The Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci
About this ebook
Nona Henry’s husband is dead, and with him the life they spent years building in New York City. Unable to bear the Manhattan winter without him, Nona goes west to Pasadena, California, land of sun, sand, and rebirth. She finds a picture postcard advertising a boarding house called Sans Souci and, charmed by the elegant hotel’s stately patio, makes a one-month reservation. Reality does not live up to the postcard.
Sans Souci is dingy, cramped, and dark, a claptrap hotel full of shabby rooms whose windows overlook a run-down neighborhood. But Nona will not give in. Sixteen other widows live in the hotel. Some are lifers, some just passing through. In this eclectic mix of women whose men have gone, Nona finds a niche, and learns that the end of her old life can’t stop her from beginning again.
About the author
Edgar Award–winning Charlotte Armstrong (1905–1969) was one of the finest American authors of classic mystery and suspense. The daughter of an inventor, Armstrong was born in Vulcan, Michigan, and attended Barnard College, in New York City. After college she worked at the New York Times and the magazine Breath of the Avenue, before marrying and turning to literature in 1928. For a decade she wrote plays and poetry, with work produced on Broadway and published in the New Yorker. In the early 1940s, she began writing suspense. Success came quickly. Her first novel, Lay On, MacDuff! (1942) was well received, spawning a three-book series. Over the next two decades, she wrote more than two dozen novels, winning critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base. The Unsuspected (1945) and Mischief (1950) were both made into films, and A Dram of Poison (1956) won the Edgar Award for best novel. She died in California in 1969.