Kathryn Gauci – författare

A haunting story of a deep friendship between two women, one Greek, one Turk. A friendship that transcends an era of mistrust, and fear, long after the wars have ended.

Aspasia and Saniye are friends from childhood. They share their secrets and joy, helping each other in times of trouble.

When WWI breaks, the news travels to the village, but the locals have no idea how it will affect their lives.

When the war ends the Greeks come to the village, causing havoc, burning houses, and shooting Turks. The residents regard each other with suspicion. Their world has turned upside down, but some of the old friendships survive, despite the odds.

But the Greeks are finally defeated, and the situation changes once more, forcing the Greeks to leave the country. Yet, the friendship between the villagers still continues.

Many years later, in Athens, Christophorus tells his grandson and his daughter, Elpida, the missing parts of the story, and what he had to leave behind in Asia Minor.

A story of love, friendship, and loss; a tragedy that affects the lives of many on both sides of the Aegean, and their struggle to survive under new circumstances, as casualties of a war beyond their control.

If you enjoyed Louis de Berniers’s Birds without Wings then you will love Kathryn Gauci’s The Carpet Weaver of Usak.

From the Amazon bestselling author of The Secret of the Grand Hôtel du Lac, Kathryn Gauci, comes a powerful and unforgettable portrait of one woman''s struggle to balance a love she knows will ultimately end in tragedy, and of the hardships of war combined with the darker forces of village life.

I saw him everywhere: in the brightest star, in the birds that came to my window—he was there. After a love like that, you can endure anything life throws at you.

Set on a Greek island during the German Occupation of Greece, The Blue Dolphin is like a Greek tragedy. Rich with loyalties and betrayals, it is a harrowing, yet ultimately uplifting story of endurance and love.

Greece, 1944: After Nefeli loses her husband during the Italian invasion of Greece in 1940, she ekes out a meager living from her Blue Dolphin taverna with the help of her eight-year-old-daughter, Georgia; their small garden; and Agamemnon the mule.

Four of Nefeli''s close friends, who belong to the Greek Resistance, ask her to hide a cache of weapons, placing her in mortal danger from the enemy. When the Resistance blows up a German naval vessel filled with troops, three of them are killed, and the Germans start to make regular visits to the island. With the loss of her friends, Nefeli''s dire circumstances force her to accept a marriage proposal arranged by the village matchmakers, but what happens next throws everyone on the island into turmoil and changes the course of Nefeli''s and Georgia''s lives forever.

From USA Today bestselling author Kathryn Gauci comes a mesmerizing, emotional espionage thriller that no fan of WWII fiction will want to miss.

1943. SOE agent Larry Hadley leaves Cairo for German- and Italian-occupied Greece. His mission is to liaise with the Poseidon network under the leadership of the White Rose. It’s not long before he finds himself involved with a beautiful and intriguing woman whose past is shrouded in mystery. In a country where hardship, destruction, and political instability threaten to split the Resistance, and terror and moral ambiguity live side by side, Larry’s instincts tell him something is wrong.

After a devastating massacre in a small mountain village by the Wehrmacht, combined with new intelligence concerning the escape networks, he is forced to confront the likelihood of a traitor in their midst. But who is it?

Time is running out and he must act before the network is blown. The stakes are high.

From the shadowy souks and cocktail parties of Cairo’s elite to the mountains of Greece, Athens, the Aegean Islands, and Turkey, The Poseidon Network is an unforgettable cat-and-mouse portrait of wartime that you will not want to put down.

Originally published in the USA Today bestselling The Darkest Hour anthology, this gripping tale of resistance, suspense, and love is now a standalone book.

1940: Paris under Nazi occupation.

When the Germans invade France, twenty-one-year-old Nathalie Fontaine is living a quiet life in rural Southwest France. Within months, she heads for Paris and joins the Resistance as a courier helping to organize escape routes. But Paris is fraught with danger. When several escapes are foiled by the Gestapo, the network suspects they are compromised.

Nathalie suspects one person. But when a chance encounter with a stranger provides an opportunity to make a little extra money by working as a model for a Nazi-sympathizing couturier, her suspicions are thrown into doubt.

Using her work in the fashionable rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Nathalie uncovers information vital to the network, but at the same time steps into a world of treachery and betrayal which threatens to bring them all undone.

Time is running out, and the Gestapo is closing in.

A powerful account of one woman’s struggle to balance her duty to her country and a love she knows will ultimately end in tragedy

1940. With the Germans about to enter Paris, Claire Bouchard flees France for England. Two years later she is recruited by the Special Operations Executive and sent back into occupied France to work alongside the Resistance. Working undercover as a teacher in Brittany, Claire accidentally befriends the wife of the German Commandant of Rennes, and the blossoming friendship is about to become a dangerous mission.

Knowing that thousands of lives depended on her actions, Claire begins a double life as a Gestapo Commandant’s mistress in order to retrieve vital information for the Allied Invasion of France, but ghosts from her past make the deception more painful than she could have imagined.

Part historical, part romance, and part thriller, Conspiracy of Lies takes us on a journey through occupied France, from the picturesque villages of rural Brittany to the glittering dinner parties of the Nazi Elite, in a story of courage, heartbreak, and secrecy.

A richly woven saga set against the mosques and minarets of Asia Minor and the ruins of ancient Athens

1822: As the Greek War of Independence rages, a child is born to a woman of legendary beauty on the Greek island of Chios. The subsequent decades of bitter struggle between Greeks and Turks simmer to a head when the Greek army invades Turkey in 1919. During this time, Dimitra Lamartine arrives in Smyrna and gains fame and fortune as an embroiderer to the elite of Ottoman society. However, it is her granddaughter, Sophia, who takes the business to great heights as a couturier in Constantinople only to see their world come crashing down with the outbreak of war.

1922: Sophia begins a new life in Athens, but the memory of a dire prophecy once told to her grandmother about a girl with flaming red hair begins to haunt her, with devastating consequences.

1972: Eleni Stephenson is called to the bedside of her dying aunt in Athens. In a story that rips her world apart, Eleni discovers the chilling truth behind her family’s dark past, plunging her into the shadowy world of political intrigue, secret societies, and espionage, where families and friends are torn apart and where a belief in superstition simmers just below the surface.

Extravagant, inventive, and emotionally sweeping, The Embroiderer is a tale that travelers and those who seek culture and oriental history will love.

“If I knew then, dear reader, what I know now, I should have turned on my heels and left. But no, instead, I stood there transfixed on the beautiful image of Seraphina. In that moment my fate was sealed.”

Dionysos Mavroulis is a man without a future: a man who embraces destiny and risks everything for love.

A refugee from Asia Minor, he escapes Smyrna in 1922 disguised as an old woman. Alienated and plagued by feelings of remorse, he spirals into poverty and seeks solace in the hashish dens around Piraeus.

Hitting rock bottom, he meets Aleko, an accomplished bouzouki player. Recognizing in the impoverished refugee a rare musical talent, Aleko offers to teach him the bouzouki.

Dionysos’s hope for the future is further fueled when he meets Seraphina—the singer with the voice of a nightingale—at Papazoglou’s Taverna. From the moment he lays eyes on her, his fate is sealed.

Set in Piraeus in the 1920’s and 30’s, Seraphina’s Song is a haunting and compelling story of hope and despair, and of a love stronger than death.

“Cine noir meets Greek tragedy, played out with a Depression era realism.”—Discovering Diamonds