Schellman, Katharine / Last Dance Before Dawn

KATHARINE SCHELLMAN is a former actor and one-time political consultant. When not writing about mystery, history, and other improbable things, she can be found in her garden or finding new ways to skip steps while baking. She currently lives and writes in the mountains of Virginia in the company of her family and the many houseplants she keeps accidentally murdering.

Vivian Kelly has finally created a home and a family at the glamorous speakeasy known as The Nightingale, where no one cares who you are in the daytime. After all, in the underground world of 1920s New York City, everyone has a secret to keep, and they're on the Nightingale's dance floor to leave those secrets behind. But sometimes it takes more than a dance to escape your past.

When a stranger from Chicago shows up at The Nightingale looking to settle old scores, Vivian and the Nightingale's owner, the mysterious and alluring Honor Huxley, send him packing. They soon discover, though, that the stranger was just a warning. Slowly, the people who have made The Nightingale their home realize that someone is following them. Hunting them. And that someone won't stop until they unravel a mystery that's been cold for years: a missing girl, a boy out for revenge, and a truck full of cash that disappeared in a job gone horribly wrong.

Vivian just wants to protect the people she loves, and she's willing to dig into the dirt of the past to make it happen. But some questions are safer left unanswered, and now that Vivian has built a family for herself, she has more to lose than ever before.

9781250325822

Minotaur Books

June 2025

Hardcover

Schellman, Katharine / Last Dance Before Dawn