Warrior Girl
The Secret Life of Bees

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

The daughter of a famous vaudevillian dancer, Evie Grace Devlin is pushed onto the stage at a young age and dubbed the toe-dancing “Pint-Sized Pavlova.” Evie hates the glare of the spotlight, no matter how much her fame-obsessed mother forces her into it. A scholarship to study nursing at a Catholic hospital in Galveston, Texas provides Evie with her only hope of escape.

However, just as Evie is about to be certified, secrets from her past are revealed and she is cast out. It’s 1932, and she is just one more casualty of the Great Depression, wandering a nation struggling with massive unemployment, economic failure, and government ineptitude. With no choice but to return to her roots, Evie finds work—as an unregistered nurse—looking after a troupe of marathon dancers. Unexpectedly she is thrust back where she doesn’t want to be: in front of screaming, adoring audiences.

Though the screams are for her partner, Zave Cassidy, the “Handsome Hoofer Evie’s talent soon comes to light. Winning over audiences with their fancy moves and implied romance, they make headlines across the country. Off stage, Evie and Zave grow closer, sharing their dreams, and planning a future together. But Galveston in the thirties is a place of dark glamour and dangerous plots where secrets can ignite and consume dreams, love, and, yes, even lives.

More Adult, Non-Juvenile Books

  • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • Twelve short stories that mark a turning point in the work of “one of the true American masters" (The New York Review of Books).
  • The great Native American Novel of a battered veteran returning home to heal his mind and spirit
  • Dynamic and debonair, Cesar Romero was best known for creating the role of the Joker in the 1960s Batman television series. As the first actor to play Batman and Robin’s villainous nemesis, Romero established the character’s giddy, manic tone and the distinctive laugh that subsequent actors like Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Joaquin Phoenix would use as the starting points in their own Oscar-nominated (Nicholson) and Oscar-winning (Ledger and Phoenix) performances. As a closeted gay man of Latin American descent, Romero gracefully faced many personal challenges while maintaining his suave public image and starring opposite legends ranging from Shirley Temple to [...]
  • An openly Lesbian couple survives and thrives in 19th century Vermont–a true story, as told by Tillie Walden