Paris, 7 a. m.

NOVELS SET DURING World War II can seem dismayingly similar: Families are separated, dangerous missions are undertaken, friends disappear. The books may be engrossing but the formulaic plots sometimes leave a reader wanting an unexpected twist. Armando Lucas Correa's the daughter's tale (Atria, $27) inventively satisfies that want. What's more, it's better written and more tightly edited than most books in this genre, and the story line is breathtakingly threaded together from start to finish with the sound of a beating heart. Or more to the point, the silence between the heartbeats. The novel starts in present-day New York when an elderly woman, who has just received a package of letters from her past, collapses from a heart attack: "One ... silence, two... silence, three... silence, four, five. She took a deep breath, waiting for the next heartbeat." And from there we rush back in time, as if coursing through her bloodstream, to a young Jewish family caught in the vortex of anti-Semitism in late 1930s Berlin. Julius, the husband, is a doctor, a heart specialist; his wife, Amanda, runs a bookshop; they will soon have two young daughters. Julius insists on staying put, providing for his patients, thinking the madness will stop: "Why flee and start all over again?" But then Nazis come to Amanda's store to burn her books, the local synagogue is destroyed by fire and Julius is arrested. From his cell, Julius manages to get word to Amanda as he is dying, instructing her how to flee the country and providing her with money and documents. The plan is for her to put her children, ages 6 and 4, on a ship bound for Cuba, where they can live with her brother, and for Amanda to go to a small French village to live with an old family friend and wait out the war. But as she is about to put her daughters on the boat, Amanda has a lastminute change of heart: She sends her elder daughter, Viera, to Havana and takes her younger one, Lina, to France. Amanda sends letters across the Atlantic to Viera, but they all come back to her. Meanwhile, she needs to protect Lina from the war now coming to France, which means passing her off to one stranger after another, reminding her to count her heartbeats when she is afraid, just as Julius had always said to do. Correa's prose is atmospheric, but what's most fascinating about this novel is his portrayal of terrified yet strong female characters who anticipate future trials and methodically work through them. Amanda knows that each decision she makes will have an impact on the next, but her goal is always survival. IN MISTRESS OF THE RITZ (Delacorte, $28), Melanie Benjamin gives us another strong female character, only in this case she's trying to do more than just survive: Blanche Ross, a young American actress who arrives in Paris in the 1920s and marries Claude Auzello, who becomes the manager of the Hotel Ritz. Ah, the Ritz. The focal point of Parisian excitement and glamour with its celebrity guests: Coco Chanel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway. Monsieur and Madame Auzello take pride in the Ritz, and their role in making the visitors feel "safe" and able to "breathe a little more freely." Until June 1940, that is, when the "top-hatted doorman in a black overcoat" is replaced by Nazi soldiers. From there, mystery, intrigue and suspicion descend on the hallways and behind the hotel's closed doors. Looking for life where death abounds, Blanche joins the Resistance. When D-Day arrives and reports that Allied forces have entered northern France make their way to Paris, she sees freedom on the horizon and makes a crucial misstep. It is a mistake that sweeps Blanche, her friends and her husband into a whirlwind of terror - brutal interrogations and imprisonment - and exposes the secret that she has been trying to hide ever since she decided to leave the United States. As Benjamin has proved before, she has a way of animating long-forgotten history. Inspired by the story of the actual Blanche and Claude Auzello, "Mistress of the Ritz" is a vividly imagined thriller about two enigmatic people who left behind tantalizing clues about their lives. if it's suspense you want, look no further than Jennifer Ryan's THE SPIES OF SHILLING LANE (Crown, $27). Fans of Ryan's debut novel, "The Chilbury Ladies' Choir," will find this book even better - and those who found that first novel plodding or slow on the uptake will be drawn in by this quick and delightful mystery set in London in March 1941. In the wake of her divorce and spurred by her demotion as head of her village's Women's Voluntary Service, Mrs. Braithwaite is forced to re-evaluate her life. She has a secret to tell and she heads to London to make amends and offer a confession to her only daughter, Betty. But Betty is nowhere to be found. Mrs. Braithwaite searches everywhere for her fiercely independent daughter, through the streets of London during the Blitz and in its hospitals filled with bombing victims. Mr. Norris, her daughter's landlord, becomes Mrs. Braithwaite's reluctant sidekick, and together they enter into dive bars, secret meetings of the British Union of Fascists and underground spy rings with double agents and fake passports. All the while they are looking for clues, trying to evade capture, kidnapping and worse - and becoming unlikely friends. As the plot develops, it becomes clear that Ryan has created more than a potboiler. She uses the story to explore maternal love and the sometimes fraught relationships between mothers and daughters as well as the capacity for friendship among strangers. Ryan's subtlety shines in her acknowledgment of the importance of remembering the people who pass through our lives ("I'd like people to talk about how I helped them," Mrs. Braithwaite says) and in her descriptions of how war and conflict can teach empathy ("I can hardly believe how much of life I notice now") and change people for the better. familial love is also at the center of Rachel Barenbaum's debut novel, A BEND IN THE STARS (Grand Central, $28), an epic march across Russia during the summer of 1914 against a backdrop of dual menace: the impending war with Germany and the mounting hostility of the czar's army toward the Jewish community. The novel features a cast of characters centered on two siblings, Miri Abramov, a young Jewish surgeon, and her genius brother, Vanya, a physicist who thinks he can complete Einstein's theory of relativity if he witnesses the Aug. 21 solar eclipse, and by so doing gain passage to America for his entire family. Early in the book, the siblings are forced to split up in this quest because of growing anti-Jewish sentiment. Vanya travels with Yuri, Miri's fiance, to join an American scientist who plans to photograph the eclipse. But after Vanya leaves, Miri discovers that he is in danger. With the help of a Russian Army deserter - whom she hides in her basement and cares for while he recovers from an injury - Miri goes in search of her brother. Their search is a perilous one, confronting Miri and her soldier companion with unexpected threats and testing their relationship. As Barenbaum poignantly writes: "Everything in our universe is made of pieces." Yet "no laws are absolute. Life, the universe, they aren't written in stone." The dialogue feels remarkably honest, and time passes in the novel like a train hurtling toward its destination with stops, starts and lurches. The history of the period and the region has been carefully studied, but Barenbaum carves a fresh story from some of its most evocative and disturbing details. IF YOU CAN'T GET ENOUGH of 20th-century Russia, leap ahead 50 years to THE RED DAUGHTER (Random House, $26), John Burnham Schwartz's novel about Stalin's only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, who defected to the United States in 1967, leaving two children behind in Moscow. Svetlana's C.I.A. profile is revealed early in the book. It's a telling passage, one that sets up much of what follows in this sad, traumatic tale of Svetlana's life and her relationship with Peter Horvath, a young American lawyer whom the C.I.A. has tasked with bringing Svetlana to New York. (That lawyer is very loosely based on Schwartz's father, Alan.) The C.I.A. describes Svetlana as "an active, alert and intense individual," a "very dependent person used perhaps to being bullied by her powerful father." The report goes on to suggest that she is "prone to become a disciple or a follower," with a tendency to become "jealous and disappointed when others receive the acceptance and praise she wants" and "furious when she feels she has been misled or misdirected." The ensuing narrative proves just how prescient this analysis is. The story, which captures the mysterious Svetlana through her imagined journal entries and letters, as well as Horvath's "editor's notes," is lively and engaging. As a novel, "The Red Daughter" does exactly what good historical fiction should do: It sends you down the rabbit hole to read and learn more. Schwartz includes a great list of books that inspired him to write his novel and that readers might want to explore. Of special interest is the section on Svetlana's time in Scottsdale, Ariz., at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship, and her brief marriage to Sid Evans, a Wright apprentice and protege (modeled on the architect William Wesley Peters), with whom she has a son. Let's just say that there is another fascinating novel to be written about Peters and Wright's widow. SPEAKING OF FAMOUS DAUGHTERS, there's a new novel out about Alice Roosevelt, the oldest child of Theodore Roosevelt. Reading about Alice - her rebellious nature, her attention-grabbing antics - is always a pleasure. That said, american princess (Berkley, paper, $16), by Stephanie Marie Thornton, is long - and it drags at times. The novel is written in Alice's voice and divided into three parts. It begins when she is 17 years old. President William McKinley has just died in office, and Alice is about to become the first daughter. The book ends near the final moments of Alice's life at the age of 96. The first section sets the scene: Alice is the wild child in the White House, the "connoisseur of mistakes," carrying a pet snake around in her purse, smoking and chewing gum and jumping into a swimming pool fully dressed while on a diplomatic mission. There's no question that she is desperate for her father's attention. Despite all the warnings, she falls in love with Congressman Nick Longworth. Yes, it's fun - after all, she's a celebrity behaving badly. The book picks up in the second section when Alice comes into her own against the backdrop of Nick's numerous affairs and drunken behavior. It's perversely satisfying to see Alice torpedo her husband's congressional re-election as she helps her father's unsuccessful third-party campaign to upset President William Howard Taft in his fight against Woodrow Wilson. She clearly wants a divorce from Nick, but it's not going to happen, so her loyalties are with her father. Good for her. The third part, which recounts her relationship with Senator Bill Borah; the birth of her child, Paulina; the death of various men in her life; and Paulina's suicide at 32, offers abundant proof that life isn't just a game for Alice - that joy and heartbreak are real for her. The book is an ambitious one, and it could have benefited from more editing. There's a lot to take in. Still, Thornton has done a great deal of research, so much that at times you feel as if you're reading a memoir. It's hard to say no to a book about Alice Roosevelt. it should also be hard to say no to a novel about the endlessly fascinating poet Elizabeth Bishop. What's not to like about a novel that reimagines Bishop's time in 1937 Paris, hanging out at Sylvia Beach's bookstore and drinking champagne at Le Boeuf sur le Tóit cabaret on the eve of World War II? A lot, in the case of Liza Wieland's PARIS, 7 A-M. (Simon & Schuster, $26.99). Bishop's childhood, including her father's untimely death and her mother's mental breakdown, was unbelievably tragic, and her relationships in college and beyond provide much fodder to explore. Alas, Wieland's book is a disappointment. While some excitement and drama ignite nearly two-thirds of the way through the book, it's over before you can take it all in, and the writing is terribly disjointed. The ending skips through the years 1938 to 1979, wrapping up decades of Bishop's life in a mere 24 messy pages. If there is one positive outcome of reading this book, it is that it might make you want to rediscover Bishop's poetry, which, if you're like me, you may not have turned to since senior year of high school. Don't bother putting this novel in your backpack as you head out of town; pick up one of Bishop's collections instead. susan ellingwood is a former books and opinion editor at The Times.

Wieland's (Land of Enchantment, 2015) biographical novel, its title from one of Elizabeth Bishop's poems, focuses on the poet's 1930 admission to Vassar College and experiences in pre-WWII Europe. The real Bishop was a careful chronicler of her life, yet wrote little about 1937, inspiring Wieland to imagine it with a wider lens, particularly Bishop's involvement with a resistance movement and part in conveying two Jewish orphans to a Paris convent. Wieland's prose is simultaneously poetic and sparse, much like Bishop's poems. The chapters are short and often skip through time like a stone across water to Bishop's death in 1979. Wieland focuses on Bishop's life-long friendship with poet and mentor Marianne Moore, her sudden losses and lasting grief, addictions and demons, and her love for women. In college, Bishop contemplated what it meant to keep her eyes open and attain a deeper vision that could reorder pieces of the past and present into coherence, like a cubist painting or modernist collage, a feat she achieved in writing. Wieland's rendition of Bishop's life aptly and beautifully mirrors that process.--Janet St. John Copyright 2019 Booklist

Striking imagery and sharp, distinctive language shimmer in Wieland's haunting fifth novel (following Land of Enchantment), which imagines American poet Elizabeth Bishop as a young woman. It opens in 1930 as the Vassar student struggles with her attraction to women, alcohol's seductive comfort, and her literary gifts. In 1934, she graduates from college and learns that her mother, who fantasized about killing Elizabeth and was permanently committed to a psychiatric institution when Bishop was five, has died. Grappling with loss, loneliness, and longing for the mothering she never received, in 1936, Bishop travels with her friend Louise Crane to Paris despite news of Hitler's rising threat. They rent the apartment of American expat Clara de Chambrun, whose only daughter died at 19. Bishop is ambivalent about Clara's need for a daughter figure, but when the older woman enlists her help in rescuing two Jewish infants being smuggled out of Germany, she can't refuse. Wieland makes scrupulous use of known fact in crafting her fictional narrative, but neither rehashes familiar biography nor attempts literal interpretations of Bishop's poems or life. Instead, her dreamlike juxtapositions of the searing and the sensual probe the artistic process, the power of the mother-daughter bond, and the creative coming-of-age of one of America's greatest poets. Agent: Kerry D'Agostino, Curtis Brown, Ltd. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Paris, 7 A.M. If you can remember a dream and write it down quickly, without translating, you've got the poem. You've got the landscapes and populations: alder and aspen and poplar and birch. A lake, a wood, the sea. Pheasants and reindeer. A moose. A lark, a gull, rainbow trout, mackerel. A horned owl. The silly somnambulist brook babbling all night. An old woman and a child. An old man covered with glittering fish scales. An all-night bus ride over precipitous hills, a heeling sailboat, its mast a slash against the sky, trains tunneling blindly through sycamore and willow, a fire raging in the village, terrible thirst. See? The dreams are poems. And the way to bring on the dreaming is to eat cheese before bed. The worst cheese you can get your hands on, limburger or blue. Cheese with a long, irregular history. This was a crazy notion to bring to college, but you have to bring something, don't you? You have to bring a certain kind of habit, or a story, or, because this is Vassar in 1930, a family name. Some girls bring the story of a mysterious past, a deep wound, a lost love, a dead brother. Other girls bring Rockefeller, Kennedy, Roosevelt. They bring smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey and promiscuity (there's a kind of habit), which some girls wear like--write it!--a habit. This is a wonderful notion, the nun and the prostitute together at last, as they probably secretly wish they could have been all along. Elizabeth laughs about it privately, nervously, alone in her head. Her roommate, Margaret Miller, has brought a gorgeous alto and a talent for painting. She's brought New York, which she calls The City, as if there were only that one, ever and always. And cigarettes, a bottle of gin stashed at the back of her wardrobe, a silver flask engraved with her mother's initials. Margaret has brought a new idea of horizon, not a vista but an angle, not a river but a tunnel, a park and not a field. She will paint angles and tunnels and parks until (write it!) disaster makes this impossible, and then she will curate exhibitions of paintings and write piercing, gemlike essays about the beauty of madwomen in nineteenth-century art. The cheese, meanwhile, occupies a low bookshelf. Most nights, Elizabeth carves a small slice and eats it with bread brought from the dining hall. And sure enough, the dreams arrive--though that seems the wrong word for dreams, but really it isn't. They arrive like passengers out of the air or off the sea, having crossed a vast expanse of some other element. Elizabeth's father, eighteen years dead. In her dreams, he's driving a large green car. Her mother, at a high window of the state hospital in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, signaling for something Elizabeth can't understand, her expression fierce and threatening. A teacher she loves disappearing into a maze of school corridors. A Dutch bricklayer setting fire to the Reichstag. A two-year-old boy dressed in a brown shirt, a swastika wound round his arm like a bandage. His sister's mouth opened wide to scream something no one will ever hear because she is gassed and then burnt to ashes. All these people trailing poems behind them like too-large overcoats. And Elizabeth is the seamstress: make the coat fit better, close the seams, move the snaps, stitch up the ragged hem. Elizabeth, Margaret says toward the end of October. I'm not sure these are poems. They're more like strange little stories. But I am sure that cheese stinks. I know, Elizabeth says, but it has a noble purpose. Which is what, for heaven's sake? If you want to have peculiar dreams, try this. Margaret holds out the silver flask. Just . . . without a glass? Just. Elizabeth takes a long swallow, coughs. Oh, she says when she can speak. It's like drinking perfume. How would you know that? Margaret says. I quaff the stuff for breakfast, of course! Margaret lies down on her bed, and Elizabeth sits below her, on the floor, her back against the bed frame. So, Margaret begins. About men. Were we talking about men? If we weren't, we should be. I wish I knew some men the way you do, Elizabeth says. And what way is that? To feel comfortable around them. Natural. Maybe I can help. Give you a lesson or two. Start now. Margaret sits up, shifts the pillow behind her back. Elizabeth turns to watch, thinking this will be part of the lesson, how to move one's body, the choreography. Margaret looks like a queen riding on a barge. What poem is that? A pearl garland winds her head: / She leaneth on a velvet bed. Margaret as the Lady of Shalott. When Elizabeth turns back, she sees herself and Margaret in the mirror across the room, leg and leg and arm and arm and so on, halves of heads. Halves of thoughts, too. It seems to do strange things, this drink. It's exhilarating. First, Margaret says, boys--men--they want two things that are contradictory. They want bad and good. They want prostitute and wife. Prostitute and nun, Elizabeth says. Margaret smiles, which makes her entire face seem to glow. Such dark beauty, Elizabeth thinks, like my mother. In some photographs, she looks like someone's powdered her face with ashes. That's the spirit! Margaret says. And not only do you have to know how to be both, you have to know when. Must take some mind reading. Which is really just imagination. Which you have loads of, obviously. Margaret leans forward to rest the flask on Elizabeth's shoulder. This helps, she says. Helps us or them? Both, Margaret says. She watches Elizabeth unscrew the cap on the flask. Not so much this time. Elizabeth takes a tiny sip, a drop. Suddenly, she feels terribly thirsty. A memory crackles out of nowhere, a fire. Much better, she says. Almost tastes good. So it's a math problem, Margaret says. Which do they want, and when. Probability. Gambling. What if you guess wrong? Then you move on. Moving on. That must be the real secret to it. Down the hall, a door opens and music pours out. How have they not heard it before now, the phonograph in Hallie's room? She is trying to learn the Mozart sonata that way, by listening. Miss Pierce tells them it will help, to listen, but it's still no substitute for fingers on the keys, hours alone in the practice room, making the notes crash and break on your own. Margaret is talking about a boy named Jerome, someone she knows from Greenwich, her childhood. Elizabeth gazes up at her, drinks in the calm assurance of Margaret's voice, the confiding tone, the privacy. College can be so awfully public, even places that are supposed to be private: library carrels, bathroom stalls. Jerome was in her cousin's class. Now at college in The City. Columbia. He is bound to have friends. Elizabeth listens to the sounds of the words, the hard-soft-hard c's like a mediocre report card: college, city, Columbia, country. The music of it soothes. She turns to look out the window, rubs her cheek against the nubby pattern of the quilt on Margaret's bed, takes some vague and unexpected comfort in the fabric. A light from the dorm room above theirs illuminates the branches of an oak tree outside, two raised arms, a child asking her mother to be picked up, pressed to a shoulder. She hears a child's voice say the words. Hold me. I'm thirsty. Margaret is talking about men. The tree is asking to be gathered up, held aloft. An impossible request: the roots run too deep, too wide, scrabbling under this dormitory, beyond, halfway across campus. Elizabeth reaches for the flask, takes a longer swallow, then another. Excerpted from Paris, 7 A. M. by Liza Wieland All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. 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