Tag: historical fiction

#BlogTour #BookReview Three Words for Goodbye by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb @RandomTTours @Harper360UK

whatcathyreadnext4 Comments

Three Words for Goodbye BT Poster

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Three Words for Goodbye by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take place in the tour and to Harper Collins for my proof copy. I hope you have been enjoying all the fabulous reviews by the other book bloggers taking part in the tour.

Three Words for GoodbyeAbout the Book

Three cities, two sisters, one chance to correct the past…

New York, 1937: When estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers learn their grandmother is dying, they agree to fulfill her last wish: to travel across Europe – together. They are to deliver three letters, in which Violet will say goodbye to those she hasn’t seen since travelling to Europe forty years earlier; a journey inspired by famed reporter, Nellie Bly.

Clara, ever-dutiful, sees the trip as an inconvenient detour before her wedding to millionaire Charles Hancock, but it’s also a chance to embrace her love of art. Budding journalist Madeleine relishes the opportunity to develop her ambitions to report on the growing threat of Hitler’s Nazi party and Mussolini’s control in Italy.

Constantly at odds with each other as they explore the luxurious Queen Mary, the Orient Express, and the sights of Paris and  Venice,, Clara and Madeleine wonder if they can fulfil Violet’s wish, until a shocking truth about their family brings them closer together. But as they reach Vienna to deliver the final letter, old grudges threaten their reconciliation again. As political tensions rise, and Europe feels increasingly volatile, the pair are glad to head home on the Hindenburg, where fate will play its hand in the final stage of their journey.

Format: Paperback (400 pages)             Publisher: Harper 360
Publication date: 2nd September 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Three Words for Goodbye on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

I was interested to learn Three Words For Goodbye is the third collaboration by authors Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb. I have only read one of Hazel’s books, The Bird in the Bamboo Cage (also published as When We Were Young & Brave) which I loved. I’ve yet to read any of Heather’s books but, after reading Three Words For Goodbye, I shall certainly be seeking some out.

Violet’s reason for asking her granddaughters, Clara and Madeleine, to embark on the trip she is unable to make herself is touching, as is her wish for the two sisters to restore their relationship to the happy one they enjoyed as children.  I loved the way Violet organised every detail of their trip. Forget charter flights and AirBnB, this is the golden age of travel – for those with money, of course. The sisters experience the grandeur and opulence of the Queen Mary, the sophistication and luxury of the Orient Express and stay in lavish suites in the best hotels with every whim catered for. Chocolate croissants and cafe au lait, yes please.

It’s not all glamour though. The threat of war is a constant backdrop to the sisters’ journey, whether that’s in newspaper headlines, the sight of Mussolini’s soldiers on the streets of Venice or the realities of Nazi persecution in Vienna.  This added tension to the story and a sense that nothing may be quite the same again. I felt the authors really conjured up the spirit of the cities Clara and Madeleine travelled to and I liked how they were each attracted to different aspects of the cities.  Clara sees the places they visit through the eyes of an artist, describing Paris as ‘like an impressionist painting, all gentle colour and romantic detail’. Meanwhile Madeleine seeks out parts of the cities off the tourist trail, mingling with the inhabitants and seeking inspiration for stories. Their different approach is summed up by Clara’s observation that she paints with colour while her sister paints with words. 

To begin with the reader witnesses how different Clara and Madeleine have become in outlook and attitude. Madeleine is impulsive, independent-minded and ambitious whereas Clara craves order and routine.  It was fascinating to see how the two sisters change as initial irritation is replaced by mutual affection and a return to something like the close relationship of their childhood. Clara comes to envy Madeleine’s refusal to conform, her insistence of going her own way and her ambition. Indeed it’s Clara who seems to undergo the most change in the course of the book and I for one gave a cheer when she channels her new found confidence. For Madeleine the journey is more a confirmation that her approach to life is justified and that she can achieve her journalistic ambitions. The two sisters’ experiences on their travels encapsulate the wisdom of Violet – ‘The more interesting path always lies ahead’ – and the spirited approach to life of Violet’s friend, the intrepid journalist Nellie Bly – ‘Never turn back’. 

There were parts of the book I found particularly moving, such as Clara and Madeleine’s trip to Amiens to deliver Violet’s first letter. But that was as nothing compared to the final chapters of the book; if they don’t leave you a little bit tearful I don’t know what will. 

Put two accomplished authors together and what do you get? I’ll tell you what you get: an emotional story that simply sweeps you along. It’s a novel you’ll be sad to say goodbye to – whether in French, Italian or German.

In three words: Moving, compelling, uplifting  

Follow this blog via Bloglovin

About the Authors

Hazel GaynorHazel Gaynor is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of When We Were Young & Brave, A Memory of Violets and The Girl Who Came Home, for which she received the 2015 Romantic Novelists’ Association Historical Romantic Novel of the Year award. Her third novel, The Girl from The Savoy, was an Irish Times and Globe and Mail bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Popular Fiction Book of the Year. In 2017, she published The Cottingley Secret and Last Christmas in Paris (co-written with Heather Webb). Both novels hit bestseller lists, and Last Christmas in Paris won the 2018 Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star Award. Hazel’s novel, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, hit the Irish Times bestseller list for five consecutive weeks. Hazel was selected by Library Journal as one of Ten Big Breakout Authors for 2015. Her work has been translated into fourteen languages and is published in twenty-one countries worldwide. She lives in Ireland with her husband and two children.

Connect with Hazel
Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram | Facebook

Heather Webb Author PIcHeather Webb is the USA Today bestselling, award-winning author of The Next Ship Home, Rodin’s Lover, Becoming Josephine, and The Phantom’s Apprentice, as well as two novels co-written with Hazel, Last Christmas in Paris, which won the 2018 Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star Award, and Meet Me in Monaco, a finalist in the 2020 RNA Awards as well as the 2019 Digital Book World Fiction awards. To date, Heather’s works have been translated into fifteen languages worldwide. She is also passionate about helping writers find their voice as a professional freelance editor, speaker, and adjunct in the MFA in Writing program at Drexeul University. She lives in New England with her family and one feisty bunny.

Connect with Heather
Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram | Facebook

#Extract Appointment in Tehran by James Stejskal @Casemate_UK

whatcathyreadnext

I’m delighted today to bring you an extract from Appointment in Tehran by James Stejskal which will be published by Casemate Publishing in hardback on 15th October and is available to pre-order here. It will appeal to those who like plenty of action in their historical fiction and its subject matter is incredibly timely given recent world events.

Appointment in TehranAbout the Book

When radical Iranian students seize the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran and take over fifty diplomats hostage the U.S. President has to negotiate with a government that wants only to humiliate the United States. When talks fail, the President must turn to the military to bring the Americans home by force.

As preparations are made for an audacious rescue, an American intelligence officer hides alone in a Tehran safehouse with a secret. He is protecting a powerful weapon known as the Perses Device, which is now at risk of being captured and employed against the United States. The Agency Director orders that it must be brought out at all costs.

But as a small American team clandestinely enters Tehran to lead the way for the rescue force, a traitor spills the secret and KGB Spetsnaz operatives begin their own search for the weapon.

At the last minute, one more American is added to the advance team – his sole mission is to get the Agency officer and the Perses device to safety. When the rescue mission fails, only two Americans are left to run the gauntlet of enemy agents and get the weapon out. Getting in was easy…

Format: Hardcover (304 pages)          Publisher: Casemate Publishing
Publication date: 15th October 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction , Military, Action

Find Appointment in Tehran on Goodreads

Extract from Appointment in Tehran

In his apartment several blocks from the university campus, Abdul Mezad knelt on a carpet facing the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina and prayed. He was one of the few people in the city who knew what was about to happen. Although the Shah had been overthrown and the revolutionary republic proclaimed months earlier, there was still an infuriating presence in the city: the den of spies – the American Embassy – that housed the very same snakes who had installed the Shah onto his Peacock Throne. It had been a quarter-century, but many Iranians still felt the insult deeply – that the Americans could overthrow their elected government and install a puppet Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It was a brazen act by insolent foreigners who knew nothing about the true nature of Iran and its people. The infidel cared only for Iran’s oil.

After his prayers, Abdul walked in the drizzling rain through the stirring city. The early morning commuters passing him would have assumed he was a student, dressed in faded jeans and a loose sweater topped off with an olive-drab fatigue jacket he had bought cheaply in a market long ago. But anyone who looked at him closely might have reconsidered, not that Abdul cared. The intensity of a zealot on a Jihad burned in his eyes, his vision reduced to tunnel vision, focused only on his destination and little else. He had a mission, and if he was to be a martyr this day, so be it.

It was cool, as November mornings in Tehran often were. To the north, the Alborz mountains were shrouded in a blanket of gray cloud. The day had started out quietly enough for a city that had been tense for months as internecine squabbles, demonstrations, and street fights broke out across the country between the moderates, the communists, and Islamists vying for influence. The hard-liners of the Council of the Islamic Revolution had only tenuous control.

That would soon change.

The shops were still shuttered. Despite the dampness in the air, the smell of barbari baking in the wood- and coal-burning ovens wafted through the neighborhood. Abdul ignored his hunger; there would be time enough for food later. Walking with determination, he covered the few kilometers to his place of appointment rapidly. He turned into Taleqani Street and, in front of him, he saw his goal. Abdul strode on, over the glistening, damp concrete and stopped outside the embassy gates where crowds had started to gather. He glared at the Americans inside the fence who looked back at him with a stare that conveyed their sense that this day would be unlike any they had experienced before. The Marine Security Guards gathered in small groups near the gates, the front entrance, and even on the roof as the embassy staff hurried to their desks inside the Chancery. They were worried; they were too few to contain the threatening crowd that gathered beyond the fence.

As the city slowly awakened, the crowd outside grew to hundreds, then thousands of young people outside the 27-acre embassy compound. As the rain tapered off, the throngs grew, made up mostly of students who had not attended school since the uprising had begun the previous January. Most believed they were there for just a peaceful protest, but the rain had dampened their spirits. Wistfully, some thought of going home, out of the damp, to enjoy a cup of tea and some savory cakes. They wanted the Americans out of their new Islamic republic, but had not come with violence in mind. They were not aware of the real plan, the plan a small group, the “Brethren,” had in mind. Today, they would finally swing the balance of power over to Ruhollah Khomeini.

Abdul was aware of the plan. He was one of the “Brethren,” a true insider. They were the core element, even closer knit than the “Islamic Brothers.” They were the vanguard of the revolution. While the placards and shouts outside the compound only demanded that the Americans leave Iran, the Brethren had other ideas. They wanted to consolidate the Imam’s power and eliminate rival militias. By seizing the embassy, they would not only break the links between the supporters of the provisional government, who wanted a “democratic Iran,” and the Americans, they would also destroy the power of the leftists who remained a threat to the Islamic revolution.

While hundreds of young men and women kept the Marines busy on the perimeter of the facility, others climbed over the barrier fence and engaged in a tug of war over the halyards of the flagpole. These distractions occupied the Marine guards. Unseen in the crowd, a small group of men pulled bolt cutters from bags and severed the chains that secured the perimeter gates. With that last physical and psychological barrier breached, the masses outside were easily pushed to storm the compound.

James StejskalAbout the Author

James Stejskal is an author, military historian, and conflict archaeologist. To gain inspiration and research his writings, he spent 35 years serving with the US Army Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency in interesting places like Africa, Europe, the Balkans, the Near and Far East.

He is the author of A Question of Time, a Cold War military & espionage thriller, as well as the non-fiction books Special Forces Berlin: Clandestine Cold War Operations of the US Army’s Elite, 1956–1990 and Masters of Mayhem: Lawrence of Arabia and the British Military Mission to the Hejaz.

He lives in Virginia with his wife Wanda and an Anatolian Shepherd named Cheena. (Photo/bio credit: Goodreads author page)

Connect with James
Facebook | Goodreads