1–What is the title of your latest release? THE UNCHARTED FLIGHT OF OLIVIA WEST 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? An action packed dual-timeline novel featuring a ground-breaking female aviator and the young woman who uncovers her buried history decades later. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? All of my books are set in Hawai’i, so that was easy! But also, I chose to have Olivia be from San Diego because that is where the aviation company where Charles Lindberg’s plane, The Spirit of St. Louis was built. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Absolutely. Olivia West(1927) and Wren Summers (1987) are fun and multifaceted and inspiring. The kind of women I love to be around. 5–What are three words that describe your protagonist? Olivia: feisty, brave, passionate Wren: creative, kind, savvy 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? It never had occurred to me that the first flights to Hawaii took 26 plus hours. I don’t think I would have made it! 7–Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done? Only a little bit here and there. Mostly, I wait until…

As the world endures once again the recurrent tragedy of war, this month’s stories remind us of those exceptional individuals who still manage to display courage and compassion despite cruelty, horror, destruction and loss.   We begin with one of the most unusual of these women – Mila Pavlichenko, heroine of Kate Quinn’s THE DIAMOND EYE, which is based on a true story.  Quiet Kiev history student Mila is completely absorbed by her library job and caring for her young son when Hitler’s invasion of Russia upends her world.  Called up like many women to join in the defense of the Motherland, she becomes one of the deadliest snipers on the Eastern front, named “Lady Death” by her Nazi foes.  But after her three hundredth kill, a government needing a rallying point turns her into a national heroine and sends her on a goodwill tour to the U.S. She’s feeling alone and lost in Washington, DC, until an unexpected friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt and a link born of shared experience with a fellow sniper brightens her world.  But wounds, loss, and a determined enemy from her past will show her that though she may have left the battlefield, the struggle…

Although the societal shifts that happened after World War I might have been more ground-breaking, by the 1940s, women were still mostly confined to traditional roles as wives and mothers or to a few “approved” careers, such as secretaries, sales clerks, or nurses.  The advent of World War II and the resulting manpower shortage once again opened opportunities—and challenges—for women to explore vastly different and sometimes dangerous occupations.  This month’s selection of stories transports the reader from England to Russia to the Hawaiian islands as intrepid ladies in difficult times take on exciting, essential, and unprecedented work. In roughly chronological order, we begin with THE ROSE CODE by Kate Quinn.  As German submarines ravage British shipping, Bletchley Park, a stately house in Buckinghamshire, is converted into the top-secret headquarters of a group of academics, scientists, mathematicians, and puzzle fanatics whose goal is breaking the German military communication code.  Included in this group are three very unlikely code-breakers: Canadian debutante Osla, beautiful, wealthy and one of Prince Phillip’s flirts; East-Ender Mab, who burns to utilize her wits and expertise to rise from poverty to make a genteel marriage, and shy spinster Beth, whose brilliance at solving puzzles soon turns her into…