Vengeance is in the family, and the family is a bond like no other…

It’s the worst year of the Great Depression, and America needs all the hope it can get. The Chicago World’s Fair, a glittery city-within-a-city, becomes a symbol of the good that’s yet to come. But every utopia has a seedy side—and that’s Rosa Mancuso’s world. As the mysterious Madame Mystique she mixes magic with a dose of bare skin burlesque, bringing customers to the home of the Fair’s carnival rides and spectacles.

Rosa doesn’t perform for fame, though. She has come from Mussolini’s Italy to America, where she’s plotting her revenge for the murders of her family. The perpetrator will soon arrive at the World’s Fair via a celebrated Italian air fleet, and Rosa is determined to be prepared.

But when her estranged cousin, Mina, comes to her desperate for help, with a dangerous mobster close on her heels, Rosa agrees to protect Mina and her new baby, born across the color line. With the clock ticking, Rosa decides the only way to survive is to make vengeance a family affair and prompt everyone to, at last, confront the sins from their pasts.

A gripping story of retribution, belonging, and survival, Sinners of Starlight City boldly explores the complexity of identities straddling ethnic lines and asks, who gets to decide who we are and where we belong.

William Morrow / HarperCollins –    Duckworth, 2023

Sisters Vera and Marya were brought up to be good Soviets, willing to risk their lives fighting the Germans on the Eastern front. Posted to Berlin in 1947, they’re ready to live in the glow of victory and the pleasures of peace. But the sisters soon find themselves mired in conflicts that are shaping a new world order. And where one sister thinks she can be free, the other has a wholly different take on what freedom is…

Nine years later, Marya is a prisoner in a Siberian work camp when Vera, a doyenne of the KGB, has cause to reopen her case file and investigate the facts behind her sister’s conviction all those years ago in Berlin. As Vera retraces the steps that brought them both to that pivotal moment in 1947, she unravels unexpected truths and discoveries that call into question the very history the Soviets are working hard to cover up.

Epic and intimate, layered and complex, The Soviet Sisters is a gripping story of spies, blackmail, and double, triple bluff. With her dexterous plotting and talent for teasing out moral ambiguity, Anika Scott expertly portrays a story about love, conflicting world views, and loyalty and betrayal between sisters.

William Morrow / HarperCollins –    Duckworth, 2022

Clara Falkenberg, once Germany’s most eligible and lauded heiress, earned the nickname “the Iron Fräulein” during World War II for her role operating her family’s ironworks empire. It’s been nearly two years since the war ended and she’s now left with nothing but a false identification card and a series of burning questions about the dark secrets of her family’s past. With nowhere else to run to, she decides to come out of hiding and return home to Essen and take refuge with her dear friend, Elisa.

Narrowly escaping a near-disastrous interrogation by a British officer who’s hell-bent on arresting her for war crimes, she arrives in Essen to discover the city in ruins, and Elisa missing. Alone and in fear of what the future holds, she sets out to find Elisa and reveal the truth of her family.

As Clara begins tracking down Elisa, she encounters Jakob Relling, a charismatic young man working on the black market, who, for his own reasons, is also searching for Elisa. Clara and Jakob soon discover how they might help each other survive in this world of unrest—as long as they can stay ahead of the British officer determined to make Clara answer for her family’s complicity in the Nazi regime.

 Propulsive, meticulously researched, and action-fueled, The German Heiress is a mesmerizing page-turner filled with vivid characters and a dramatically nuanced portrait of post-war Germany. In this riveting story of courage and morality, Anika Scott deftly shines the spotlight on the often-overlooked perspective of Germans who were caught in the crossfire of the Nazi regime and had nowhere to turn.

William Morrow / HarperCollins, 2020