BooksChatter: ☀ Casablanca: Appointment at Dawn

Thank you for joining us on the first day of the Virtual Book Tour for Casablanca: Appointment at Dawn, a Historical Fiction novel, with romantic elements, by Linda Bennett Pennell (28 August 2015, The Wild Rose Press, Inc, 308 pages).

Check out the book's synopsis and the excerpt below, as well as the author's other works. Don't miss out on our Q&A with Author Linda Bennet Pennell!

PREVIEW: Read the first three chapters with Amazon Look Inside.

Linda Bennett Pennell will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), interviews (ℚ), reviews (✍) and guest blog posts (✉).

Synopsis | Teaser | Other Works | Author Q&A | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops

Synopsis

Casablanca, 1943: a viper’s nest of double agents and spies where OSS Officer Kurt Heinz finds his skill in covert operations pushed to the limit. Allied success in North Africa and the fate of the First Allied Conference—perhaps the outcome of the war—hang on Kurt’s next mission. The nature of his work makes relationships impossible. Nonetheless, he is increasingly torn between duty and the beautiful girl who desperately needs his protection and help.

Sarah Barrett, U.S. Army R.N., is finished with wartime romance. Determined to protect her recently broken heart, she throws all of her time and energy into caring for her patients, but when she is given a coded message by a mysterious dying civilian, she is sucked into a vortex of danger and intrigue that threatens her very survival. The one person who can help Sarah is Kurt Heinz, a man with too many secrets to be trusted.

Teaser: Excerpt

“I’m Heinz. What do you want?”
     “Oh. It’s you.”
     “Yeah?”
     “From the restaurant on New Year’s Eve.”
     Kurt was silent for a moment, then it came back to him. “I remember. Sarah, right? You’re the girl who refused to dance with me.”
     A red flush crawled from her throat onto the apples of her cheeks. “Yes. I’m sorry if I was rude.”
     “I’ve been cut dead before. I got over it.”
     The girl’s eyes glittered. “I’m sure you did. Are you going to keep me standing here on the doorstep for everyone to see?”
     “Why? I’m not expecting company. Would it be a problem?”
     “It certainly might if the people who tore my apartment apart followed me here.”
     Kurt looked into her eyes with complete attention for the first time since opening the door. Whatever had happened to this girl, she looked terrified and angry. Not a particularly good combination for the covert activities he and Phelps were up to.
     Kurt made a quick decision. He stepped back and pulled the door wide while raising his voice.
     “You better come inside and tell me why you think what happened to your apartment has anything to do with me.”
     When they stepped into the living area, Phelps had disappeared. Kurt gestured toward the sofa and the girl sat down.
     Propping himself on the sofa’s arm, he looked down into her frightened eyes.
     “Now tell me how I can help you, Miss, uh…” “Barrett, Sarah. US Army. RN.”
     “Well, Nurse Barrett, what can I do for you?”
     The girl stuck her hand in her coat pocket and whipped out a scrap of paper that she waved in his face.
     “By telling me what’s on this paper and why it’s so important that somebody took a knife to my furniture.”

Casablanca: Appointment at Dawn
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Other Works

Click on the book cover to Look Inside the book on Amazon and read an excerpt.

ALL of the following titles are FREE on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner Library.

Al Capone at the Blanche Hotel

Lake City, Florida, June, 1930: Al Capone checks in for an unusually long stay at the Blanche Hotel, a nice enough joint for an insignificant little whistle stop. The following night, young Jack Blevins witnesses a body being dumped heralding the summer of violence to come. One-by-one, people controlling county vice activities swing from KKK ropes. No moonshine distributor, gaming operator, or brothel madam, black or white, is safe from the Klan's self-righteous vigilantism. Jack's older sister Meg, a waitress at the Blanche, and her fiancé, a sheriff's deputy, discover reasons to believe the lynchings are cover for a much larger ambition than simply ridding the county of vice. Someone, possibly backed by Capone, has secret plans for filling the voids created by the killings. But as the body count grows and crosses burn, they come to realize this knowledge may get all of them killed.

Gainesville, Florida, August, 2011: Liz Reams, an up and coming young academic specializing in the history of American crime, impulsively moves across the continent to follow a man who convinces her of his devotion yet refuses to say the three simple words “I love you”. Despite the entreaties of friends and family, she is attracted to edginess and a certain type of glamour in her men, both living and historical. Her personal life is an emotional roller coaster, but her career options suddenly blossom beyond all expectation, creating a very different type of stress. To deal with it all, Liz loses herself in her professional passion, original research into the life and times of her favorite bad boy, Al Capone. What she discovers about 1930's summer of violence, and herself in the process, leaves her reeling at first and then changed forever. [Published by Soul Mate Publishing on 9 July 2013, 320 pages]

Confederado do Norte

October, 1866

Mary Catherine is devastated when her family emigrates from Georgia to Brazil because her father and maternal uncle refuse to accept the terms of Reconstruction following the Confederacy’s defeat. Shortly after arrival in their new country, she is orphaned, leaving her in Uncle Nathan’s care. He hates Mary Catherine, blaming her for his sister’s death. She despises him because she believes Nathan murdered her father. When Mary Catherine discovers Nathan’s plan to be rid of her as well, she flees into the mountain wilderness filled with jaguars and equally dangerous men.

Finding refuge among kind peasants, she grows into a beauty, ultimately marrying the scion of a wealthy Portuguese family. Happiness and security seem assured until civil unrest brings armed marauders who have an inexplicable connection to Mary Catherine. Recreating herself has protected Mary Catherine in the past, but this new crisis will demand all of the courage, intelligence, and creativity she possesses simply to survive. [Published by Soul Mate Publishing on 7 July 2014, 362 pages]

When War Came Home: a Civil War Anthology

When War Came Home contains four stories of ordinary Southerners caught up in a conflagration not of their making, but which dominated their lives for four long, bloody years. The stories are set in the mountains of northern Georgia where support for the Confederate cause was mixed at best. Some north Georgians hated the very idea of secession and did what they could to reject demands of the CSA. Others participated, either grudgingly or enthusiastically, in a cause that asked them to fight for someone else's way of life, for the mountain South was not divided into large plantations populated by wealthy masters and their hundreds of slaves. Instead, the area contained small farms that a man and his sons could till unaided by forced labor. Three of the stories are based on actual events in the author's family history. [Published by Real Cypress Press on 1 July 2015, 35 pages]

About the Author

I have been in love with the past for as long as I can remember. Anything with a history, whether shabby or majestic, recent or ancient, instantly draws me in. I suppose it comes from being part of a large extended family that spanned several generations. Long summer afternoons on my grandmother's porch or winter evenings gathered around her fireplace were filled with stories both entertaining and poignant. Of course being set in the American South, those stories were also peopled by some very interesting characters, some of whom have found their way into my work.

As for my venture in writing, it has allowed me to reinvent myself. We humans are truly multifaceted creatures, but unfortunately we tend to sort and categorize each other into neat, easily understood packages that rarely reveal the whole person. Perhaps you, too, want to step out of the box in which you find yourself. I encourage you to look at the possibilities and imagine. Be filled with childlike wonder in your mental wanderings. Envision what might be, not simply what is. Let us never forget, all good fiction begins when someone says to her or himself, "Let's pretend."

I reside in the Houston area with one sweet husband and one adorable German Shorthaired Pointer who is quite certain she’s a little girl.

"History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up." Voltaire

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