Autumn Leaves, 1922

A Kiki Button Mystery

Tessa Lunney

• Publisher: Pegasus Crime
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781643137131
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

After a year away from Paris, Kiki Button is delighted to be back in City of Lights. But danger threatens her return as she is pulled into another spy mission—one that brings her ever closer to the rising fascist threat in Europe. October 1922. Kiki Button has had a rough year at home in Australia after her mother's sudden death. As the leaves turn gold on the Parisian boulevards, Kiki returns to Europe, more desperately in need of Paris and all its liveliness than ever. As soon as she arrives back in Montparnasse, Kiki takes up her life again, drinking with artists at the Café Rotonde, gossiping with her friends, and finding lovers among the enormous expatriate community. Even her summertime lover from the year before, handsome Russian exile Prince Theo Romanov, is waiting for her.But it's not all champagne and moonlit trysts. Theo is worried that his brother-in-law is being led astray by political fanatics. Kiki's boy from home, Tom, is still hiding under a false name. Her friends are in trouble—Maisie has been blackmailed and looks for revenge, Bertie is still lovesick and lonely, and Harry has important information about her mother. And to top it off, she is found by Dr. Fox, her former spymaster, who insists that she work for him once more.Amidst the gaiety of 1920s Paris, Kiki stalks the haunted, the hunted, and people still heartsore from the war. She parties with princes and Communist comrades, she wears ballgowns with Chanel and the Marchesa Casati, she talks politics with Hemingway and poetry with Sylvia Beach, and sips tea with Gertrude Stein. She confronts the men who would bring Europe into another war. And as she uses her gossip columnist connections for her mission, she also meets people who knew her mother, and can help to answer her burning question: why did her mother leave England all those years ago?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: “When the Leaves Come Tumbling Down”
• Chapter 2: “Down in Midnight Town”
• Chapter 3: “Limehouse Blues”
• Chapter 4: “Whirled Into Happiness”
• Chapter 5: “Dearest (You’re the Nearest to My Heart)”
• Chapter 6: “Love Her by Radio”
• Chapter 7: “Polyphème”
• Chapter 8: “Runnin’ Wild”
• Chapter 9: “You Remind Me of My Mother”
• Chapter 10: “ ’Neath the South Sea Moon”
• Chapter 11: “Shimmy with Me”
• Chapter 12: “Der Zwerg”
• Chapter 13: “My Rambler Rose”
• Chapter 14: “When You and I Were Young, Maggie, Blues”
• Chapter 15: “Baby Blue Eyes”
• Chapter 16: “Oo-Oo Ernest Are You Earnest with Me?”
• Chapter 17: “Throw Me a Kiss”
• Chapter 18: “My Buddy”
• Chapter 19: “Angel Child”
• Chapter 20: “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”
• Chapter 21: “Lovesick Blues”
• Chapter 22: “Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean”
• Chapter 23: “Bugle Call Rag”
• Chapter 24: “Looking All Over for You”
• Chapter 25: “Lady of the Evening”
• Chapter 26: “Taint Nobody’s Business If I Do”
• Chapter 27: “When Hearts are Young”
• Chapter 28: “Crinoline Days”
• Chapter 29: “Yes! We Have No Bananas”
• Chapter 30: “Make It Snappy”
• Chapter 31: “In the Little Red Schoolhouse”
• Chapter 32: “Queen O’ Hearts”
• Chapter 33: “That Da Da Strain”
• Chapter 34: “Dancing Fool”
• Chapter 35: “I Gave You Up Just Before You Threw Me Down”
• Chapter 36: “Who Cares?”
• Chapter 37: “My Word You Do Look Queer”
• Chapter 38: “Do It Again”
• Chapter 39: “Phi-Phi”
• Chapter 40: “Thru the Night”
• Chapter 41: “Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil”
• Chapter 42: “Hot Lips”
• Chapter 43: “Wonderful One”
• Chapter 44: “Say It While Dancing”
• Chapter 45: “Three O’Clock in the Morning”
• Chapter 46: “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise”
• Chapter 47: “On the Gin Gin Ginny Shore”
• Chapter 48: “A Brown Bird Singing”
• Chapter 49: “A Kiss in the Dark”
• Chapter 50: “Fate”
• Chapter 51: “Aggravatin’ Papa”
• Chapter 52: “March with Me!”
• Chapter 53: “Farewell Blues”
• Chapter 54: “L’Amour, Toujours L’Amour”
• Chapter 55: “Stumbling”
• Chapter 56: “Journey’s End”
• Chapter 57: “London, Dear Old London”
• Chapter 58: “Along the Road to Gundagai”
• Chapter 59: “Goin’ Home”
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright