The Safety of Strangers

Publisher: Life Events Library/Lion's Paw October 2023

ISBN: 978-1648394867

Fiction

BOOK 3 OF THE “AMERICAN SPY SISTERS” NOVELS INSPIRED BY THE BRAVE U.S. WOMEN SECRET AGENTS WHO FOUGHT THE NAZIS IN WW II.

Brooke Bradley is headed for stardom in Hollywood when a whirlwind romance with a famous French film actor transports her to Paris just as the Nazis are storming her adopted country. Within months, the beautiful blonde with the amber eyes who speaks no French finds herself utterly alone and faced with a choice: collaborate and live comfortably with the invading enemy or join former journalist-turned-secret agent Christopher Laurent as an “Escape Helper” spiriting downed Allied fliers to safety in neutral Spain to “fly again another day.”

Struggling to learn the language and French customs, Brooke is recruited by British intelligence to employ her skills as an actress to execute the Allies’ risky operations, even as she hides some shameful secrets of her own. At any point, the truths about her past mistakes threaten to jeopardize the lives of the pilots under her protection and send her and her fellow résistants to face a German firing squad.

Brooke’s life soon shifts from glamorous Paris salons with invited guests Pablo Picasso and American expatriates Josephine Baker and Earnest Hemingway, to a “safe house” in the picturesque village of Barbizon. There she leads stranded airmen hidden in her potting shed to late-night rendezvous with trains that serve as routes for escape and evasion.

With wanted posters featuring publicity photos from her film days plastered everywhere, Brooke adopts a new identity to fight for the liberation of France in partnership with the only man she’s ever truly loved. Hope for their survival dims with each day the brutal war endures.

New York Times & USA Today bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning former broadcast journalist Ciji Ware once again displays her extraordinary talent for weaving historical fact into mesmerizing fiction in this heart-stopping romantic thriller.