The Rustle of Silk

A watchmaker's daughter in 1920s London wants out. Lola Breezy has watched the aristocrats pass through Bayswater her whole life, and she's done being invisible. When a playwright notices her magnetic presence on the street, Lola sees her opening. She secures a position as a lady's maid, hoping to draw close to Fallaray, the powerful political figure who embodies everything she yearns to become. But her ambitious climb threatens her anxious mother, who watches her daughter's beauty and drive with dread, understanding what the world does to young women who reach too high. Cosmo Hamilton captures post-war London's social upheaval, where old hierarchies wobble and pretty girls with sharp elbows can slip through the cracks. This is a novel about desire as a force of nature, about the alchemy of looks and cunning, and what it costs to become someone new when your surname will always betray you.