About this item
A stunning and surprising new thriller, Mitch Silver's latest novel takes readers from a secret operation during World War II -- with appearances by Noel Coward and Winston Churchill -- to present day London and Moscow, where Lara Klimt, "the Bookworm," must employ all her skills to prevent an international conspiracy. Why did Hitler chose not to invade England when he had the chance? Europe, 1940: It's late summer and Belgium has been overrun by the German army. Posing as a friar, a British operative talks his way into the monastery at Villers-devant-Orval just before Nazi art thieves plan to sweep through the area and whisk everything of value back to Berlin. But the ersatz man of the cloth is no thief. Instead, that night he adds an old leather Bible to the monastery's library and then escapes. London, 2017: A construction worker operating a backhoe makes a grisly discovery -- a skeletal arm-bone with a rusty handcuff attached to the wrist. Was this the site, as a BBC newsreader speculates, of "a long-forgotten prison, uncharted on any map?" One viewer knows better: it's all that remains of a courier who died in a V-2 rocket attack. The woman who will put these two disparate events together -- and understand the looming tragedy she must hurry to prevent -- is Russian historian and former Soviet chess champion Larissa Mendelovg Klimt, "Lara the Bookworm," to her friends. She's also experiencing some woeful marital troubles. In the course of this riveting thriller, Lara will learn the significance of six musty Dictaphone cylinders recorded after D-Day by Noel Coward -- actor, playwright and, secretly, a British agent reporting directly to Winston Churchill. She will understand precisely why that leather Bible, scooped up by the Nazis and deposited on the desk of Adolf Hitler days before he planned to attack Britain, played such a pivotal role in turning his guns to the East. And she will discover the new secret pact negotiated by the nefarious Russian president and his newly elected American counterpart -- maverick and dealmaker -- and the evil it portends. Oh, and she'll reconcile with her husband.
About the Author
Mitch Silver was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island. He attended Yale (B.A. in History) and Harvard Law School ("I lasted three days. I know the law through Wednesday, but after that...") . He was an advertising writer for several of the big New York agencies, living in Paris for a year with his wife, Ellen Highsmith Silver, while he was European Creative Director on the Colgate-Palmolive account. They have two children and live in Greenwich, Connecticut.The Bookworm is Mitch's second novel, following In Secret Service. His upcoming thriller, The Apollo Deception--about what did (and didn't!) happen on the moon 50 years ago--will be published this fall. Mitch also won the American Song Festival Lyric Grand Prize for "Sleeping Single in a Double Bed." His blood type is O positive, and he always writes his biography in the third person. For more info, please go to mitchsilverauthor.com.
