New novel now out in print and ebook!

Paris in the Jazz Age

A brave war   ...   a failed peace

It’s 1928 Paris and literary agent Bill Lawrence is successfully selling the work of Left Bank writers back to New York from his sumptuous apartment on Île Saint-Louis overlooking the Seine River. Kurt Eckhart, a Berlin correspondent, asks Bill’s help in publishing his war novel, a story about a doomed romance with a German nurse. Bill and Kurt were fellow infantry officers in the World War I American army.  Coolly independent freelancer Kate Lundberg edits the novel while Bill’s interest in Kate grows during a late-night date at a Paris jazz bistro. The beautiful Djuna Barnes meets Kurt at a literary salon and strikes up a friendship and helps Kurt portray a more realistic, war-torn heroine in his novel. The exciting Left Bank life during the Paris Jazz Age is highlighted with cameos of Janet Flanner, Solita Solano, Margaret Anderson, Man Ray, Andre Breton, Sylvia Beach, Natalie Barney, while John Maynard Keynes provides a dramatic subplot on getting much needed food into defeated Germany in 1919.  

A brave war...a failed peace...a story set during the Jazz Age in Paris of the 1920s...with plenty of Lost Generation panache.

"...a veteran literary agent makes his way through the literary scene of interwar Paris. Few places evoke nostalgia like the City of Light in the 1920s, and Myers doesn't skimp on the literary and historical details in his latest novel: His protagonist, Bill Lawrence, an American war veteran turned literary agent, encounters a bevy of famous writers and artists..."   Kirkus Reviews.

A Farewell in Paris a review from Kirkus Reviews

Reviews

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Great Quotes from J.M. Keynes' 

The Economic Consequences of the the Peace 

Paris in the 1930s

Paris 1935:  Destiny's Crossroads

     "takes us into the back rooms of high-level officials, writers, and media stars in order to understand why events happened...involved and intriguing...definitely is worth reading."

       --B.N. Peacock, Historical Novel Society Online Review Feb. 2012

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             "A beautiful widow...a charming diplomat"

In the darkening years of the 1930s, the beautiful Madame Lambert meets American diplomat Dexter Jones at the Quai d’Orsay. She works on the staff of French Premier Pierre Laval. Dedicated to her work, the austere widow resists romance while becoming increasingly intrigued with the charming diplomat as he escorts her to political and literary salons across the vibrant Left Bank cultural scene. Romance ripens into enduring commitment against a backdrop of momentous historical events as the French government attempts to contain the Ethiopian crisis at the League of Nations while countering the rising Nazi threat to remilitarize the German Rhineland.

 

Madame Lambert witnesses first-hand the British-French diplomatic meetings between Premier Laval and British foreign secretary Sir Samuel Hoare that collapse in controversy over ending the Italo-Ethiopian war. Shortly afterwards, she is in the room when the French government bogs down with indecision over responding to Hitler’s march into the Rhineland, the key to preserving France’s alliances with its East European allies.

 

Cameo appearances by Colonel Charles DeGaulle, André Malraux, Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, André Chamson, and journalists Genevieve Tabouis and Pertinax.

 

See caricatures by Joss to the left.

 

Link to author interview at Kindle Author.

 

Reviews

 

 

Paris in the 1930's

Paris 1934: Victory in Retreat

   " Richly detailed description brings Sandrine's Paris to life... lively bistro scenes...the 'City of Light' shines through the page."

     -- Historical Novel Society review August 2010.

 

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"Paris romance...dark intrigues...momentous political events"

 

In Depression-era France, Sorbonne student Sandrine covers news and fashion as a part-time reporter for an American paper in Paris. She banters with the Americans after work at the local bistro as red wine flows and stories grow in the telling. Early in 1934, with public outrage at government corruption peaking, she witnesses massive street riots by Far Right leagues that overthrow two French cabinets in a row. The very existence of the Third Republic is threatened. Then one bold man prevails against the forces of disorder.

 

Reviews

 

Romance and international intrigue

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Vienna, 1934. 

As the Austrian government slides towards an Italian-style fascist state, German-backed Nazis move to overthrow Chancellor Dollfuss’s government and deliver Austria to Hitler’s Reich. British foreign correspondent Geoffrey Ashbrook returns to Vienna to write dispatches for his London paper and secret reports for the British cabinet. But Ashbrook has a second secret mission: to find out why his fiancée Anna Marie Linden has mysteriously broken off their engagement. Is her Nazi stepbrother Erich involved? All paths cross on a day in July as Nazi putschists ride their trucks through the streets of Vienna towards the Ballplatz, the square in front of the Austrian chancellery, a day that changes the destiny of nations and people in this exciting book of accurate historical event and dashing fictional romance.

In 1950, twenty-seven-year-old Prince Rainier succeeded his grandfather as sovereign prince of the little principality of Monaco on the French Riviera. The city-state’s principal attractions were the renowned casino at Monte Carlo and the beautiful belle époque Hotel de Paris. Unfortunately, the Russian nobility and English aristocrats who had lost fortunes at the casino were long gone. Into these impecunious circumstances sailed international tanker tycoon Aristotle Onassis who bought majority control of SBM, the holding company that owned the casino and hotel.

Onassis had new money and old ideas about how to make Monaco prosperous again. He wanted to cater to a small audience of the very wealthy. In contrast, Prince Rainier wanted to develop a modern and larger market of well-to-do tax exiles, high income people attracted to favorable tax rates and beautiful Riviera weather. A power struggle between the two visions evolved over the next fifteen years until in the mid-1960s Rainier vanquished Onassis with the help of Charles de Gaulle, president of France.

Along the way Rainier married movie star Grace Kelly in the greatest fairytale wedding of the twentieth century. In a more roguish manner, Onassis embarked on high profile affairs with opera diva Maria Callas, Lee Radziwill, and Jackie Kennedy, often using his luxurious yacht Christina O as a floating rendezvous for assignation, a perfect symbol for the lust, greed, and status seeking behind these tabloid romances.

In 1928, world famous British author W. Somerset Maugham moved into a sumptuous villa on twelve gardened acres on Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera. Maugham’s marriage to his wife Syrie was behind him; his secretary and companion Gregory Haxton was with him. Syrie, disappointed at coming in number two, had threatened to name Gregory in the divorce action. All was settled peaceably by the solicitors in London. Maugham lived at his beloved Villa Mauresque until his death in 1965 except for the war years. This long essay highlights a fascinating life lived on the Riviera.