Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Melting the Snow on Hester Street

Author: Daisy Waugh

Narrator: Alice Frayn

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-28-13

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Rich. Beautiful. Damned. Sumptuously evoking the Golden Age of Hollywood, a time when money is built on greed and love can be a trick of the light, Daisy Waughs stunning new novel is a compelling portrait of love, fame, and survival.

It is the blistering summer of 1929 and Hollywoods glamorous set appear to have it all. Everybody everywhere is living the Hollywood dream, including the elegant and charming, high-society couple, actor and actress Maximilian and Eleanor Beecham. But beneath the sophistication and glamour their insecure and unhappy marriage is on the brink of divorce and their finances are teetering on a knifes edge after a series of failed films.

When the creditors come in to take possession of the house, it seems all is lost and they have nowhere to turn but into the arms of their waiting lovers. But when they receive an invitation to one of the legendary weekend house parties at Hearst Castle - which they know will be filled every Hollywood big-shot around - they cannot resist one last shot of making it in the film industry. With gossip, glamour, scandal, and decadence the party is the epitome of the Golden Era, but for Maximilian and Eleanor the time has come to make a decision that will change their future. Will they sacrifice everything for fame and fortune? Or can Eleanor and Maximilian learn to love each other again?

Critic Reviews:

Praise for Last Dance with Valentino: "A gripping, bittersweet love story." (Sunday Times)

"Impeccably researched and beautifully-written." (Daily Mail)

"Daisy Waugh delivers her engaging tale with wit and a real lightness of touch." (Literary Review)

Members Reviews:

The golden era of Gatsby in the States

Melting the Snow on Hester Street absolutely brings the era of early 20th Century America to life, the era of the Great Gatsby and the polarisation of wealth, the seamy side of the garment district in New York, the burgeoning wealth of Hollywood.. essentially two very different ends of the spectrum.

The main storyline is cradled at the beginning and end by scenes in which Marion (the paramour of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst) is discussing with Charlie (Chaplin, of course) the context of a letter she has received from someone not known to her personally. This is Santa Monica of the late 1920s. Enter Max and Eleanor Beecham, married couple, and waning stars of the silver screen who find themselves at the heart of the social whirl that is Hollywood.... Valentino, Garbo, Kennedy and more glamour chararcters pepper the plot as it moves back and forth in time, from Hollywood back to New York; a period when times were truly hard for the immigrants, the so-called green horns, who were arriving daily from Europe in search of work.

ï¿ï¿ï¿ï¿ï¿ï¿The early part of the story is based on a true event in 1911 and it vividly portrays the struggle of the people living around the Hester Street of the title, both before and after that event. The people have uprooted themselves from Europe, settled into their new surroundings and taken up the threads of a new life - and though the reader may want to learn more about their personal motivations for leaving everything behind, nothing is revealed. This echoes the new-found rootlessness of the immigrants who can only afford to look forward, and never yearn for what was.