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  Advance Praise for The Bookseller’s Secret

  “The Bookseller’s Secret is a delight from start to finish. Michelle Gable skillfully twines the narratives of two effervescent heroines, a modern-day author with writer’s block and her literary icon, Nancy Mitford, who is struggling to pen a bestseller in the middle of the London Blitz. The result is a literary feast any booklover will savor!”

  —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of

  The Alice Network and The Rose Code

  “A thoroughly entertaining tale based on the life of a legendary author. With a vivid real-and-imagined cast of unforgettable characters, Gable expertly and cleverly delivers wit, humor, and intrigue in full measure on every page. What a delightful escape.”

  —Susan Meissner, bestselling author of

  The Nature of Fragile Things

  “Michelle Gable delivers a triumphant tale that highlights the magic of bookshops and literature to carry people through even the darkest days of war. Featuring a colorful, witty, tenacious cast of characters, The Bookseller’s Secret deftly connects two authors separated by generations while unraveling a mystery that keeps the pages turning. A delightful tribute to an intriguing historical legend.”

  —Kristina McMorris, New York Times bestselling author of

  Sold on a Monday

  MICHELLE GABLE is the New York Times bestselling author of A Paris Apartment, I’ll See You in Paris, The Book of Summer, and The Summer I Met Jack. She attended the College of William & Mary and spent twenty years working in finance before becoming a full-time writer. She grew up in San Diego and lives in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California. Find her on Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest, @mgablewriter.

  MICHELLEGABLE.COM

  The Bookseller’s Secret

  A Novel

  Michelle Gable

  For my agent, Barbara

  Without you, none of this

  Contents

  The Mitford Family

  April 1946

  Thanksgiving Night

  Earlier that night...

  Black Friday

  February 1942

  Saturday Morning

  Saturday Afternoon

  February 1942

  Saturday Night

  June 1942

  Monday Afternoon

  June 1942

  Monday Evening

  July 1942

  Tuesday Afternoon

  September 1942

  Wednesday Morning

  September 1942

  Wednesday Evening

  November 1942

  Thursday Afternoon

  December 1942

  Thursday Evening

  January 1943

  Friday Morning

  May 1943

  Saturday Afternoon

  October 1943

  Saturday Evening

  March 1944

  Saturday Evening

  June 1944

  Saturday Evening

  August 1944

  Sunday Morning

  September 1944

  Monday Afternoon

  March 1945

  April 1945

  Tuesday Afternoon

  August 1945

  Wednesday Afternoon

  April 1946

  Thursday Morning

  Letters

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  The Mitfords

  Selected List Of Sources

  The Bookseller’s Secret - Reader’s Guide

  Questions for Discussions

  THE MITFORD FAMILY

  THE PARENTS

  Lord Redesdale:

  David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, “Farve”

  Lady Redesdale:

  Sydney Bowles, “Muv”

  THE SISTERS

  The Novelist:

  Nancy Freeman-Mitford (born 1904)

  The Countrywoman:

  Pamela Freeman-Mitford (born 1907)

  The Fascist:

  Diana, Lady Mosley (born 1910)

  The Hitler Confidante:

  Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford (born 1914)

  The Communist:

  Jessica Lucy “Decca” Freeman-Mitford (born 1917)

  The Duchess:

  Deborah “Debo” Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (born 1920)

  The Lone Brother:

  Thomas “Tom” David Freeman-Mitford (born 1909)

  April 1946

  Hôtel de Bourgogne, Paris VII

  There they are, held like flies in the amber of that moment—click goes the camera and on goes life; the minutes, the days, the years, the decades, taking them further and further from that happiness and promise of youth, from the hopes...and from the dreams they dreamed for themselves.

  —Nancy Mitford,

  The Pursuit of Love

  “Alors, racontez!” the Colonel said, and spun her beneath his arm.

  Nancy had to duck, of course. The man was frightfully short.

  “Racontez! Racontez!”

  She laughed, thinking of all the times the Colonel made this demand. Racontez! Tell me!

  “Allô—allô,” he’d say across some crackling line. “Were you asleep?”

  He might be in Paris, or Algiers, or another place he could not name. Weeks or months would pass and then the phone would ring in London and set Nancy Mitford’s world straight again.

  “Alors, racontez! Tell me everything!”

  And she did.

  The Colonel found Nancy’s stories comical, outrageous, unlike anything he’d ever known, his delight beginning first and foremost with the six Mitford girls, and their secret society. Nancy also had a brother, but he hardly counted at all.

  “C’est pas vrai!” the Colonel would cry with each new tale. “That cannot be true!”

  “It all happened,” Nancy told him. “Every word. What do you expect with a Nazi, a Communist, and several Fascists in one family tree?”

  “C’est incroyable!”

  But her sisters and the Hon Society were the past, and this gilded Parisian hotel room was the present, likewise Nancy’s beloved Colonel, currently reaching into the bucket of champagne. How had she gotten to this place? It was the impossible dream.

  “Promise we can stay here forever,” Nancy said.

  “Here or somewhere like it,” he answered with a grin.

  Nancy’s heart bounced. Heavens, he was ever so ugly with his pockmarked face and receding hairline, the precise opposite of her strapping husband, a man so wholesome he might’ve leapt from the pages of a seedsman catalogue. But Nancy loved her Colonel with every part of herself, in particular the female, which represented another chief difference between the two men.

  “You know, my friends are desperate to take a French lover,” Nancy said, and she tossed her gloves onto the bed. “All thanks to a fictional character from a book. Everyone is positively in love with Fabrice!”

  “Bien sûr, as in real life,” the Colonel said as he popped the cork.

  The champagne bubbled up the bottle’s neck and dribbled onto his stubby hands.

  “You’re such a wolf!” Nancy said. She heaved open the shutters and scanned the square below. “At last! A hotel with a view.”

  Their room overlooked the Palais Bourbon, home to the Assemblée nationale, the two-hundred-year seat of the French government, minus the interlude during which it was occupied by the Luftwaffe. Mere months ago, German propaganda had hung from the building: DEUTS
CHLAND SIEGT AN ALLEN FRONTEN. Germany is victorious on all fronts. But the banners were gone now, and France had been freed. Nancy was in Paris, just as she’d planned.

  “This is heaven!” Nancy said. She peered over her shoulder and coquettishly kicked up a heel. “A luncheon party tomorrow? What do you think?”

  “Okay, ma chérie, quoi que tu en dises,” the Colonel said as she sauntered toward him.

  “Whatever I want?” Nancy said. “I’ve been dying to hear those words! What about snails, chicken, and Port Salut? No more eating from tins for you. On that note, darling, you mustn’t worry about your job prospects. I know you’ll miss governing France but, goodness, we’ll have so much more free time!”

  Nancy was proud of the work the Colonel had done as General de Gaulle’s chef du cabinet, but his resignation made life far more convenient. No longer would she have to wait around, or brook his maddeningly specific requests. I’ve got a heavy political day. LET ME SEE—can you come at two minutes to six?

  “It’s really one of the best things that could’ve happened to us,” Nancy said. “Oh, darling, life will be pure bliss!”

  Nancy leaned forward and planted a kiss on the Colonel’s nose.

  “On trinque?” he said, and lifted a glass.

  Nancy raised hers to meet it.

  “Santé!” he cheered.

  Nancy rolled her eyes. “The French are so dull with their toasts. Who cares about my health? It’s wretched, most of the time. Cheers to novels, I’d say! Cheers to readers the world over!”

  “À la femme auteur Nancy Mitford!” The Colonel clinked her glass. “Vive la littérature!”

  Thanksgiving Night

  Arlington, Virginia

  Katie wakes up, disoriented. She doesn’t know where she is, other than in the back of a car. Her phone is missing. She can’t find her purse. There is a white crust on her jeans.

  Cautiously, Katie wiggles into a seated position. They are on the George Washington Parkway going fifty, at least. If she’s being abducted, Katie is neither nimble nor fit enough to launch herself out of the car. Her gaze darts toward the front seat, and the panic dissolves when she spots her nieces’ long and glorious hair.

  “Hello, friends,” she says.

  “Welcome back,” Danielle answers. She is the older of the two sisters, by sixteen months, and the driver of the car. “Did you have a nice nap?”

  “See?” says Dani’s little sister, Clementine. “I told you we didn’t need to have her stomach pumped.”

  “Aren’t you a bit young to know about stomach pumping?” Katie says. At fifteen, Clem is pretty, long-lashed and freckle-nosed, but Katie still sees the snaggletoothed, Muppet-voiced kid. “Anyway, I didn’t drink that much,” she adds, as her stomach roils in disagreement and the night’s events flash like photographs through her mind.

  Thanksgiving dinner. Three tables. The forty-some people invited to feast. Katie’s mother, her stepbrothers, the cavalcade of uncles and aunts. There are strangers, too. Neighbors, maybe, or distant relatives of her stepfather, Charles.

  “You didn’t drink that much?” Clem says, her voice high and alarmed. “What do you consider ‘a lot’?”

  “It was a lot,” Katie admits. She’s supposed to be a role model. Well, so much for that. “Listen, girls,” she says, “nothing good comes from binging alcohol. You’ll just end up sick, and embarrassed, and spending way too many hours obsessing over what you did.”

  “Okay, thanks. Good tip.”

  “The regret is not worth the brief window of fun,” Katie says.

  “There was a window?” asks Dani.

  “We must have missed the part where you were having fun,” Clem says.

  Katie catches them exchanging smirks.

  “Alcohol’s a depressant,” Clem says. “You shouldn’t drink when you’re sad.”

  “I’m not sad!” Katie insists, though she has to wonder if this is true. “More tired, than anything. But you’re right, about it being a depressant.”

  They motor along in silence, past dark office buildings and the Arlington Cemetery. Katie squeezes her eyes shut and attempts to replay how it all went to hell. Downing two flutes of Veuve Clicquot, straight from the jump, was probably the first wrong turn.

  Katie tries to remember. She sees everyone taking their seats. Katie places herself between her grandmother and Jill (Jillian?), her stepbrother’s new girlfriend. An uncle poses a question. An aunt. Hackles rise. Jill or Jillian repeats a query Katie’s already sidestepped two or three times. Words are exchanged.

  “Shit,” Katie mutters. “Did I yell at Chuck’s new girlfriend?”

  “You did,” Dani confirms.

  “It was more of a bark,” Clem says. “You also told Gam-Gam to ‘eff off.’ Though you did not say ‘eff.’”

  “Oh, God,” Katie groans. Her heart drops into her gut. Funny that a person can be thirty-nine and still get in trouble with their mom. “Hey, mind slowing down? You seem to be going a tad fast.”

  “Actually, we’re going the speed limit,” Dani says, and Katie can practically hear the roll of her eyes.

  “Don’t stress,” Clem says. “Everyone understands that you’re going through some crap. Plus, people always mouth off during holidays. That’s what happens.”

  Dani nods vigorously. “It’s the best reason to see extended family, T-B-H,” she says.

  “Yeah. And Gam-Gam didn’t even seem all that upset.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t seem that way, no,” Katie says.

  “Everyone was way more freaked out about the crying,” adds Clem.

  “I cried?” Katie touches her puffy, salty eyes. “There were tears?”

  “Wow, you are drunker than you seem.”

  Clem smacks her sister’s arm and, in a hiss, tells her to be nice.

  “It was just a surprise,” Clem says, and glances over her shoulder. “I mean, Gam-Gam always thinks you use your, quote, unquote, creative license to make things seem more dramatic than they really are.”

  “Your grandmother only says that when the story paints her in an unflattering light.”

  “But you don’t seem that dramatic,” Clem continues. “Far as we can tell, you’re happy, like, ninety percent of the time.”

  “Bubbly,” Dani offers.

  Katie narrows her eyes. “Bubbly. What a horrible word. It’s just a way to tell someone they’re trivial, unimportant.”

  “Paranoid,” Dani sings.

  “You two have never been called ‘bubbly,’ am I right?” Katie says. “And do you know why?”

  “Because we’re shy?” Dani guesses.

  “We have anxiety?” Clem tries.

  “Why does all of Gen Z think they have anxiety?”

  “Our formative years got a little messed up,” Dani says. “As you might recall, I didn’t see anyone other than Clem and my parents for almost a year.”

  “You guys also destroyed the environment,” Clem says. “And the economy. Now we’re supposed to fix it. Some might find that anxiety-inducing. God, I can’t wait until normal people are old enough to vote.”

  “Yeah,” Dani agrees. “Imagine being born in the 1900s.”

  “Fine,” Katie says. “You might have anxiety—on some level—but the reason you’ve never been called bubbly is because you’re both five foot nine.”

  “Um, okay,” Dani says, and her eyes flick toward her sister.

  “I’m actually five-ten,” says Clem.

  Katie sighs and swallows, hard. The whooshing landscape makes her sick and she sinks farther into her seat. With each passing minute, and each passing mile, the night becomes clearer, the knot of regret heavier inside. They’ve seen her now—each and every one of them. Yes, Katie told her mom to “fuck off,” but she’s also done something far worse. Katie Cabot told the truth.

&
nbsp; Earlier that night...

  McLean, Virginia

  “At last! You’ve arrived!” her mother says. “Better late than never.”

  Family and friends have gathered for Thanksgiving at Little Falls Farm, Katie’s mom and stepfather’s wearying estate.

  “It’s so good to see you, darling! You look tired, though. Too thin.”

  Little Falls Farm isn’t little. It’s also not a farm but a Palladian brick monstrosity whose only “fall” is part of the zero-edge pool. On the plus side, it overlooks the Potomac, in the toniest part of the already tony McLean, and sits doors from Jackie Kennedy’s childhood home.

  “That woman was a saint,” says Judy Cabot-Swift whenever it comes up.

  Judy and Charles’s guests are spread across three tables in the so-called public room, a former ballroom now outfitted with lacquered reddish-brown furniture and blue monkey wallpaper made by Hermès. Everyone is happy to be part of a large group, and the alcohol flows liberally.

  Upon arriving, Katie flits from person to person, stopping no longer than the ninety seconds it takes to say hello. She is lively, and buoyant, and using every inch of her middling charm. No one asks about Armie because Katie prepared her mother weeks ago.

  “He’s going to visit his grandmother,” Katie warned.

  “WHAT!?” Judy said, eyes wide with hurt. “Doesn’t he want to spend Thanksgiving with family?”

  “He does and that’s why he’s going to Puerto Rico.”

  Judy accepted the news, eventually, but the lie solved only one problem and Katie can’t exactly dispatch her career to a US territory. About this, she should’ve come up with something, and now the questions are flying at her, the very ones she’d known to expect.

  “When’s your next book coming out?” someone asks.

  Katie smiles meekly, lifts her shoulders, and pours herself more champagne.

  “What are you working on?”

  Another shrug. More Veuve Clicquot. Suddenly, Katie’s missing Armie in more ways than one. He’s a good barrier, always quick to redirect.