Teaser Tuesday

Here's how to play.

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

The Hollywood Daughter by Kate Alcott. We meet our narrator in New York City, 1959. The daughter of a Hollywood publicist, she went away to college in Vermont now works for Newsweek. She is about to get a mysterious opportunity to go home again.

In a leisurely fashion, I opened the fancy envelope. It was an invitation, yes. Engraved. But no, not to a wedding.

Jessica Malloy (indeed, me) was cordially invited to attend the 1959 Academy Awards at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles as a guest. Nowhere on the invitation did it say who was doing the inviting – just a cool request for an RSVP because attendance is limited.

I smoothed the polished surface of the invitation with my hand, letting it be, for a moment. Aladdin's lamp. The broken gutters and moldy carpet of my shabby apartment building disappeared.