The Librarians of Lisbon: A WWII Story of Love and Espionage by Suzanne Nelson

WWII rages Europe. Lisbon stands alone as a glamorous city on the brink of chaos, harboring spies trading double-edged secrets. Among them are Selene Delmont and Beatrice Sullivan, Boston librarians turned Allied operatives. Officially enlisted to collect banned books, both women are undercover agents tasked with infiltrating the Axis spy network. Soon, they’re caught up in games of deception with two of Lisbon’s most notorious men --- the outcast Portuguese baron, Luca Caldeira, and the lethal spy, code name Gable.

As Selene charms her way through lavish ballrooms with Luca, the more bookish Bea is plunged into Gable’s shadowy world of informants. But when a betrayal unravels a carefully spun web of lies, everything they’ve fought for is thrown into jeopardy.

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Rachel Joyce, author of The Homemade God

There is a heatwave across Europe, and four siblings have gathered at their family’s lake house to seek answers about their father, a famous artist, who recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his long-awaited masterpiece. Now he is dead. And there is no sign of his final painting. As the siblings try to piece together what happened, they spend the summer in a state of lawlessness: living under the same roof for the first time in decades, forced to confront the buried wounds they incurred as his children, and waiting for answers. Though they have always been close, the things they learn that summer --- about themselves and their father --- will drive them apart before they can truly understand his legacy. Meanwhile, their stepmother’s enigmatic presence looms over the house.

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Meg Waite Clayton, author of Typewriter Beach

1957. Isabella Giori is 10 months into a standard seven-year studio contract when she auditions with Alfred Hitchcock. Just weeks later, she is sequestered by the studio’s “fixer” in a tiny Carmel cottage, waiting and dreading. Meanwhile, next door, Léon Chazan is annoyed when Iz interrupts his work on yet another screenplay he won’t be able to sell, because he’s been blacklisted. Soon, they’re together in his roadster, speeding down the fog-shrouded Big Sur coast. 2018. Twenty-six-year-old screenwriter Gemma Chazan, in Carmel to sell her grandfather’s cottage, finds a hidden safe full of secrets --- raising questions about who the screenwriter known simply as Chazan really was, and if she can live up to his name. 

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