Code Name Sapphire

September 1, 2022

The Emmy Award--winning Calvi (Dear George, Dear Mary) returns with the story of a young Teddy Roosevelt wooing Boston belle Alice Lee in If a Poem Could Live and Breathe (60,000-copy first printing). Three Souls author Chang goes hardcover with The Porcelain Moon, about a young Chinese woman who flees her uncle's Paris home in 1918 to avoid an arranged marriage, seeking a cousin in the French countryside working with the Chinese Labour Corps and befriending a Frenchwoman who wants quit of her abusive husband (50,000-copy first printing). Set in 1940s Trinidad, when British colonialism and U.S. occupation were folding, Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner Hosein's Hungry Ghosts contrasts the lives of wealthy farm owners Dalton and Marlee Changoor and their impoverished workers, with the plot driven by Dalton's disappearance (100,000-copy first printing). In Code Name Sapphire, from World War II fiction titan Jenoff, Hannah Martel flees Nazi Germany for Brussels and joins the Sapphire Line, which spirits downed Allied airmen to safety; when her cousin Lily's family is slated for deportation, she must decide whether she should risk trying to rescue them (350,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). Best-selling thriller writer Labuskes turns to historical fiction with The Librarian of Burned Books, which moves from U.S. author Althea James's discovery of Nazi resisters in 1933 Berlin to German refugee Hannah Brecht's work at the German Library of Burned Books in 1936 Paris to Vivian Childs's efforts in 1944 New York to block the censorship of the Armed Service Editions, paperbacks shipped to soldiers overseas (100,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing). Writing under his father's Lithuanian surname, Maetis, British thriller writer John Matthews takes readers to 1938 Vienna, where members of The Vienna Writers Circle fear that the Anschluss means they won't be able to write and then fear for their very survival (50,000-copy first printing). In Canadian author Marshall's best-selling debut, Angela Creighton's discovery in 2017 of a long-misplaced letter with great import to her family sends her Looking for Jane, with Jane the codename for a network providing illegal abortions in 1970s-80s Toronto. Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award and National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honors for Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, Moustakis tries out full-length fiction in Homestead, about a couple named Marie and Lawrence who marry impulsively and then learn about each other while homesteading in Alaska as it nears statehood (75,000-copy first printing). In Pulitzer Prize-winning Verble's Stealing, a Cherokee girl named Kit Crockett is taken from her home in 1950s bayou country and sent to a Christian boarding school intent on expunging her heritage (50,000-copy first printing).

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November 1, 2022
In 1942 in Belgium, young Micheline leads the Sapphire Line, an underground network that helps downed British airmen escape from occupied Europe. Hannah, a member of the Resistance, arrives in Belgium after narrowly escaping the Gestapo in Berlin and finds refuge with her cousin Lily. While Hannah is grateful to Lily, every day in Belgium increases her risk of arrest. Meanwhile, Lily attempts to keep life as normal as possible for the sake of her young son, despite the growing dangers. When Hannah crosses paths with Mateo, Micheline's brother, she agrees to run errands for the Sapphire Line in exchange for passage out of the country. Then one of the missions goes awry, and Lily's family is arrested and sent to a camp. A distraught Hannah is determined to rescue her cousin, despite impossible odds, before she and her family end up at Auschwitz. It is a mission made even more complex after Micheline discovers that her network may have been infiltrated. Grounded in history, Jenoff's latest captivating WWII tale, which follows Woman with the Blue Star (2021), entwines heartrending journeys of survival, betrayal, and human connection.

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December 12, 2022
Jenoff (The Woman with the Blue Star) draws on the activities of a WWII resistance network dedicated to getting downed Allied airmen to safety in her uneven latest. Hannah Martel created satiric anti-Nazi cartoons that her lover, Isaac, printed in his underground Berlin newspaper. But in 1942, after Nazis kill Isaac, Hannah flees Germany for Havana via passage on the MS Brittany. However, upon arrival, the refugees aren’t allowed to disembark, and with America’s shores closed to them as well, the ship returns to Europe, where some will be allowed to live in Belgium. Hannah ends up living with her cousin Lily Abel and her family, and seeking help from Micheline, 23, who runs a resistance effort to rescue downed Allied pilots and air crew. Hannah finds herself falling for Micheline’s brother, Matteo, who’s involved in his sister’s campaign. In the final act, Jenoff reveals a complex web of connections between the Abels, Matteo, and Hannah. The author finds plenty of thrills in the historical material, which makes a melodramatic denouement involving a love triangle feel all the more unnecessary. Thin characterizations are another minus. There’s little to help this one stand out from the glut of WWII fiction.