The Neighbor, and several titles by Kimberly Willis Holt. Card is an actor, singer, and writer from North Carolina. On screen, she's appeared in The Delivery. Her stage work includes The Importance of Being Earnest, Bye Bye Birdie, The Fantasticks, and Once Upon a Mattress. She also adapted and starred in the play A Sepulcher of Songs, based on a short story by her father, Orson Scott Card.