About Landing by Moonlight: A Novel of WW II (American Spy Sisters Book 1):
Ciji Ware – NY Times & USAToday bestselling author presents A NOVEL INSPIRED BY TRUE STORIES OF EXCEPTIONAL AMERICAN WOMEN & MEN WHO VOLUNTEERED AS SECRET AGENTS, PARACHUTING INTO OCCUPIED FRANCE DURING WW II TO JOIN THE RESISTANCE AND WIN THE WAR.
The year is 1942, and American secret agent Catherine Thornton has no idea whether she will be dropped behind enemy lines in an inflatable raft launched from a submarine or be flung through the moonlit sky from a low-flying British Halifax. Either way, the young embassy wife and erstwhile journalist knows there’s always the chance she’ll be picked off by German sharpshooters, although nothing in her imagination prepares her for the trial-by-fire to come.
Only she understands why she volunteered for such “unwomanly warfare” and the secret reasons she joined a handful of female American spies destined to risk her gilded life on French soil–yet former Vichy diplomat Henri Leblanc, code name Claude Foret, thinks he knows the answers.
As Catherine’s missions grow more harrowing each day, and she fears she’s fallen in love with a captured fellow agent, the German SS begin to close in on the world of Madame “Colette Durand” and her Résistance network embedded in coastal cities along the French Riviera—an exposure that could threaten the Allied victory itself.
And hanging in the air like a half-opened parachute is the life-or-death question: Who is the betrayer and who will be betrayed in this, their finest hour?
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 compelling fiction to produce novels so engaging that one reviewer warned of her work: “…do not start unless you want to be up all night.”
“Thoroughly engaging” – BOOKLIST
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Author Bio:
CIJI WARE is a New York Times & USA Today bestselling novelist, an Emmy-award winning television producer, reporter, writer, lecturer, and host.
Her latest work, THE SAFETY OF STRANGERS–as well as Book 1, LANDING BY MOONLIGHT, and Book 2, A SPY ABOVE THE CLOUDS in her American Spy Sisters series–was inspired by the exceptional American women who volunteered as secret agents during WW II. Working for the British intelligence services, they parachuted or infiltrated behind enemy lines into occupied France to fight the Nazis, as dramatized in the first two novelis in the series. Book 3 is based on true accounta of several American women (including a starlet, late of Hollywood) who volunteered to hide Allied airmen shot down over France and spirit them aboard midnight trains headed for neutral Spain. From there, the aviators made their way back to Britain to “fly on another day. In Ware’s new novel, the former actress-turned-“escape helper” operating in the village of Barbizon, south of Paris, saves some forty fliers, but risks losing her life at almost every turn in Nazi-infested France. Her greatest liability? Falling in love with the Deputy in charge of northern France’s principal Escape Line, a man who, in his pre-war life, was a fearless journalist who doesn’t tolerate lies. And despite Brooke Bradley’s heroism, she has several shameful ones she’s desperate to keep secret.
As with her other novels, author Ware invites her readers to view her research photos at https://www.pinterest.com/cijiware/ and join her readers group, Ciji Ware’s Readers Roundtable at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1755047761490960
Ware’s Four Seasons Quartet “THAT…” series includes stand-alone titles set in CORNWALL, EDINBURGH, VENICE and PARIS that were released between 2013-2017. A novella “The Ring of Kerry Hannigan,” part of the RING OF TRUTH anthology with novelists Diana Dempsey and Kate Moore, was published as a single title in the spring of 2015.
The author’s historical fiction includes her bestselling ISLAND OF THE SWANS, and New York Times & USA Tday’s bestselling MIDNIGHT ON JULIA STREET, among her 14 published novels. Exploring the linkages between Europe and America, Ware’s burning question in all of her work is: “What were the women doing?” during various historical periods.
Ware has won numerous awards for both her historical and contemporary fiction, including the Dorothy Parker Award of Excellence; the ‘Golden Quill’ award for Historical Fiction; ‘Best Fictionalized Biography’ for her 18th c. historical novel, ISLAND OF THE SWANS. For the latter work, she was bestowed in Edinburgh the honor of FSA Scot, of which she is exceedingly proud. Another historical novel, A RACE TO SPLENDOR, debuted in April, 2011 on the 105th anniversary of the devastating 1905 San Francisco Earthquake and Firestorm and was short-listed for the WILLA (Cather) Literary Award in 2012.
In 2015, Ware was named to the Martha’s Vineyard Writers-in-Residence program where she began a long-term project: MY FAMILY TREE AND ME: The Ware family in Black and White, a memoir of her search to understand a complicated famiy history while plying her lifelong profession in all aspects of media.
Ware’s most recent nonfiction, RIGHTSIZING YOUR LIFE: Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most, was named by the Wall Street Journal as “One of the Top 5 Books on Retirement Issues.” She continues to lecture extensively on the subject of domestic downsizing for people age 50+ as she relates her own journey from 4000sq. feet of living space in Beverly Hills and Santa Barbara, down to a “cottage by the sea” of around 1000 square feet in the San Francisco Bay Area–and loving it! She is also the author of JOINT CUSTODY: Making Shared Parenting Work.
For eighteen years, Ware was heard daily as a commentator on ABC Radio & TV in Los Angeles. During her noted career as a broadcaster, she has worked as a reporter or anchor for PBS and all three major network affiliates, covering a wide range of topics in the areas of health, consumer, lifestyle and women’s issues. As a reporter, and anchor at the PBS station in that city, she won a DuPont Award reporting on dangers in the lead industry and an Emmy as the producer of a harrowing program about divorcing parents kidnapping their own children.
Ciji Ware is also a sought-after event speaker and print journalist (AARP, Travel & Leisure and other national magazines). A graduate of Harvard with a degree in History, she has the distinction of being elected as the first woman graduate of Harvard College to serve as President of the Harvard Alumni Association, Worldwide.
The author is married to Internet marketing executive, Tony Cook. The “Cook-Wares” have a son, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren.
Visit Ciji’s website at www.cijiware.com; her Facebook page: Ciji Ware, Novelist
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ciji-Ware-Novelist/
Join Ciji Ware’s Readers Roundtable at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1755047761490960
and her Pinterest page with reserch photos at http://pinterest.com/cijiware/