Celia Imrie - "Meet Me at Rainbow Corner" - Fidelis Morgan

Celia Imrie will discuss Meet Me at Rainbow Corner. She will be joined in conversation by collaborator, Fidelis Morgan. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. They will be introduced by Sara Paretsky. 

At the Co-op

RSVP Here (Please note that your RSVP is requested but not required.)

About the Book: London, 1944. The air raid sirens are blaring, the bombers hovering. England has been at war with Germany for four years, and there's no sign of peace. 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, an American Red Cross club in Piccadilly. They need dance hostesses, women who know how to jitterbug and jive, to dance with the soldiers. Would Dot like to apply?

Rainbow Corner is an oasis in central London where, inside, the constraints of wartime Britain disappear. All luxuries are available, including a constant stream of donuts, chewing gum and cola. It is there that Dot becomes firm friends with Lilly, who works for the Colonel in charge of the club. But there is a spy at work in the club, who is dead set on betraying the American men to Nazi Germany.

Meet Me at Rainbow Corner follows Lilly and Dot and their new GI friends into the horrors of World War 2 and finally to a new life in the USA.

About the Author: An Olivier Award-winning and Screen Actors Guild-nominated actress, Celia Imrie CBE 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 recently finished filming the role of Joyce in Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club.

About the Collaborator: 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 17th century playwrights known as The Female Wits, along with biographies of charismatic females of the 17th and 18th 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, and in 2014 she was the Artist-in-Residence at the University of California, Davis.