The Woman in the Sable Coat

January 15, 2024
The lives of two British families collide during WWII as essential truths about them are obscured by deceptions--past and ongoing--in this historical fiction (with some surprises up its sleeve). Adolescent friends Nina Woodrow and Rose Allen spend languid prewar summers together whenever Rose visits family in the quiet English village where Nina lives with her widowed father, Henry. A chance meeting with visiting Canadian Joey Roussin leads the girls and Henry to dine with him and his friends Guy and Kate Nicholson, a married couple who've just moved to the village. This meeting marks the beginning of Nina's growing awareness of (and attraction to) to men, Guy in particular. Years later, after the outbreak of war, in a somewhat orchestrated (by Nina) "coincidence," Nina and Guy meet at the RAF air base where both are stationed. The spiraling effects of Nina and Guy's developing relationship during the war--played out against the devastation and loss visited upon civilians and military alike--have consequences not only for the couple but also for their families and friends. Kate and son Pip are left to their own devices as Guy pursues his military and romantic goals away from home, and, intriguingly, the stolid-appearing Henry appears to represent a measure of comfort and stability to her. Using plot elements that hark back to an earlier era of storytelling and echoes of the thwarted lovers in the classic British wartime movie Brief Encounter, Brooks concocts an increasingly complex web of misunderstanding and misdirection. Kate narrates her own account of the events, while the more enigmatic Nina's perspective is related in the third person, but it is the latter's story that launches the narrative from a suspenseful and equivocal prologue. A new-fashioned, old-fashioned story of love, deception, and buried secrets.

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February 15, 2024
Kate Nicholson admires an indulgent sable coat while shopping with her husband, Guy, but ultimately congratulates herself for purchasing a more practical rabbit-fur stole instead. After all, with WWII in full force, they can't afford luxuries. But when Kate spots that coat on a local young woman named Nina, she knows Guy is having an affair. The intertwined stories of Kate and Nina go back to a disastrous dinner party in their English village years before, which sets the stage for their complex and claustrophobic competition. During the war, Nina's father, Henry, is furious to learn of his daughter's transgression and slowly begins to see more of Kate as she transitions to life as a divorced mother, without the man she's known since childhood. After their service in the air force ends, Nina and Guy move to Canada, where their dreams of farm life quickly run up against cold, hard reality. Secrets, betrayals, and compromises abound as these very different women navigate treacherous relationships to find safe harbor in Brooks' (The Whispering House, 2021) taut novel.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 11, 2024
English writer Brooks follows up The Whispering House with another seductive gothic novel. This time out, the focus is on a young woman’s illicit affair during WWII. In 1942 Lincolnshire, Nina Woodrow, a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, is reacquainted with Royal Air Force officer Guy Nicholson, whom she first met eight years earlier at a dinner party hosted by her widowed father, Henry. Told by a friend that Guy is divorced from his wife, Kate, Nina begins an affair with him. Nina grew up believing her mother, Teodora, died in a car accident when she was two, but during a spooky séance with a makeshift spirit board, the letters suggest Teodora was murdered. Then Henry learns of Nina and Guy’s affair and disowns her (it turns out Guy is still married). Kate and Henry, joined together by their mutual feelings of betrayal, become friends until she discovers some disturbing information about Teodora’s death, leading her to rethink everything she thought she knew about Nina’s “soft-spoken” father. Brooks’s moody tale defies standard-issue WWII narratives of resilience, focusing instead on characters reexamining their relationships in the face of difficult truths. Readers will be rapt. Agent: Sarah Levitt, Aevitas Creative Management.

April 5, 2024

When Nina Woodrow first meets Guy Nicholson, a nearby neighbor, she is a dreamy adolescent, and he is a married twentysomething with a pregnant wife. And while their lives intersect only briefly for one afternoon and evening, she doesn't forget about him. Their paths cross again during World War II when they are stationed at the same British base, and they begin an affair while Nina mistakenly believes Guy is divorced. At first, she is over the moon in love, but she soon discovers that Guy isn't as perfect as he seems. Kate, Guy's wife, learns of his infidelity when Nina stops by their house on her way to visit her father. Kate, remembering the kindness of Nina's father, turns to Henry Woodrow and befriends him as a way to deal with her grief over Guy. The two develop a friendship despite their age gap and unconventional connection. Brooks (The Whispering House) draws in readers with a unique plot and several unexpected secrets. VERDICT Told in multiple POVs, Brooks's latest features complex yet fragile characters that will engage readers until the end.--Beth Brentlinger

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