Patty Farmer is a historian, best-selling author, businesswoman, and former model. She's been fascinated with the glamour, magic, and history of New York City's quintessential Plaza Hotel ever since the day her mother introduced her to the ritual of afternoon tea at the hotel's Palm Court when she was just seven years old. She continues her in-depth research uncovering all the secrets and history this mythical, landmark hotel holds.

Patty has followed the entertainment industry as an insider, and archivist all her life. Her work draws upon a lifetime of close friendships and socializing among personalities and celebrities around the world and has spent the last decade writing about some of our most significant cultural institutions. Her books include The Persian Room Presents, about the famed supper club in the Plaza Hotel; two oral histories of entertainment at the legendary Playboy Clubs called Playboy Swings and Playboy Laughs; and an illustrated celebration of films and live performances set at the Plaza called Starring the Plaza.

In her best-selling book Playboy Swings, she chronicles--through hundreds of personal interviews--the careers and personalities of the country's leading jazz artists. Terry Teachout, in a review for the Wall Street Journal, said, "Playboy Swings is a well-researched, fascinatingly detailed new book by Patty Farmer. It goes a long way toward answering the question of how Jazz acquired its cultural cachet."
She makes her home in the Portuguese Algarve.