Another policeman stepped to the door to shut it, but not before Lillian caught sight of a woman's bloody hand, the fingers gently, almost daintily, curled in. In 1966, two people are stuck inside the Frick museum after it closes down and they have no way out, so they explore various pieces of art, stumbling upon a secret from 1919 involving Helen and her family. But when she—along with a charming intern/budding art curator named Joshua—is dismissed from the Vogue shoot taking place at the Frick Collection, she chances upon a series of hidden messages in the museum: messages that will lead her and Joshua on a hunt that could not only solve Veronica’s financial woes, but could finally reveal the truth behind a decades-old murder in the infamous Frick family.

You won’t be able to put in down and you’ll want to make plans to go see the Frick Museum for yourself. Watkins was released right away, she'd have to avoid him until she pulled together enough money to pay for the one-bedroom apartment she leased in the crumbling, five-story tenement building on Sixty-Fifth Street.

I savor every glorious new Fiona Davis novel and The Magnolia Palace has it all—two intriguing heroines, two fabulous time periods to get swept up in, and a delicious mystery that keeps you on tenterhooks. When a case of mistaken identity works in her favor, she accepts a job at the Frick mansion as the personal assistant to Helen Frick, daughter of the industrialist. It is a dual timeline (1919 and 1966) with a strong, independent women in each period, plus a variety of memorable characters and a mystery. Lillian escaped out the fire escape when the police arrived, slept on a bench in Central Park for the night, and accidentally was drawn into the Frick Mansion for a job she hadn't applied for but got hired. When she is dismissed from one of her shoots, she happens to come across some hidden messages that will help solve an age old mystery of murder and mayhem.

The interesting mystery thread started a bit late in the narrative for my taste, so I can only express my disappointment in the early pacing.

But alternating between the two women's narratives creates a delicious tension that kept me turning the pages.