The Bookseller's Secret

Starred review from June 21, 2021
Gable (A Paris Apartment) immerses readers into parallel narratives of two authors revolving around a London bookshop. American novelist Katie Cabot’s writing career seems to have stalled. Eager to get away from her overbearing family in present-day Northern Virginia and their advice about her recent breakup with her fiancé, Armie, Katie travels to London to see a friend. There, Katie visits Heywood Hill Ltd., a decades-old bookstore where famed novelist Nancy Mitford worked during WWII, and meets Simon Bailey, an attractive teacher who is eager to find Nancy’s missing unpublished memoir, which he learned about when reading letters from Nancy to his grandmother Lea, who lived at Rutland Gate, where Nancy’s friend housed war refugees. As Katie helps Simon by searching for the missing manuscript at Heywood Hill, the attraction between the two builds, but is complicated by Armie’s unexpected arrival in London. Gable’s witty narrative effortlessly moves between two time periods and is enriched with cameos by historical figures and authentic, memorable characters. Historical fiction fans will be riveted from the first page. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Literary.

Starred review from July 1, 2021
Despondent over the breaking of her engagement and fretting over a debilitating case of writer's block, best-selling novelist Katharine Cabot accepts her dear friend's generous offer to visit her in London, where Kate finds herself in the same posh neighborhood once frequented by her literary idol, Nancy Mitford. Bonus points for being just a short walk away from the bookshop where Mitford worked when she, too, grappled with a publishing slump, unexpected poverty, and relationship complications during WWII. Armed with rumors of an unpublished Mitford manuscript, Kate hounds the shop owner for access to Mitford's papers, and encounters the dashing young Simon Bailey, who has his own reasons for pursing the same elusive treasure. Toggling seamlessly in time between the present and the 1940s, Gable (The Summer I Met Jack, 2018) handles Mitford's actual and Cabot's fictional romantic and professional challenges with a sparkling sauciness. The notorious Mitford sisters have always been a rich fount of mystery, scandal, and intrigue, and Gable's vision of Nancy Mitford's wartime years sheds the light of probability on a relatively unexamined portion of her life and career. A cunning blend of historical fiction, fetching romance, and literary thriller, Gable's newest novel is sure to reinvigorate interest in Mitford and beguile fans of light-hearted relationship fiction.

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