The Last Hours in Paris

February 1, 2022

Chiaverini's Switchboard Soldiers chronicles the women of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, who weren't even eligible to enlist in the army but helped facilitate communication on the battlefield as bombs fell around them and pandemic raged during World War I (150,000-copy first printing). French Resistance fighter Elise and German soldier Sebastian fall in love in Occupied Paris and face moral crisis at war's end in Druart's The Last Hours in Paris (45,000-copy first printing). In Kidd's The Night Ship, sad-eyed young Gil is sent to live with his grandfather in a Western Australian fishing community and learns about the 1629 sinking of a ship whose passengers included the newly orphaned Mayken, sailing to what was then the Dutch East Indies (75,000-copy first printing). In Martin's latest, Ava is The Librarian Spy, working undercover in World War II Lisbon to collect intelligence and finding connection through coded messages with Elaine, apprenticed at a press run by the Resistance in Occupied France (150,000-copy first printing). Lock continues his successful "American Novels" series with Voices in the Dead House, which braids together the experiences of Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott in Civil War-torn Washington, DC. In Sister Mother Warrior, celebrated Island Queen author Riley conveys the Haitian Revolution through the stories of two women: Marie-Claire Bonheur, the first empress of Haiti, and West African-born warrior Gran Toya (100,000-copy first printing).

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2022
This World War II saga explores issues of parenthood, justice, and retribution. Druart's second novel unfolds in two timelines, taking place in the 1940s and 1960s. At the book's outset, in 1963, �lise has been living in apparent exile from her Paris roots, in a remote Breton village with a mysterious old woman named Soizic. Jos�phine, �lise's 18-year-old daughter, unearths her birth certificate and learns what her mother had postponed telling her: A man with a German surname is her father, not, as she had been told, her mother's fiance who died fighting for France. Not understanding that her parentage was not only a source of disgrace, but of danger, Jos�phine is angered by the deception and vows to track down her father. By 1944, �lise, her mother, and sister have endured four years of Nazi occupation. The way in which Paris has been devastated on so many fronts is viscerally evoked. �lise is part of a clandestine operation that arranges passage to Switzerland for Jewish children. At a bookshop, �lise meets S�bastian, a bilingual German soldier whose mother was French and who, with the glaring exception of his uniform, can pass as French. S�bastian finds the duties of his posting repugnant--acting as interpreter during Gestapo interrogation sessions and translating denunciation letters in which Parisians turn in their Jewish neighbors. S�bastian interferes when French police harass �lise in the bookshop, where he is an unwelcome customer. He takes escalating risks to win �lise's trust and, ultimately, her love--rescuing her from the Gestapo and helping to save several children from deportation. Jos�phine's journey of discovery uncovers a tragedy of errors. S�bastian and �lise seem too innocent--unconvincingly so--to realize the depths of depravity into which both occupiers and occupied can sink. Their misplaced optimism will have disastrous consequences for each. But although S�bastian's complexity will emerge only later, these characters command sympathy, to the point that readers will be exasperated by their missteps. A vivid expos� of war and its dislocations.

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July 28, 2023
Elise Chevalier has almost raised her daughter, Josephine, to adulthood when her long-buried secrets are exposed. After attempting to find her birth certificate, Josephine realizes that her father isn't who she thinks he is. She discovers that he was in fact a Nazi soldier her mother met while growing up during the Third Reich in Paris. This knowledge propels Josephine on a quest to Paris to find answers about Elise's past and why she has kept this secret for so many years. In another time line, Druart reveals the past experiences of Elise and her young love Sebastian slowly, over alternating chapters, as they navigate Paris under German occupation. Sebastian's feelings about being forced into a lifetime of service to the Nazis add to the complexity of this love story. Josephine eventually learns the truth, which is even more painful for her and her mother than she imagined. Druart gives light to this difficult time in history while also offering a beautifully told story of family bonds and long-lost love.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.