40+ Tales of the Jazz Age

This week’s Riot Recommendation is sponsored by An American Duchess by Sharon Page. At the height of the Roaring Twenties, New York heiress Zoe Gifford longs for the freedoms promised by the Jazz Age. Headstrong and brazen, but bound by her father’s will to marry before she can access his fortune, Zoe arranges for a brief marriage to Sebastian Hazelton, whose aristocratic British family sorely needs a benefactor. Once in England, her foolproof plan to wed, inherit and divorce proves more complicated than Zoe had anticipated. Nigel Hazelton, Duke of Langford and Sebastian’s austere older brother, is disgraced by the arrangement and looks down upon the raucous young American who has taken up residence at crumbling Brideswell Abbey. Still reeling from the Great War, Nigel is now staging a one-man battle against a rapidly changing world—and the outspoken Zoe represents everything he’s fighting against. When circumstances compel Zoe to marry Nigel rather than Sebastian, she does so for love, he for honor. But with Nigel unwilling to change with the times, Zoe may be forced to choose between her husband and her dreams. ____________________ In this Riot Recommendation, we asked for your favorite gin-soaked, jazz-filled books about the Roaring 20s. Here’s what you came up with: 1929 by Frederick W. Turner The Jazz Flower by Vee Williams Garcia Jazz by Toni Morrison Oh, Play That Thing by Roddy Doyle “The Girl the Prince Liked” by Zelda Fitzgerald Phryne Fisher mysteries by Kerry Greenwood Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse Bones of Paris by Laurie R. King Miss Anne in Harlem by Carla Kaplan Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh Passing by Nella Larsen Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf To the Ligthouse by Virginia Woolf The Diviners by Libba Bray Sirens by Janet Fox The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald Nightwood by Djuna Barnes The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott FItzegerald The Paris Wife by Paula McLain Havoc by Tom Kristensen The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum Island of Vice by Richard Zacks Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje Everybody Was So Young by Amanda Vaill Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald Ragtime By E. L. Doctorow The Disenchanted by Budd Schulberg Love in a Cold Climate Nancy Mitford The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue Dream Street by Damon Runyan Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons Shadows of the Sun by Harry Crosby Live by Night by Dennis Lehane