“When a mysterious visitor promises contact with her long-lost mother, Aimée Leduc finds herself hot on the trail of the Seventies radicals with whom her mother was evidently associated. The result is not just good suspense but an affecting and realistic psychological study of a daughter’s coming to terms with an absent parent.
This is another high-class mystery from Black, whose previous works in the series (Murder in Belleville, Murder in the Marais) have the same indelible sense of place and sophisticated political context.”
Giveaway:
1 US winner will receive a softcover
in very good condition
Paris, 1940.
The City of Light has fallen under German occupation.
Among patriotic Parisians, the pursuit of art, culture, and jazz has become a bold act of defiance.
So has forbidden love for spirited Jewish teenager Annette Zelman, a student at the Beaux-Arts,
and dashing young Catholic poet Jean Jausion.
Despite their devout families’ vehement opposition, the young couple finds acceptance at the famed Café de Flore, whose habitués include Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, Django Reinhardt, and other luminaries of the Latin Quarter.
For a time, Annette and Jean feel they have eluded the brute might of the relentless Nazis — and more immediately, their parents’ threats and demands.
But as restrictions on the Jewish community escalate to arrests and deportations, the maleficent forces gathering around the young lovers set them on divergent and tragically inevitable paths.
Drawn from never-before-published family letters and other treasures, as well as archival sources and exclusive interviews, Star Crossed offers us precious insight into the Holocaust and the lives French people bravely led under the Hitler regime. This breathtaking true story of beauty, art, liberation, and the transformative power of love resonates with an intimate story of undying devotion, seen through the prism of history.
ABOUTH THE AUTHORS:
HEATHER DUNE MACADAM
is the author of the international bestseller and Pen Award Finalist 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Transport to Auschwitz,
translated into 18 languages, and the producer/director of its companion documentary film, 999.
Her first book was the bestselling memoir Rena’s Promise: A Story of Sister in Auschwitz.
Click on the picture to check Heather Dune’s other books and her documentary:
SIMON WORRALL
a Francophile since his Parisian childhood, Simon is fluent in French and German,
and is the author of the highly acclaimed books, The Poet and the Murderer and the novelized true story of his mother in World War II, The Very White of Love.
Giveaway:
1 winner will receive an English copy of the book
1 winner will receive a Spanish copy of the book.
See details in the giveaway form
(open to all countries)
Winemaking firefighters, a tree in a church, an inverted phallus at a well-known entrance,
an atomic bomb shelter under Gare de l’Est, unsuspected traces of former brothels,
the patron saint of motorists, royal monograms hidden in the Louvre courtyard,
the presentation of Christ’s crown of thorns, a prehistoric merry-go-round,
a sundial designed by Dalí, war-wounded palm trees, bullet holes at the ministry,
religious plants in a priest’s garden, a mysterious monument to Freemasonry at the Champ-de-Mars,
a solid gold sphere in parliament, a Chinese temple in a parking lot,
the effect of the Bièvre river on Parisian geography, a blockhouse in the Bois de Boulogne…
For those who thought they knew Paris well, the city is still teeming with unusual and secret places that are easily accessible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Thomas Jonglez was born and grew up in Paris.
At the age of 22 he set out to discover the world,
and spent most of 1992 backpacking around South America.
Next he bought a one-way ticket to Beijing,
from where he decided to make his way back to Paris overland
– a trip that took him seven months.
On his return, he tirelessly trawled the streets of Paris
for material to write his first guidebook, which was published in 1996.
After several years with the steel industry, he launched his publishing company in 2003. The first edition of Secret Paris came out in 2007.
Ever since, he has regularly strolled around the capital,
constantly surprised to discover new secret places in a city he thought he knew so well.
July 20, 2024
WordsAndPeace
Thomas Jonglez
France Book Tours 