Michael Wallner

With bravura storytelling, stunning authenticity, and unforgettable characters, The Russian Affair brings readers into a world of love, intrigue and espionage in the midst of the Cold War. Twenty-nine-year-old Anna Viktorovna lives in Moscow with her young son and her father, a once popular and respected poet who has fallen into disgrace because of his dissident views. Her husband, a junior officer in the Red Army, is on active duty and living seven time zones away. When she meets Alexey Bulgyakov, a married and powerful Soviet official who is nearly twice her age, her life begins to look a little brighter. Yet their burgeoning romance is irrevocably threatened when a KGB colonel forces Anna to spy on Alexey, who is suspected of disloyalty to the state. Though she loathes the notion of double-crossing, she is forced to comply. But Anna isn't the only character playing a double game.

Michael Wallner's thrilling first novel, set in occupied France during World War II, movingly recounts the impossible love affair between a German soldier and a French resistance fighter.Roth, a young soldier in the SS and a fluent French translator, works as an interpreter during the interrogation of Resistance fighters. But while off-duty, he slips away from his fellow officers, changes into civilian clothes, and wanders aimlessly through Paris disguised as his alter ego "Antoine." One day he is drawn into an antiquarian bookshop and becomes enchanted with the bookseller's beautiful daughter, Chantal. The two begin to meet and fall in love before Roth has the courage to reveal his true identity, or the time to discover that Chantal is part of the Resistance. Written in an elegant and arresting style, April in Paris is an engrossing novel from a promising new talent.

When people on Paris's bustling streets look at Michael Roth, they see little more than a Parisian student, a quietly spoken young man with a book under his arm, handsome but guarded. What they do not realize is that he is carrying a painful secret, one that he cannot even reveal to the woman he loves. For Michael is no ordinary Frenchman but a German. He has been sent to Paris to assist the Nazis in dealing with Resistance fighters. Desperate to escape his daily life, he steals into the world of the oppressed Parisians, and into the path of Chantal. But as Michael falls for the bookseller's beautiful daughter, he discovers that a person's past always catches up with them. Soon he will be forced to make the ultimate sacrifice and choose between his country, his life and his destiny. Daring, romantic and of exceptional quality, April in Paris is an extraordinary love story which will stay with you long after its final pages.