The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
When I first read about the Rosenstraße protests, the only successful event that lasted for several days and resulted in the protesters’ victory, I just knew I had to write the story of these incredible women. Yes, it was mostly women who gathered in front of the...
Immediately the tone of The Woman Who Risked Everything is introduced as one that is tense and threatening. The Prologue takes the reader to a point in the future, demonstrating how the novel will escalate. The tension in this small section is built effectively as our...
Ellie Midwood, many congratulations on the new novel. What inspired you to write about the Second World War? Thank you so much, and as for the inspiration, it was family history mostly. As a child, I preferred my grandfather’s war stories to normal kiddie fairy tales...
Lily Graham’s latest novel, The Last Restaurant in Paris, begins in 1980s France, where living memories of World War Two are slowly fading to just the older generations of the population. Yet when a young librarian, Sabine Dupris, inherits a restaurant from her...
Lily, congratulations on your new novel, The Last Restaurant in Paris. It’s set in Occupied Paris during WW2. Why did you want to write about it? Thank you so much. I love Paris, it’s architecture, food, history and joie de vivre and I’ve always been fascinated by its...
On the 18th of November 1978, the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project – better known as Jonestown – made headline news around the world through the mass murder-suicide of over 900 of its inhabitants, orchestrated by cult leader Jim Jones. In her latest novel, The Girl...
When the Nazis entered Prague in 1942, little did Amelia know how her life would change forever. However, she soon discovered that she could not let their hatred bend her, or even her tiniest hope of surviving Nazi cruelty would become a victim of their homicide will....
Sharon Maas, congratulations on the new novel, which deals with an incredibly tragic event, that is the Jonestown mass-suicide. What impact did it have on you? I was living in France at the time, so the initial reports trickled through only slowly – this was before...
On the morning of the 19th November 1978 I entered my classroom at the Alliance Française in Paris, where I was attending a course in advanced French. A few minutes later our teacher, M. Beaulieu, strode in. Instead of his usual jovial ‘Bonjour, bonjour tout le monde’...
Shari J Ryan, many congrats on the new book. How hard was it to find inspiration for the plot of The Girl with the Diary amid the horrors and misery of the holocaust? Thank you so much! It wasn’t hard for me to find inspiration for the plot of The Girl with the Diary....
