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myersbooks.com PAUL A. MYERS

Romance - Intrigue - History

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The French Army in Italy 1944


Les Ambulancières: The French Army at Belvedere

a Novel






Two French infantry divisions, the 2nd Moroccans and the 3rd Algerians, unload in Naples, Italy in late 1944 for the Allied advance on Rome. The American general asks the French general to reassign his woman ambulance drivers to safer areas in the rear. He refuses. “The women of France, like the men are proud to die for their country.” This is the story of the woman ambulance drivers of the 3e Division d’Infanterie Algérienne who supported the fierce battle for the mountains of Belvedere east of Cassino in January and February 1944.

In mid-January, the 3rd Algerians push the Germans north of the Rapido River in fierce fighting. Sous-lieutenant Sandrine Renault returns exhausted after evacuating casualties and speaks with ambulance leader Lieutenant Madeleine Sauveterre. “The battle just consumes everything, sucks it all in. Everything we had.” Sandrine added, “If we have to support a regimental attack beyond twenty-four hours, we need more drivers, more brancardiers … more …”

“More surgeons, more nurses, more trucks,” says Madeleine. “The tents are overflowing. That was a two-regiment attack.”

The following week the 4th Tunisian infantry regiment crosses the Rapido River and assaults the Belvedere Heights. The battle rages for two weeks. The French hold.


https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/paul-a-myers/les-ambulancieres-the-french-army-at-belvedere-a-novel/

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Free pdf copy of memoir of author's army service in Vietnam.

Get FREE PDF COPY here

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Algiers 1941

American diplomats go to Vichy-governed French North Africa in 1941 to diplomatically keep the Germans out while preparing North Africa as an eventual staging area to launch American forces at Nazi Germany.




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French North Africa 1941 – President Roosevelt dispatches American diplomats to Algiers under direction of his personal representative Robert Murphy on a secret mission to prepare North Africa as a future base for American action against Nazi Germany. This is the true story underlying this tale of historical fiction.

People move history. A lonely wife works as a secretary for an important French general while her husband serves as a Vichy diplomat in Nazi Germany. A young American diplomat has a secret mission. A French counterespionage agent and his alluring lady friend have a score to settle. A slinky German foreign correspondent charms her way into the top social circles of Algiers. A Nazi diplomat has perverse tastes while his sadistic Gestapo bodyguard keeps blackmailers at bay.

Refugees and adventurers, Vichy officers, German armistice officials, and American diplomats jockey for position as Sunday dinner at the posh Hotel Aletti approaches -- on December 7, 1941.

Read a Preview of novel here

Kindle edition $2.99; Print edition $12.50

Want more information? What are some of the historical questions and issues that "Divided Loyalties: Algiers 194" raises? See the Tip Sheet here.

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Fighting France - a new series

Divided Loyalties: Algiers 1941 is the first in a new set of historical novels under the series name Fighting France. The series aims to dramatize the rise of the French nation from defeat to triumph in World War II.

The next book in the series will be released in 2020.


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The 1938 Munich Crisis

Peace is at stake in Europe as Nazi power threatens Austria and Czechoslovakia. Corrupt French politicians and scheming mistresses combine with feckless British ministers to plot peace at any price with Germany.

An echo reverberating in today’s Ukraine...

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"This is a good book. Most of Paul Myers books deal with the same years, and they are all good. Good historical background and facts, and good fictional stories on the side."

By Maureen O'Donnell

Kirkus Review - "An intriguing, historically grounded imagining of behind-the-scenes machinations during a crucial moment in European history...the characters embody the complexity and conflicts of the historical moment. Myers has done his research and impeccably draws the month-to-month social and political situations. The setting also creates a tragic dramatic irony..."

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From the back cover

Paris 1938. A countess channels money and charm to the top circle of French politicians, both in the salons and in the bed chamber. A baroness engages in a torrid affair with a suave German diplomat. Unknown to both women, the diplomat is a spymaster weaving a web to make German-inspired appeasement dominant in the French cabinet table.

As German power grows, Berlin challenges Paris and London over sovereignty for German-speakers in Czechoslovakia and a “free hand” in Eastern Europe to counter Russian Bolshevism.In Paris, the wealthy elite fear Russian Bolsheviks more than Nazi revanchists.

French industrialists and a corrupt press champion appeasement-minded politicians. Peace at any price, they say, as champagne glasses clink and beautiful women arrange favored assignations.

Amidst the appeasement, an intrepid woman diplomatic correspondent reveals sinister Nazi designs and weak and fearful policy responses by governments in Paris and London.

As the Versailles Peace Treaty unravels in the late 1930s, resurgent German military power thirsts for European conquest.

Amazon print edition $11.13

Kindle edition $2.99

Read the Kirkus Review

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European Financial Crisis 2015

New satirical novel at Kindle $2.99 and Amazon print for $9.99

Fast Money and French Ladies

The novel is fast-paced, with an intriguing plot...and Myers demonstrates that a financial story can be a thriller even without a single drawn gun or weapon of mass destruction. An enjoyable novel...

-- Kirkus Reviews

European diplomat Sophie maneuvers to save Europe from crisis created by Greek financial collapse.

Back Cover – June 2015 – The Greek prime minister calls for a referendum to reject the harsh austerity terms demanded by the European Union for a bailout of the crushed Greek economy. The EU cuts off the banks and Greeks line up at the ATMs to grab all the cash they can. Massive street demonstrations in Athens protest the “Fourth Reich” being imposed from Berlin.

Deputy European finance commissioner Sophie d’Auverne rushes to Berlin to meet with top German leaders. Meanwhile her American boyfriend Jim returns to Geneva to find that his hedge fund suddenly went long billions in Greek bonds due to a rogue computer program.

Sophie embarks on a week of hidden diplomacy culminating in a grand compromise at an all-night summit meeting in Brussels. Unknown to her, Jim’s hedge fund has a spy high in the French government tipping Jim to market-moving developments.

Kindle edition

Amazon print edition

Kirkus Review


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More European Financial Crisis

A satirical romance of finance in the world of modern European money markets

A secret list ... threatens a billion-dollar windfall

“Love and money are both at risk in Myers’ politically driven novel of intrigue and betrayal…told with humor and sophistication.”

Kirkus Reviews

May 2012—Athens is rocked by riots as the Greek economy tanks. The International Monetary Fund warns Greece to clean up corruption. In Geneva, hedge fund investor Jim Schiller bets billions on a bail-out of Greek bonds. What secrets threaten the bail-out? Jim wonders.

To find out, Jim travels to Paris and meets with international consultant Sophie d’Auverne, a former French finance official close to IMF director Christine Lagarde. Sophie assures Jim that Greece will be bailed out and investors will make billions.

Then a shocking revelation—France sent a CD with 2,000 names of tax evaders to the Greek government. Now two former Greek ministers caught up in a corrupt Russian arms deal are dead of “apparent suicide.” Enraged German public opinion is turning against the Greek bail-out.

The French are rumored to have a master list of a 130,000 Europeans with secret Swiss bank accounts. And a spy working for a foreign government saw a second copy of the list go out the door of the finance ministry. Where is the mysterious second copy? Why are secret agents stalking Sophie? Can Sophie and Jim save the day before scandal blows the Greek bail-out apart and Europe erupts into a massive financial crisis?

A satire of the bizarre reality behind modern-day finance.

Kindle $2.99

Amazon print $9.99

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Paris in the Jazz Age

A brave war ... a failed peace

Praise from Blue Ink reviews

A Farewell in Paris is actually three well-told stories: One probes the three characters’ personal struggles to help explain their sense of emptiness and foreboding in a self-absorbed world. The second is an immersion in the era’s blossoming of art, literature, fashion, dance, music, sexuality and modernism. The third is a historical lesson about how the Treaty of Versailles, which ended WWI, sowed the seeds for the more disastrous WWII.

In all this, Myers succeeds in displaying sophisticated and empathetic insight into the period’s mindset, an era he captivatingly sketches. Although the Left Bank, the Parisian salons and cafes, and their denizens are familiar in literature and art, Myers freshly paints them, giving them their due.

-- Blue Ink Reviews, February 2017

Summary

It’s 1928 Paris and literary agent Bill Lawrence is successfully selling the work of Left Bank writers back to New York from his sumptuous apartment on Île Saint-Louis overlooking the Seine River. Kurt Eckhart, a Berlin correspondent, asks Bill’s help in publishing his war novel, a story about a doomed romance with a German nurse. Bill and Kurt were fellow infantry officers in the World War I American army. Coolly independent freelancer Kate Lundberg edits the novel while Bill’s interest in Kate grows during a late-night date at a Paris jazz bistro. The beautiful Djuna Barnes meets Kurt at a literary salon and strikes up a friendship and helps Kurt portray a more realistic, war-torn heroine in his novel. The exciting Left Bank life during the Paris Jazz Age is highlighted with cameos of Janet Flanner, Solita Solano, Margaret Anderson, Man Ray, Andre Breton, Sylvia Beach, Natalie Barney, while John Maynard Keynes provides a dramatic subplot on getting much needed food into defeated Germany in 1919.

A brave war...a failed peace...a story set during the Jazz Age in Paris of the 1920s...with plenty of Lost Generation panache.

Other review excerpts

"...a veteran literary agent makes his way through the literary scene of interwar Paris. Few places evoke nostalgia like the City of Light in the 1920s, and Myers doesn't skimp on the literary and historical details in his latest novel: His protagonist, Bill Lawrence, an American war veteran turned literary agent, encounters a bevy of famous writers and artists..." Kirkus Reviews.

"In this lively novel, Myers clearly demonstrates his familiarity with the intellectual culture of Paris in the 1920s...Myers has a consummate understanding of his setting..." Publishers Weekly

Kindle $2.99

Amazon print $10.99

Free Extra!

Great Quotes from J.M. Keynes'

The Economic Consequences of the the Peace

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Paris in the 1930s

Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads

"takes us into the back rooms of high-level officials, writers, and media stars in order to understand why events happened...involved and intriguing...definitely is worth reading."

--B.N. Peacock, Historical Novel Society Online Review Feb. 2012

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"A beautiful widow...a charming diplomat"

In the darkening years of the 1930s, the beautiful Madame Lambert meets American diplomat Dexter Jones at the Quai d’Orsay. She works on the staff of French Premier Pierre Laval. Dedicated to her work, the austere widow resists romance while becoming increasingly intrigued with the charming diplomat as he escorts her to political and literary salons across the vibrant Left Bank cultural scene. Romance ripens into enduring commitment against a backdrop of momentous historical events as the French government attempts to contain the Ethiopian crisis at the League of Nations while countering the rising Nazi threat to remilitarize the German Rhineland.

Madame Lambert witnesses first-hand the British-French diplomatic meetings between Premier Laval and British foreign secretary Sir Samuel Hoare that collapse in controversy over ending the Italo-Ethiopian war. Shortly afterwards, she is in the room when the French government bogs down with indecision over responding to Hitler’s march into the Rhineland, the key to preserving France’s alliances with its East European allies.

Cameo appearances by Colonel Charles de Gaulle, André Malraux, Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, André Chamson, and journalists Genevieve Tabouis and Pertinax.

Link to author interview at Kindle Author.

Reviews

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Paris in the 1930's

Paris 1934: Victory in Retreat

" Richly detailed description brings Sandrine's Paris to life... lively bistro scenes...the 'City of Light' shines through the page."

-- Historical Novel Society review August 2010.

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"Paris romance...dark intrigues...momentous political events"

In Depression-era France, Sorbonne student Sandrine covers news and fashion as a part-time reporter for an American paper in Paris. She banters with the Americans after work at the local bistro as red wine flows and stories grow in the telling. Early in 1934, with public outrage at government corruption peaking, she witnesses massive street riots by Far Right leagues that overthrow two French cabinets in a row. The very existence of the Third Republic is threatened. Then one bold man prevails against the forces of disorder.

Reviews

More about Paris 1934 Continued

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Romance and international intrigue

Vienna 1934: Betrayal at the Ballplatz

"Myers' characters feel true to the era...good research and fine storytelling...makes this book exciting and romantic."

-- Historical Novel Society review May 2009.


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Vienna, 1934.

As the Austrian government slides towards an Italian-style fascist state, German-backed Nazis move to overthrow Chancellor Dollfuss’s government and deliver Austria to Hitler’s Reich. British foreign correspondent Geoffrey Ashbrook returns to Vienna to write dispatches for his London paper and secret reports for the British cabinet. But Ashbrook has a second secret mission: to find out why his fiancée Anna Marie Linden has mysteriously broken off their engagement. Is her Nazi stepbrother Erich involved? All paths cross on a day in July as Nazi putschists ride their trucks through the streets of Vienna towards the Ballplatz, the square in front of the Austrian chancellery, a day that changes the destiny of nations and people in this exciting book of accurate historical event and dashing fictional romance.

More about Vienna 1934

Reviews

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Historical Novels by

Paul A. Myers

These novels are "history-centered fiction" for readers who enjoy the dramatic flow of historical events woven into a story with personal adventure and romance.

Buy singly or get a box set of all four novels in one Kindle edition. (See below.)

Box Set

All four historical novels in one Kindle edition box set for only $2.99.

http://www.amazon.com/Storm-Gathers-Europe-Between-Historical-ebook/dp/B00PYZQ4H4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419990876&sr=8-1&keywords=the+storm+gathers

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And may I recommend to you this memoir by a long standing friend of the Myers family. (I am the Kindle publisher.)

Ruth Bryan Owen: Congresswoman and Diplomat

A short essay on Rudd Brown and Helen Myers and their involvement in California Democratic politics in the 1950s and 60s is on the Rudd Brown page.

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Cultural profile

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In 1950, twenty-seven-year-old Prince Rainier succeeded his grandfather as sovereign prince of the little principality of Monaco on the French Riviera. The city-state’s principal attractions were the renowned casino at Monte Carlo and the beautiful belle époque Hotel de Paris. Unfortunately, the Russian nobility and English aristocrats who had lost fortunes at the casino were long gone. Into these impecunious circumstances sailed international tanker tycoon Aristotle Onassis who bought majority control of SBM, the holding company that owned the casino and hotel.

Onassis had new money and old ideas about how to make Monaco prosperous again. He wanted to cater to a small audience of the very wealthy. In contrast, Prince Rainier wanted to develop a modern and larger market of well-to-do tax exiles, high income people attracted to favorable tax rates and beautiful Riviera weather. A power struggle between the two visions evolved over the next fifteen years until in the mid-1960s Rainier vanquished Onassis with the help of Charles de Gaulle, president of France.

Along the way Rainier married movie star Grace Kelly in the greatest fairytale wedding of the twentieth century. In a more roguish manner, Onassis embarked on high profile affairs with opera diva Maria Callas, Lee Radziwill, and Jackie Kennedy, often using his luxurious yacht Christina O as a floating rendezvous for assignation, a perfect symbol for the lust, greed, and status seeking behind these tabloid romances.

Available at Kindle and other etailers

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Cultural profile

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In 1928, world famous British author W. Somerset Maugham moved into a sumptuous villa on twelve gardened acres on Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera. Maugham’s marriage to his wife Syrie was behind him; his secretary and companion Gregory Haxton was with him. Syrie, disappointed at coming in number two, had threatened to name Gregory in the divorce action. All was settled peaceably by the solicitors in London. Maugham lived at his beloved Villa Mauresque until his death in 1965 except for the war years. This long essay highlights a fascinating life lived on the Riviera.

At Kindle and other etailers

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Cultural profile

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Gerald and Sara Murphy, a wealthy young American couple, arrived in Paris in 1921 and walked into the Modernist cultural revolution sweeping through France. They were charter members of the Lost Generation chronicled so poignantly by Ernest Hemingway in "The Sun Also Rises." In 1925 the couple moved into their beautiful home, the Villa America, on Cap d'Antibes where they famously entertained.

Kindle and other etailers

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Maritime history

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More information on the author's book North to California: The Spanish Voyages of Discovery 1533-1603, published 2005, an in-depth history of the exploration of California during the Age of Discovery. Preview at Google books

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Personal memoir

Clerk! The Vietnam Memoir of Paul A. Myers

Infantry PFC Paul A. Myers was assigned to the elite operations section G-3 at Headquarters, 101st Airborne Division, at Camp Eagle in March 1970 as clerk for the Doctrine, Organization, and Training Section. From this vantage point, he followed the infantry and air war in the northern two provinces of South Vietnam, the corner where the DMZ, Laos, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam intersect.

Get FREE PDF COPY here

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