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City of Smoke and Sparks
She came to New York to disappear. He made her want to be seen.
New York City, 1920. Maria Decristoforo steps off a train at Grand Central Terminal with a cardboard suitcase, twenty-four dollars and change sewn into the lining of her coat, and a new name she invented somewhere between Lynn, Massachusetts and the Harlem River. She is eighteen years old. She is running from a factory floor, a family that failed her, and a secret she cannot say out loud. By the time her shoes hit the marble, Maria is gone. She is Diana Grant now, and Diana Grant does not flinch.
The Carthage Theater on MacDougal Street is supposed to be a job — a seamstress's wages, a room she can afford, a place to keep her head down and her notebooks closer. Instead it is a Greenwich Village carriage house full of loud, broke, brilliant people who argue about Bolshevism at breakfast and stage plays on sawdust and prayer. And at the center of it is Theodore Calloway.
Teddy is the last thing Diana needs. Old-money heir. Columbia-educated playwright. War hero with a Silver Star, a shrapnel limp, and a drinking problem he has not yet learned to name. He is charming in the way dangerous men are charming, and he is the first person in Diana's life who is genuinely, fatally, interested in her mind. He does not want to save her. He does not want to fix her. He wants to read her writing and argue about it until three in the morning.
What begins between them in the dust of a failing theater will become the defining love of both their lives — and the first casualty of the one thing Diana cannot tell him.
Because Teddy's mother has hired a private investigator. Because the name Diana Grant does not exist in any record before April 1920. Because a woman who reinvents herself has always reinvented herself for a reason. And when Dorothea Calloway finally drops her weapon on the marble of a Waldorf-Astoria tea table, the lie Diana built to survive will detonate everything she has come to love.
A slow-burn, high-heat Jazz Age romance of smoke-filled speakeasies, bohemian theaters, and the fierce, fragile art of becoming someone new. Perfect for readers of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, The Paris Wife, and Outlander.
Book One of The Burning Years — a sweeping six-book saga spanning New York, Hollywood, Paris, and London from 1920 to 1939.
One woman. One impossible love. Two decades that will burn everything down and build it back again.
⭐ Dual POV (close third person) ⭐ Slow burn to explicit, emotionally grounded heat ⭐ Class-divide, opposites attract, secret identity, grumpy/sunshine ⭐ Found-family theater troupe ⭐ Rich 1920s period detail ⭐ Ends on a heartbreak that sets up Book 2
New York City, 1920. Maria Decristoforo steps off a train at Grand Central Terminal with a cardboard suitcase, twenty-four dollars and change sewn into the lining of her coat, and a new name she invented somewhere between Lynn, Massachusetts and the Harlem River. She is eighteen years old. She is running from a factory floor, a family that failed her, and a secret she cannot say out loud. By the time her shoes hit the marble, Maria is gone. She is Diana Grant now, and Diana Grant does not flinch.
The Carthage Theater on MacDougal Street is supposed to be a job — a seamstress's wages, a room she can afford, a place to keep her head down and her notebooks closer. Instead it is a Greenwich Village carriage house full of loud, broke, brilliant people who argue about Bolshevism at breakfast and stage plays on sawdust and prayer. And at the center of it is Theodore Calloway.
Teddy is the last thing Diana needs. Old-money heir. Columbia-educated playwright. War hero with a Silver Star, a shrapnel limp, and a drinking problem he has not yet learned to name. He is charming in the way dangerous men are charming, and he is the first person in Diana's life who is genuinely, fatally, interested in her mind. He does not want to save her. He does not want to fix her. He wants to read her writing and argue about it until three in the morning.
What begins between them in the dust of a failing theater will become the defining love of both their lives — and the first casualty of the one thing Diana cannot tell him.
Because Teddy's mother has hired a private investigator. Because the name Diana Grant does not exist in any record before April 1920. Because a woman who reinvents herself has always reinvented herself for a reason. And when Dorothea Calloway finally drops her weapon on the marble of a Waldorf-Astoria tea table, the lie Diana built to survive will detonate everything she has come to love.
A slow-burn, high-heat Jazz Age romance of smoke-filled speakeasies, bohemian theaters, and the fierce, fragile art of becoming someone new. Perfect for readers of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, The Paris Wife, and Outlander.
Book One of The Burning Years — a sweeping six-book saga spanning New York, Hollywood, Paris, and London from 1920 to 1939.
One woman. One impossible love. Two decades that will burn everything down and build it back again.
⭐ Dual POV (close third person) ⭐ Slow burn to explicit, emotionally grounded heat ⭐ Class-divide, opposites attract, secret identity, grumpy/sunshine ⭐ Found-family theater troupe ⭐ Rich 1920s period detail ⭐ Ends on a heartbreak that sets up Book 2
481 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 30, 2026
About the author
Anna Ivors
4 books7 followersAnna Ivors lives somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard, in a house with too many books and not enough shelves. She has held a number of jobs she doesn't talk about, read more novels than is probably advisable, and spent an unreasonable amount of time in the archives of cities she may or may not have lived in. City of Smoke and Sparks is her first novel. She is already writing the next one.
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May 18, 2026I saw this book actively as a giveaway and just by looking at the cover I was already suspicious of AI art. I tried researching about the Author and few links came up for their website of their book and a sample of it on Amazon to see if there was any book company publishing names and illustrators name. Low and behold, couldn't find concrete information of if a real human was hired to created the cover book and if I or anyone else suspects AI software was used, then why would any book worm want to read AI written book?
Also, just looking at the Authors bio on Goodreads was also suspicious too. I understand that this book hasn't been published for a month now and no reviews on either media platforms already says enough for me to be skeptical of the book series. Not only does this Author doesn't have genuine followers, they have one following with their profile and photos using AI images which doesn't help the support the Author may think they would be getting.
This book doesn't even deserve a star because of how obvious this cover was and if any competent human can simply research about this non exciting Author, then that's already questionable even a 'pen name' of other Authors get noticed better than this AI human user with their name being A.I isn't hiding it either.
Also, just looking at the Authors bio on Goodreads was also suspicious too. I understand that this book hasn't been published for a month now and no reviews on either media platforms already says enough for me to be skeptical of the book series. Not only does this Author doesn't have genuine followers, they have one following with their profile and photos using AI images which doesn't help the support the Author may think they would be getting.
This book doesn't even deserve a star because of how obvious this cover was and if any competent human can simply research about this non exciting Author, then that's already questionable even a 'pen name' of other Authors get noticed better than this AI human user with their name being A.I isn't hiding it either.
Displaying 1 of 1 review