Author Event: Celie Imrie & Fidelis Morgan

Avid Reader is beyond excited to host authors Celia Imrie and Fidelis Morgan on their book tour celebrating the release of Imrie’s latest book: Meet Me at Rainbow Corner.

About the Book

London, 1944. The air raid sirens are blaring, the bombers are hovering. England has been at war with Germany for four years, and there’s no sign of peace coming. Dot Gallagher, newly arrived from Liverpool to offer her services as a nurse, hurries from her Red Cross hostel to the tube station to join the crowds of people taking shelter. A group of GIs have started dancing around a wind-up gramophone, and it doesn’t take long for Dot to join them. As she jives along with one of the American soldiers, he tells her about Rainbow Corner, a social club in Piccadilly for US troops. There is always a demand for dance hostesses there, women who know how to jitterbug and rock’n’roll, to dance with the soldiers. Would Dot like to apply?

As Dot discovers, Rainbow Corner is like no other place, an oasis in London where, once inside, the constraints of wartime Britain disappear. There is no rationing, all luxuries are available, including a constant stream of donuts, chewing gum and cola. There are restaurants and cafes, boxing matches and movies, and, much to Dot’s delight, a huge dance hall. Rather like an Embassy, Rainbow Corner is essentially a plot of America in central London.

It is there that Dot becomes firm friends with many of the other hostesses, and in particular with Lilly, who works for the Colonel.

Meet Me at Rainbow Corner follows the lives of Dot, Lilly and their friends, as they dance the nights away, fall in and out of love, and navigate the horrors of war. Lilly goes on a secret mission with her Colonel to France, and Dot becomes pregnant and returns to Liverpool. When the war is over, they are re-united, having travelled by boat to the US with countless other war brides to meet their repatriated fiancés again. Along the way, they uncover a case of inside espionage and learn the true meaning of love.

About Celia Imrie

An Olivier Award-winning and Screen Actors Guild-nominated actress, Celia is known for her film roles in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movies, Calendar Girls, Nanny McPhee, Bridget Jones, Finding Your Feet, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and Good Grief. On TV she is known for her roles in Pamela Adlon’s Better Things, Netflix’s The Diplomat, Absolutely Fabulous and Doctor Who. Celia’s previous books include her autobiography, The Happy Hoofer, and Sunday Times bestselling novels Not Quite Nice, Nice Work (If You Can Get It), A Nice Cup of Tea, Sail Away and Orphans of the Storm about two French children lost on the Titanic. She is currently filming the role of Joyce in Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club.

About Fidelis Morgan

Historical researcher and collaborator on Meet Me at Rainbow Corner, Fidelis is a Barnes & Noble Discovery Author for her historical whodunnit Unnatural Fire, while The Rival Queens was nominated for a Lefty at Left Coast Crime. Fidelis wrote the first groundbreaking account of the 17 th century playwrights known as The Female Wits, along with biographies of charismatic females of the 17 th and 18 th centuries. She is also an actress (As Time Goes By, Jeeves and Wooster) playwright (Pamela, Hangover Square) and theatre director. Fidelis is no stranger to the US, having lectured at Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austin while in 2014 she was the Artist-in-Residence at UC Davis.