Paragon Hotel Novels & Stories

So I looked into this because I hit a wall after finishing the ebook from my library. 'Paragon Hotel' is surprisingly tricky for a recent release! The audiobook is exclusive to Audible last I checked, which is a bit of a bummer if you're not in that ecosystem. I managed to find the eBook available through Overdrive/Libby at several public libraries, but availability varies wildly. Honestly, your library might have a waitlist.

For digital purchase, Kindle and Kobo stores have it. I don't think there's a legal free full-text version floating around on random websites, which is probably for the best. The author's website sometimes links to retailers, but it's not hosted there directly. If you're into audiobooks, Audible is pretty much the only game in town unless your library's Hoopla has it—mine didn't.

I read 'Paragon Hotel' a while back and had to look this up because I was curious too. The central hotel and the specific events are the author's creation, but the setting and social context are steeped in real history. It's set in 1920s Portland, and the author, Lyndsay Faye, clearly did her homework on the racial tensions and the Ku Klux Klan's presence there at the time.

That historical backdrop gives the whole mystery a weight it wouldn't have otherwise. The feeling of danger and the struggles of the characters at the hotel feel authentic because that prejudice was very real. So while Alice James and Max don't have direct real-life counterparts, their story is woven into a fabric of true events. I remember finishing it and immediately reading about the history of the Albina district, which the book kind of led me to.

The central puzzle in 'Paragon Hotel' isn't just where the guests went—it's about the history of the hotel itself being a kind of sponge, absorbing people until they become part of its fabric. I kept waiting for a standard ghostly kidnapping, but the real mystery is more insidious: the hotel’s architecture literally shifts, rooms appear and vanish based on some internal logic tied to the guests' own regrets or secrets. The main character starts piecing together that the missing aren't just taken; they might have willingly stepped into a different layer of the building, a pocket dimension shaped by post-war ennui and aristocratic decay.

What hooked me was how the solution isn't a 'who' or a 'how,' but a 'why' that ties back to the founder's original sin—a failed seance that cracked reality within the hotel's walls. The guests aren't missing; they're unresolved. The ending leaves you wondering if solving it actually released them or just made room for the next batch of lost souls.