“A richly textured work balancing magical realism with historical fact…in Hoffman’s spellbinding tale, the New York City of 1911 straddles the past and the present: electricity has begun ‘snaking through Brooklyn, turning night into day,’ the woods of upper Manhattan are giving way to sidewalks and streets, and factory owners will stop at nothing to keep prices low and workers marginalized. The chaos and grandeur of New York City at the time make it a character in its own right, as monstrous and intoxicating as the circus sideshow that traps Coralie and makes her a star.” “Spellbinding…Hoffman’s penchant for the magical is on full display in this world filled with rogues, strivers, corrupt politicians, Gilded Age riches and debilitating poverty. The Museum of Extraordinary Things is Hoffman at her most spellbinding. With its colorful crowds of heiresses, thugs, and idealists, New York itself becomes a riveting character as Hoffman weaves her trademark magic, romance, and masterful storytelling to unite Coralie and Eddie in a sizzling and tender story of young love in tumultuous times. When Eddie photographs the devastation on the streets of New York following the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he becomes embroiled in the suspicious mystery behind a young woman’s disappearance. The dashing photographer is Eddie Cohen, a Russian immigrant who has run away from his father’s Lower East Side Orthodox community and his job as an apprentice tailor. One night Coralie stumbles upon a striking young man photographing moonlit trees in the woods off the Hudson River.

An exceptional swimmer, Coralie appears as the Mermaid in her father’s “museum,” alongside performers like the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl, and a one-hundred-year-old turtle.

Buy the Book: Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, IndieBound, Books-A-Million, Hudson Booksellers, Powell's, Target, Amazon (Audio)įrom the beloved, bestselling author of The Dovekeepers, a mesmerizing new novel about the electric and impassioned love between two vastly different souls in New York during the volatile first decades of the twentieth century.Ĭoney Island: Coralie Sardie is the daughter of the sinister impresario behind The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a boardwalk freak show that thrills the masses.

The museum of extraordinary things