Inferno on Fifth

Fire! St. Patrick's Day, New York City, 1899. Spectators along Fifth Avenue, unaware of impending doom, enjoy the parade and the bands playing Irish tunes. Suddenly marchers halt at the immense and luxurious Windsor Hotel, watching terrified women at upper-floor windows cringe at the flames-and then leap. Within two hours, the fire kills close to one hundred people. What set it off? An ember from a cigar? Robbers who sparked the fire as a distraction? Broken boilers in the basement? Spunky hotel guest Marguerite Wells decides she and her two wealthy friends can discover what started the terrible inferno while three newly jobless hotel maids struggle to figure out how they can survive. Inspired by the true story of the shocking fire that leveled one of Manhattan's elegant hotels twelve years before the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Inferno on Fifth prompts readers to ask how they would react in the defining seconds of an irreversible tragedy.