> HISTORICAL FICTION: LINDA DIEBEL
THE SCENT OF SECRETS Jane Thynne Doubleday Canada, 448 pages, $22.95 An intriguing question lies at the heart of Jane Thynne’s latest novel, The Scent of Secrets. Her author’s note asks: “Were the Nazi leaders’ wives complicit or did they try to dissuade their men from their crimes?” She found answers in research that offers a new perspective on the private life of the Third Reich and weaves it into a romantic, political thriller set in wartime Europe.
Clara Vine, a half-Jewish Anglo-German actress, is approached by a British intelligence agent in Paris on the eve of the Second World War and asked to spy on Hitler through his mistress, Eva Braun. Clara’s already close to elite Nazi wives and the book, the first of a trilogy, is fraught with danger for her.
Eva Braun’s intoxicating (and ironic) scent, Je Reviens, seems to permeate pages filled with as much glamour and romance as betrayal and death. ALONG THE INFINITE SEA Beatriz Williams Penguin Random House Canada, 456 pages, $34.95 A few years ago, New York Times-bestselling author Beatriz Williams read a newspaper article about a rare 1936 Mercedes Special Roadster, found in Greenwich, Conn., where she then lived. The article said it had been driven by a pre-Second World War German baroness who brought it with her when she fled to America.
It gave Williams the idea for her third and final Schuyler sisters’ novel, Along the Infinite Sea. She wove the restoration of the car (which sold for nearly $12 million in 1989) with the fictional lives of two women born decades apart, Pepper Schuyler and Annabelle Dommerich.
Readers new to the Schuyler sisters may want to start with the first books, The Secret Life of Violet Grant and Tiny Little Thing, or dive right into the action of the finale. CLEOPATRA’S SHADOWS Emily Holleman Little, Brown and Company. 384 pages, $30 Author Emily Holleman’s own childhood relationship with her older sister shaped how she approached telling the story of Cleopatra’s younger sister, Arsinoe, in Cleopatra’s Shadows. She explores how early adulation and jealousy matured into deep understanding.
This is the first instalment in her series about little-known Arsinoe, whose story comes at the beginning of the Cleopatra saga. It begins with a palace coup against King Ptolemy by Arsinoe’s half sister Berenice and the narrative is told in their alternating voices.
Holleman, a Yale graduate, became fascinated with Arsinoe during a trip to Egypt and, in an afterword, describes her goal: “My hope is (to) carry you back to a time when dreams were omens and kings were gods, when every wily woman had a wily eunuch at her side and a devious husband or father she was plotting to depose.” GOLDEN LION Wilbur Smith with Giles Khristian HarperCollins Canada, 382 pages, $24.99 Stephen King calls bestselling South African writer Wilbur Smith “the best historical novelist . . . You can get lost in Wilbur Smith and misplace all of August.”
Millions of readers agree with King, and his adventure novels have sold more than 125 million copies worldwide. His 36th and latest book, Golden Lion, continues his Courtney series about a swashbuckling 17th-century family.
It’s full of suspense as hero Henry “Hal” Courtney tracks his abducted warrior wife, Judith, across deserts and along the eastern coast of Africa in his ship, The Golden Bough.
The novel is part of a six-book deal Smith signed with HarperCollins Worldwide in 2012, after leaving Pan Macmillan after 45 years. Smith, already then almost 80, said working with other writers on some titles, while controlling plot and character, was a way to keep up with demand.
Linda Diebel is a Toronto journalist
and writer.