The Black Swan of Paris

Famed, beautiful Parisian singer Genevieve Dumont uses her alliance with the Resistance to rescue her mother from the Nazis in Robards’s thrilling latest (after The Fifth Doctrine). As the darling of Paris’s music scene, Genevieve receives adulation from the Nazis while secretly helping her manager, Max Bonet, an intelligence operative working with the British. When Genevieve returns to her childhood home and discovers that the Germans have killed her father and taken her mother, Baroness Lillian de Rocheford, prisoner, Genevieve becomes resolute in her efforts to rescue her and joins forces with her estranged sister, Emmy, also an agent for the British. Genevieve gains the attention of Gen. Claus von Wagner, a high-ranking German officer who she believes knows her mother’s whereabouts. In her quest to save Lillian, Genevieve persuades Max to help by revealing a painful story from her past. Together, Emmy, Genevieve, and Max risk their lives in a well-planned but highly risky mission to free Lillian from von Wagner’s German estate where she is being held prisoner. Robards blends commendable attention to historical detail with intense realism and deep feeling. Historical fiction fans will be enthralled with this richly hewn novel and the romance and danger lurking around its every corner. Agent: Robert Gottlieb, Trident Media Group, LLC. (June)