Saturday, June 20, 2015

Genevieve Tabouis - French Journalist

Genevieve Tabouis - French Journalist in 1938


Genevieve Tabouis was the diplomatic columnist for the Parisian daily newspaper L'Oeuvre. She is a historic character in my historical fiction novels "Betrayal in Europe: Paris 1938" and "Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads." She was an incisive, sharp-witted journalist unafraid to speak truth to power.

Tabouis is somewhat fictionalized in Betrayal in Europe because I wanted to flesh out this fascinating woman who came from a family of leading French diplomats. Her book "They Called Me Cassandra" was published in exile in New York in 1942 and recounts her career from the 1920s up until the day in the summer of 1940 when she climbed up a boarding ladder to a British freighter off Bordeaux that took her into exile.

This photo is scanned from the cover of her 1938 political book detailing the tactics of the dictators Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini titled "Blackmail or War."


Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Latest historical novel - Betrayal in Europe - Paris 1938


My newest historical novel "Betrayal in Europe" is now live on Amazon. The print edition is $11.13 while the Kindle edition is $2.99. Cover notes:

Paris 1938.  A countess channels money and charm to the top circle of French politicians, both in the salons and in the bed chamber. A baroness engages in a torrid affair with a suave German diplomat. Unknown to both women, the diplomat is a spymaster weaving a web to make German-inspired appeasement dominant in the French cabinet table.
As German power grows, Berlin challenges Paris and London over sovereignty for German-speakers in Czechoslovakia and a “free hand” in Eastern Europe to counter Russian Bolshevism.
In Paris, the wealthy elite fear Russian Bolsheviks more than Nazi revanchists. French industrialists and a corrupt press champion appeasement-minded politicians. Peace at any price, they say, as champagne glasses clink and beautiful women arrange favored assignations.
Amidst the appeasement, an intrepid woman diplomatic correspondent reveals sinister Nazi designs and weak and fearful policy responses by governments in Paris and London. As the Versailles Peace Treaty unravels in the late 1930s, resurgent German military power thirsts for European conquest.