The Bookseller's Secret: A Novel of Nancy Mitford and WWII

by Michelle Gable

Overview

“The Bookseller's Secret is a delight from start to finish, a literary feast any booklover will savor!” —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye

ARISTOCRAT, AUTHOR, BOOKSELLER, SPY—A THRILLING NOVEL ABOUT REAL-LIFE LITERARY ICON NANCY MITFORD FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF A PARIS APARTMENT

In 1942, London, Nancy Mitford is worried about more than air raids and German spies. Still recovering from a devastating loss, the once sparkling Bright Young Thing is estranged from her husband, her allowance has been cut, and she’s given up her writing career. On top of this, her five beautiful but infamous sisters continue making headlines with their controversial politics.

Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. Between the shop’s brisk business and the literary salons she hosts for her eccentric friends, Nancy’s life seems on the upswing. But when a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay.

Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of a change, the search will reveal not only a new side to Nancy, but an even more surprising link between the past and present…

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781525806469
Publisher:	Graydon House Books
Publication date:	08/17/2021
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	130,418
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 5.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

MICHELLE GABLE is the New York Times bestselling author of A Paris Apartment, I'll See You in Paris, The Book of Summer, and The Summer I Met Jack. She attended the College of William & Mary and spent twenty years working in finance before becoming a full-time writer. She grew up in San Diego and lives in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California. Find her on Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest, @mgablewriter.

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/21/2021

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. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

PRAISE FOR THE BOOKSELLER'S SECRET

“A thoroughly entertaining tale based on the life of a legendary author. With a vivid real-and-imagined cast of unforgettable characters, Gable expertly and cleverly delivers wit, humor, and intrigue in full measure on every page. What a delightful escape.”
—Susan Meissner, bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things

“The Bookseller's Secret is a delight from start to finish. Michelle Gable skillfully twines the narratives of two effervescent heroines, a modern-day author with writer's block and her literary icon Nancy Mitford who is struggling to pen a bestseller in the middle of the London Blitz. The result is a literary feast any booklover will savor!”
—Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Rose Code

“Michelle Gable delivers a triumphant tale that highlights the magic of bookshops and literature to carry people through even the darkest days of war. Featuring a colorful, witty, tenacious cast of characters, The Bookseller’s Secret deftly connects two authors separated by generations while unraveling a mystery that keeps the pages turning. A delightful tribute to an intriguing historical legend.”
—Kristina McMorris, New York Times bestselling author of Sold on a Monday

“Gable’s ingenious story connects two struggling authors, eighty years apart, and is an ode to fans of Nancy Mitford and book lovers everywhere. Filled with crisp dialogue and populated with delightful, intriguing characters, the novel sings with wit and wisdom.”
—Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“The Bookseller’s Secret is a captivating story about the inimitable Nancy Mitford while she was working in a bookshop in wartime London, and an American author who visits the city in the present day and becomes immersed in the search for a lost manuscript. Michelle Gable has a gift for describing complex, charming characters, and her Nancy steps out of the pages in all her witty, irreverent glory. This is an engrossing page-turner about books and war, and finding love in unexpected places.”
—Gill Paul, bestselling author of Jackie and Maria and The Collector’s Daughter

“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.”
—Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)

“Toggling seamlessly in time between the present and the 1940s, Gable handles Mitford’s actual and Cabot’s fictional romantic and professional challenges with a sparkling sauciness… 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.”
—Booklist (STARRED REVIEW)

From the Publisher

2021-06-02
A London bookshop serves as backdrop to the lives and loves of two women from different centuries.

The novel toggles back and forth between the story of (real-life) struggling author Nancy Mitford’s life during World War II and present-day (fictional) struggling author Katharine Cabot’s transformative visit to London. When the novel opens on Nancy’s story, the war is in full effect, London is being bombed nightly, and Nancy has just taken a job working at the Heywood Hill bookshop. Nancy and her seven siblings are something of a legend: Of her five sisters, one is a Hitler sympathizer, one a fascist, one a communist, and one a duchess. Nancy takes up spying for the British government by befriending a French colonel who becomes both her lover and her most eager audience for stories of her life, inspiring her to finally write her first successful novel loosely based on her own dramatic family and upbringing. Katie, meanwhile, after a truly spectacular meltdown during a family celebration in Virginia, mostly driven by her frustration with writer’s block, travels to London. Visiting the same Heywood Hill bookshop, she meets a handsome stranger who believes Nancy Mitford wrote a memoir during World War II that was never published; he would love to get his hands on that manuscript because of a family connection to the story. Katie is quickly absorbed by both the mystery of the manuscript and the charms of the man himself, and their literary investigations also inspire her to break free of the constrictions of her life and writer’s block. Despite the complexity of the narrative structure, the novel seems somewhat one-note. The mysteries of the past are not overly gripping, though Nancy is an enjoyable character, as is the delightfully snooty Evelyn Waugh. But Katie elicits little deep interest, coming across as whiny and self-pitying.

Ultimately, the novel suffers from its split focus.

Kirkus Reviews