In addition to Nina and Ian, she introduces readers to Jordan McBride, a young girl growing up in Boston who begins to suspect that her new German stepmother, Anneliese Weber, may be hiding unspeakable secrets. To make such a complex story play out, Quinn had to interweave multiple characters, plot points and timelines. “What does it mean for someone to discover someone in their family literally has this kind of past?”

“That was the story I realized I wanted to tell,” Quinn says. She experienced a “lightbulb moment” when she stumbled across the story of Hermine Braunsteiner, a Nazi war criminal discovered in the 1960s living as a housewife in Queens, New York. After that book’s tremendous success, Quinn knew she wanted to write something war-based and set in the 20th century. Similarly, Quinn’s previous novel, The Alice Network, was a historical thriller involving real-life female spies in France.

In the novel, Quinn describes one of Ian’s articles as “Dynamite in ink,” writing: “He knew every pulse point to push in those paragraphs, every emotional trigger to pull.” Those words serve as an apt description of Quinn’s latest tale, which will no doubt appeal to fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale. An unlikely pair and a study in opposites, Nina and Ian are determined to deliver this war criminal to justice. Pilot Nina, who narrowly missed becoming one of the victims, later marries Ian Graham, a British journalist and brother to one of those killed. Spine-tingling bombing runs are just one of the many highlights of Quinn’s intricately plotted novel about a trio of characters that converge after World War II to locate “the Huntress,” the mistress of an SS officer who slaughtered six innocent souls on the shore of a Polish lake. “Absolutely not,” Biggles quickly responded. So as Quinn’s aerial courage grew, she asked the pilot, nicknamed “Biggles,” if he would consider momentarily cutting the engine, imitating the method the Night Witches often used to silently descend over German troops before releasing their bombs. “A lot of things they experienced I would not have dared to make up.” “I read that and said, ‘You people are crazy, and that’s totally going in the book!’” she says.

Quinn was mesmerized by the hair-raising escapades related to the Night Witches and the tales of navigators who climbed out on the wing in the middle of a flight to dislodge a stuck bomb. After growing up in the wilds of Siberia, Nina becomes a fearless member of the Night Witches, the Soviet Union’s legendary all-female night bomber regiment. Although novelist Kate Quinn admits she is “not terribly fond of flying,” she opted for adrenaline when she booked a 1929 open cockpit biplane in the name of historical research for her latest novel, The Huntress, a spellbinding Nazi-hunting saga that spans continents and decades.Īfter her British pilot took off, Quinn found herself soaring through the air, experiencing the same kind of rush that her novel’s character, Nina Markova, might have felt during a World War II bombing run. “Gentle or thrilling-you decide,” reads the ad for private charter company Fun Flights in Carlsbad, California.

But when an old enemy from Mila’s past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.īased on a true story, The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism born of desperation, of a mother who became a soldier, of a woman who found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever.Kate Quinn takes to the skies in her new novel of Nazi hunters, Night Witches and a truly evil stepmother. Still reeling from war wounds and devastated by loss, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in the glittering world of Washington, DC-until an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and an even more unexpected connection with a silent fellow sniper offer the possibility of happiness. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper-a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kiev (now known as Kyiv), wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son-but Hitler’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. The bestselling author of The Rose Code returns with an unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history’s deadliest female sniper.

Kate quinn