With my final book from my first contract with Tyndale turned in, it was time to pitch some new ideas to them…and I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve just signed a contract for three more World War II novels, plus a Christmas novella!

We’re still a long way out from when you all will be seeing these books, of course–the first novel won’t release until July 2028. Even so, I’m too excited not to share. Here’s a bit about the projects as they stand now (keeping in mind that things could well change between now and when they release, LOL.)

Beyond a Thousand Stars

It isn’t often that I’m attached to a title these days. I know too well how often they change to get hung up on them. But this one…this one I love, and my editor loves it too, so hopefully it will stick. 😉

I still remember when this title and the vague idea for a story came to me. We were in the car, driving the kids home from youth group, and Rowyn and David were talking about Rowyn Things–space, quantum physics, the science of the stars. It was dark, and I remember cresting one of the hills on our very winding country road, looking up past the trees, and seeing those stars that they were talking about in such complex terms. Something about that moment just crystallized in my mind.

The beauty of the night sky. All those countless pinpoints of twinkling light–each one a sun, a burning ball of incredible energy. And I thought about those scientists who had decided that looking at them wasn’t enough, who wanted to understand them, to understand the complicated physics that keeps them burning, that shapes our very universe. Men like Einstein and Bohr and Oppenheimer and so many others.

Men whose work would reshape our world, first for a weapon and then for energy production. The words of the title drifted into my head as we made the final turns toward our house. Beyond a Thousand Stars. 

I had no idea what the story would actually be about. Just this fuzzy thought that it could be set in Princeton during WWII, with Einstein as a character (not the main one, just a fun secondary one). I promptly bought half a dozen books on Einstein–his life, his theories, his impact. And then…nothing. Didn’t read them, didn’t develop it any further. I’d run the nutshell idea past my previous editor in a list of a bunch of possible stories I could focus on, and it wasn’t the one she latched onto, so I didn’t pursue it. But it never went away.

So this time, when it was yet again pitching time, I dusted it off. I skimmed through some of that Einstein material, did some research online. Watched Oppenheimer (um…sure, that’s research. Right? LOL). And finally figured out what my story would be. A heroine who works as one of Einstein’s many aides. A hero on the Manhattan Project, one of the scientists in Chicago. And of course, a bit of espionage thrown in…

And then, a bit of what I love to do: ask hard questions as my characters with two very different viewpoints have to truly wrestle with the implications of what this “new physics” could unleash.

Here’s my very rough, very not-final back cover style summary:

            Estelle Hathaway is a rare thing in 1944—a woman with a physics degree. Though her career of choice is out of reach, she’s found contentment as one of Professor Einstein’s many assistants at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where she can rub elbows with great minds during the day and then go home with her astronomy-professor father in the evening to study the stars. She’s content with her life…until suspicious entries begin appearing in her father’s astronomy logs.

            Andreas Falkner came to America from Vienna with his parents a decade ago, determined to work against the rising evil in Europe. Now a physicist working on a top-secret project in Chicago, he’s out to help unlock the power of the atom before Nazi Germany can do the same. The last thing he needs is a distraction—but when he meets Estelle at a stargazing party when he goes to Princeton to visit his parents, everything changes. Especially when the brilliant young woman begins to notice what could well be signs of espionage hidden in her father’s star-charts and observatory logs.

            As Estelle and Andreas grow closer, mysteries hidden in plain sight and betrayal close to home draw them ever deeper into a web of secrets. With the war reaching its climax, they must decide whether the pursuit of knowledge is worth the cost—and whether love can survive in a world forever changed by the forces they seek to understand.

The Art of Escape

My second idea is one I’d put a pin in while researching for The Spy Keeper of Marseille. I have a research book called The Show Went On about the arts in France during the occupation, and it had a chapter called “L’Americain,” all about an American journalist who arrived in Marseille in the first days of the occupation with a goal of helping artists (which means novelists, playwrights, poets, painters, sculptures, etc.) who were in danger of arrest by the Nazis because of heritage or politics, to escape Europe.

He came with the intention of being there for a month and helping a few hundred artists from a list he had. In reality, he was in France for a year and a half and helped over 3,000 people escape (not all artists). How intriguing is that! And happily, this fellow wrote it all out in an autobiography called Assignment: Rescue. 

Well, naturally I will be fictionalizing plenty, including my romance line, so I’ve changed the name of both him and the heroine (who is a mashup of about half a dozen women who actually helped, LOL), but I think this one will be great fun. My heroine decided to be rather quirky and comedic, but she’ll be off-setting some heavy themes.

Here’s my back cover style idea for this one:

            Victoria “Toria” Davenport came to Paris in 1940 seeking adventure, romance, and stories worthy of her daring grandmother. But when the Nazis take Paris, the artists she’s quickly come to love become fugitives, desperate for a way out of the country. Toria determines to help, even if it means following the refugees to Marseille, where she joins a growing rescue operation run by another American who, quite frankly, needs all the help he can get.

            Journalist Varian Gray was sent by a group of humanitarians in New York to help as many artists escape the Nazis as possible, but he’s the first to admit all he had to recommend him was a month of vacation and a letter from the international YMCA. He doesn’t know the first thing about refugees, but that doesn’t stop him from diving head-first into the work and praying for the best. He’s quickly overwhelmed, and at first he thinks the last thing he needs is a bold American heiress who forges documents, charms guards, and insists on throwing herself into danger at every opportunity—and wearing a bright red dress while she does so. But he can’t argue with results, and Toria Davenport knows how to deliver just that.

            With gangsters as allies, consuls as enemies, and a villa full of Europe’s leading artists waiting for salvation, Toria and Varian are in a desperate race against time that tests their faith and their resolve. But as the noose tightens around Marseille, they find that risking their hearts may be even more dangerous than denying the Nazis.

Some Third Book

Yeah, and, um…there will be a third one. I don’t know yet what it is, LOL. I only prepped two pitches for the team, so I was pleasantly surprised when they came back and said they wanted three. This third one will be developed later. I do have several ideas I loosely put together that we might draw back out, or who knows–maybe something new will strike me before then. 😉

And the novella: The Christmas Pursuit

Of course, this title (much like the others) could well change, but it’s the working one, anyway, for a story I’m quite excited about. I’d first sent my editor an idea for a Scandinavian one, but it was (a) too similar in themes to The Collector of Burned Books and (b) too dark for a Christmas story, so I went back to the drawing board. And thought: Davie.

That is to say, David Culbreth, twin brother of Evie, our heroine in the WWII timeline of Yesterday’s Tides. We see telegrams from him in that book…we hear his voice on the radio in The Collector of Burned Books. And in next year’s book, The Translator’s War, we even get to meet him, when my hero travels to London for debriefing and training. I’ve always known Davie (okay, he totally goes by David as an adult, but I wrote him first as a child, so he’s still Davie to me, LOL) needed a love story of his own. So what could I put together for him?

It honestly only took me about ten minutes to come up with something I absolutely loved. What if the Culbreth family offered their estate as a home for displaced children in Operation Pied Piper? Many grand estates did–and many even set up schools at said estates. So what if the girl Davie had once fancied but never pursued because his friend liked her too was a teacher at his ancestral estate-turned-foster-house? Okay, that sounded like fun. So…what if the kids they took in weren’t just any kids, but were the children of England’s intelligence agents? That would give me the tie-in I need to my existing espionage-rich world.

I didn’t want anything dire. This is a Christmas novella, after all. So I came up with the following, sent it to my editor, and she promptly said yes, that it felt well-rounded and well-balanced with intrigue and Christmas cheer:

Christmas 1944. Herefordshire, England.

            Audrey Price has enjoyed spending the war at Springbourne Hall, teaching the two dozen children the manor took in as part of Operation Pied Piper. She passed many a happy day there herself as a child and knew that working alongside Lady Culbreth, whom she’d once hoped would be her mother-in-law, would be lovely. But when two of her charges vanish a week before Christmas, after receiving a cryptic letter from home, she knows she has to do the thing she’s most dreaded: face down the heir to Springbourne—the man who hand-selected the children who’d be staying at his family home…and who’d made it clear it would never be her home.

            David Culbreth is a second-generation codebreaker and established intelligencer at Bletchley Park. When his parents wanted to open the manor to children being sent from London at the start of the war, he’d thought it a fine idea—and had suggested they take in the children of the agents Bletchley Park had in the field. But when Audrey—the woman he’s always loved…as had his best friend—greets him on his first trip home in years with the news that two of their wards are missing, he knows his brilliant idea has backfired. The father of the children in question is in hospital in London after a harrowing year in occupied France, and it seems their mother’s letter about him convinced her children they needed to set out for London. On foot. A week before Christmas.

            Audrey and David set out after the children in what should be a simple pursuit…but these two brothers aren’t just determined, they’re as clever and resourceful as their special-agent father, and every bit as hard to catch. In a Yuletide adventure through the English countryside, these old friends discover love as they seek to find the missing boys and deliver them home to their parents in time for Christmas.

~*~

And there we have it! My upcoming new stories. =) It will be a few months yet before I begin working on the first of them, but I’m so excited to have them in the queue!

Which one are you most excited for?