The Queen of Paris

The Queen of Paris

ISBN-10: 1982546840
ISBN-13: 978-1982546847
Blackstone Publishing

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Legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel is revered for her sophisticated style–the iconic little black dress–and famed for her intoxicating perfume Chanel No. 5. Yet behind the public persona is a complicated woman of intrigue, shadowed by mysterious rumors. The Queen of Paris, the new novel from award-winning author Pamela Binnings Ewen, vividly imagines the hidden life of Chanel during the four years of Nazi occupation in Paris in the midst of WWII–as discovered in recently unearthed wartime files.

Coco Chanel could be cheerful, lighthearted, and generous; she also could be ruthless, manipulative, even cruel. Against the winds of war, with the Wehrmacht marching down the Champs-Élysées, Chanel finds herself residing alongside the Reich’s High Command in the Hotel Ritz. Surrounded by the enemy, Chanel wages a private war of her own to wrestle full control of her perfume company from the hands of her Jewish business partner, Pierre Wertheimer. With anti-Semitism on the rise, he has escaped to the United States with the confidential formula for Chanel No. 5. Distrustful of his intentions to set up production on the outskirts of New York City, Chanel fights to seize ownership. The House of Chanel shall not fall.

While Chanel struggles to keep her livelihood intact, Paris sinks under the iron fist of German rule. Chanel–a woman made of sparkling granite–will do anything to survive. She will even agree to collaborate with the Nazis in order to protect her darkest secrets. When she is covertly recruited by Germany to spy for the Reich, she becomes Agent F-7124, code name: Westminster. But why? And to what lengths will she go to keep her stormy past from haunting her future?

 

Reviews for The Queen of Paris

Ranked No. 1 in Historical Fiction for Hot New Releases (2020) by Amazon Kindle!

– Pamela’s interview on The Queen of Paris with Sharon Sirts’ Book and Wine Club

“Ewen (The Moon in the Mango Tree) dazzles in this outstanding historical thriller that chronicles the life of Coco Chanel in occupied France. ..Ewen’s Chanel is arrogant and fragile in equal measure, and the author does a marvelous job of diving into the motivations of a woman born into poverty as she defends the fortune she built for herself, making this a refreshingly nuanced character portrait and also a real page-turner. This is top-notch historical fiction.”
Publisher’s Weekly – starred review

“Empathetic yet unsparing. The Queen of Paris is an engrossing historical novel that reveals another room in the House of Chanel: beyond the timeless elegance, simplicity, and jasmine-scented perfume was a desperate woman, trapped by a maze of circumstances, and her own troubled mind.”
Foreward Reviews

“In Pamela Binnings Ewen’s experienced hands…Coco Chanel comes alive in the pages of The Queen of Paris as thoroughly as she ever did in even a brilliant biography like that by Edmonde Charles-Roux…a delectable historical novel…”
Open Letters Review – Steve Donoghue, Editor

“Ewen’s Coco is a proud and image-conscious character, sprung from a painful, lonely childhood to become a self-made triumph, a Machiavellian madam—”
Kirkus Reviews

“Ewen spins fact and rumor into compelling fiction with a novel about brilliantly talented, supremely self-absorbed fashion designer Coco Chanel…A well-imagined, highly entertaining tale.”
Toby Devens, bestselling author of Happy Any Day Now

“The Queen of Paris brings Paris alive during World War II with exacting and fascinating details as Ewen explores the constantly evolving complexity of Chanel’s enigmatic character…the most engrossing novel I’ve read all year. I loved this book. I wish I had written it.”
Bev Marshall, author of Right as Rain, Walking Through Shadows, Hot Fudge Sunday Blues, and Back Home

“The Queen of Paris is multilayered and compelling, the characters lingering, like the delicate scent of Chanel No. 5, long after the final page.”
Sonia Velton, author of Blackberry & Wild Rose

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