Spotlight & Giveaway: The Paris Showroom by Juliet Blackwell

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Juliet Blackwell’s new release: THE PARIS SHOWROOM

New York Times bestselling author, Juliet Blackwell, returns this spring to deliver a tale of resistance, resilience, and love in her latest historical novel, The Paris Showroom.

 
THE PARIS SHOWRROM is based on the little-known true history of a Paris department store during WWII, where 795 prisoners were forced to work selling confiscated property to German soldiers and their families.

This poignant story explores the lives of the women on the front lines of Nazi-occupied Paris and the unshakable bond between a mother and daughter. Though the subject matter is bleak, there remains an ongoing theme of resilience, hope, and love throughout.

In Nazi-occupied Paris, a talented artisan must fight for her life by designing for her enemies. From New York Times bestselling author Juliet Blackwell comes an extraordinary story about holding on to hope when all seems lost.

Capucine Benoit works alongside her father to produce fans of rare feathers, beads, and intricate pleating for the haute couture fashion houses. But after the Germans invade Paris in June 1940, Capucine and her father must focus on mere survival—until they are betrayed to the secret police and arrested for his political beliefs. When Capucine saves herself from deportation to Auschwitz by highlighting her connections to Parisian design houses, she is sent to a little-known prison camp located in the heart of Paris, within the Lévitan department store.

There, hundreds of prisoners work to sort through, repair, and put on display the massive quantities of art, furniture, and household goods looted from Jewish homes and businesses. Forced to wait on German officials and their wives and mistresses, Capucine struggles to hold her tongue in order to survive, remembering happier days spent in the art salons, ateliers, and jazz clubs of Montmartre in the 1920s.

Capucine’s estranged daughter, Mathilde, remains in the care of her conservative paternal grandparents, who are prospering under the Nazi occupation. But after her mother is arrested and then a childhood friend goes missing, the usually obedient Mathilde finds herself drawn into the shadowy world of Paris’s Résistance fighters. As her mind opens to new ways of looking at the world, Mathilde also begins to see her unconventional mother in a different light.

When an old acquaintance arrives to go “shopping” at the Lévitan department store on the arm of a Nazi officer and secretly offers to help Capucine get in touch with Mathilde, this seeming act of kindness could have dangerous consequences.
 

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from The Paris Showroom

Abrielle shut the apartment door behind her and leaned on it for a moment, closing her eyes and letting out a long sigh. “Oh, merci à dieu, she’s gone. I swear, that woman hates me. We’re lucky she hasn’t poisoned our food.”
I had to smile. “Maybe she will yet.”
She made a breezy wave, and I caught a whiff of her perfume. “Otto says he’s going to bring a girl from Germany so we can be more comfortable in our own home.”
“It’s tough to occupy a country, isn’t it?” I asked.

She tilted her head as though wondering if I was kidding. “Any- way, now we can have a good talk,” she said, moving over to an uncomfortable-looking sofa covered in what appeared to be some kind of animal fur dyed a grayish purple, as if with wine must. “Come sit, and tell me true: How are you doing?”
I stared at her, incredulous. How did she think I was doing? But I bit back those words and instead said, “What am I doing here, Abrielle? What is it you want from me?”
“Well, I think you have to admit I’ve done well for myself,” she said, gesturing at the view out the living room windows. “Can you imagine me living in a penthouse like this one?”
“Congratulations.”
She smiled, nervous. “The last time I saw you at La Maison Benoît, I couldn’t afford even your least expensive fan!”
“Things have certainly taken a turn for the better for you,” I said in a neutral tone.
Not long before Bruno and I were arrested, Abrielle had come into La Maison Benoît to inquire about a fan. I told her that our handmade fans were far too expensive for her, which I had not meant as an insult—they would have been out of my reach as well, had I not been creating them. I remembered how her face had fallen and the way her gaze had landed upon the pamphlets my father had written, calling on his fellow Parisians to defy the Nazis and em- brace communist ideals. She picked one up, read a little, then tossed it aside with a sneer.
A few days later the dreaded Schutzstaffel showed up at our door, ordered us to pack a single bag each, and dragged us off Drancy.
Her face fell again. “But, Capu, tell me—what happened? It was the shock of my life when I saw you there in that awful department store. Is that where you live now?”

“I’m a Nazi prisoner, Abrielle. It’s not as though I have a choice.
Surely you understand that.”
“Still, living in a department store! What will they think of next?” Abrielle shook her head, as if the absurdity of the situation was just too much to comprehend. She gazed at me a moment, then leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Listen, Capu, I was think- ing: I could get a message to your daughter for you. Does she even know where you are?”
My breath caught in my throat. Hope is the thing with feathers, Charles used to say, quoting an American poet. But in my current circumstances, hope was the thing that hurt. The day-to-day grim- ness of my life could be endured, but hope—and the threat of hopes dashed—could destroy the soul.
Besides, I wondered again, could sending Mathilde a message put her in danger? Might it be used against her to prove that we still had a connection, that she might have been polluted by my “antisocial” thoughts and manners?
“You don’t trust me,” Abrielle said when I did not respond. Her mouth twisted into a pretty little pout that I was willing to bet Herr Pflüger found adorable. “Capu, I’m offering to do you a favor. For old times’ sake.”
“Like the ‘favor’ you did me when you turned us in to the S.S.? My father and me?” My heart pounded with barely suppressed rage.
“What are you talking about?”
“The last time you were in La Maison Benoît, you read a pam- phlet my father had written. Just a few days later, the S.S. arrested us.” “Communism is evil, not to mention godless,” she said, pursing
her lips.
“And the Nazis aren’t?” I blurted out.
My mouth had gotten me into trouble more than once in my life,

but now I was playing a dangerous game. The cherished mistress of a Nazi commander might have enough power to have me sent to one of those camps Pettit liked to threaten us with—or even sum- marily executed.
“I’m doing what I have to to survive,” she said in a flat tone, echoing what I had been thinking just moments ago.
Abrielle had always grated on me, though I never could put my finger on exactly why. Back when we rubbed shoulders in Mont- martre, she liked to tell people we were the “best of friends” when clearly we were not. Still, though I found that irksome, it did not explain my distaste.
One night, long ago, I had confessed my aversion to Abrielle as Charles and I lay in bed, our hands entwined. He chuckled and said his grandfather used to train dogs in North Carolina. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, the dogs took an instant and intense dislike to a person. Even the most docile animal might snarl or snap at a man who smelled wrong to them.
Chemistry, Charles said, adding with a seductive smile, It brings some people together and drives others apart. How else do you explain you and me, two people from such different backgrounds?
“Anyway, I didn’t turn you or your father in,” Abrielle said, look- ing surprised. “I wouldn’t do that.”
I nodded, but remained unconvinced.
“It’s true! I did see the pamphlet that day, and you know I’ve never agreed with atheism. I’m a good Catholic,” said Abrielle. “But I didn’t go to the secret police! We were such good friends not so very long ago! How could you even think I would do such a thing?”
As if on cue, the gold cross she always wore at her throat caught a shaft of afternoon light and gleamed.

I did not know what to think. I had vowed to seek revenge against Abrielle, but as I sat here with her now . . . she seemed silly and shallow, not calculating and evil. And, of course, anyone who came into the store could have seen Bruno’s newsletter and alerted the S.S. Or perhaps my in-laws, the Duplantiers, had seized on the opportunity to be rid of me once and for all.
“We all have our own cross to bear, Capu. And I have to keep Otto happy. You think that’s easy?”
I shrugged. I certainly wouldn’t find being Herr Pflüger’s mistress easy.
Abrielle apparently misinterpreted my shrug, for she seemed to relax. “I knew you’d understand! A big part of making Otto happy is presenting myself and our apartment in just the right way. We’ll be entertaining some very important people here, Capu. Why, Otto tells me Reichsminister Speer sometimes comes to Paris to check on Möbel Aktion! Can you imagine entertaining Herr Speer himself?”
“No, I can’t,” I said, meaning it.
“And . . . I hate to admit it, but I’ve never had the best taste. Everything I like, Otto says is, well, tacky. You always had great taste, and you ran around with all those fancy designers I en-
vied you that.” She sighed and patted the couch. “Otto hates this couch. Absolutely despises it. Please, I need your help.”
“All right,” I said as if I were doing her a favor. “But I want a few things in return.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Capu, but you’re not exactly in a position to make demands. This isn’t Zelli’s, and you aren’t the famous Fan Girl anymore.”
“We can agree on that, at least,” I said. “But, Abrielle, I know a few things that I suspect you’d rather no one else knew.”
Abrielle looked uncertain. “Like what?”

“For one thing, you’re not twenty-nine years old. Far from it. I wonder what Herr Pflüger would think if he knew you were nearly middle-aged.” I let that sink in for a moment, then continued. “I also have lots of fond memories of us in the good old days, at Zelli’s and other ‘degenerate’ clubs. What if your boyfriend and his Nazi col- leagues knew about your past?”
“You can’t tell him, Capu! Otto is good to me, but he’s . . . prickly. These men, these officers, they’re under a lot of stress, you know.”
“I know they turn on their own at the drop of a hat,” I said. “I’d hate to think what would happen if Herr Pflüger turned on you.”
She let out a quick, harsh breath. “You would tell him?”
I stared at her for a long moment. “I wouldn’t want to, no. But desperate times call for desperate measures. And I’m desperate.”
She sat back in a huff, her cupid-bow mouth settling into a hard line.
“What is it you want?”
“For now? A hot bath,” I said. “Oh, and something to eat. Meat.
And paper—I’ll need some nice paper to make sketches.”

Excerpted from The Paris Showroom by Juliet Blackwell, published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022

Excerpt. ©Juliet Blackwell. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: 1 Print copy of THE PARIS SHOWROOM by Juliet Blackwell

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Meet the Author:

Juliet Blackwell is the pseudonym for the New York Times bestselling author of Off the Wild Coast of Brittany and The Vineyards of Champagne. In addition to writing the beloved Witchcraft Mystery series and the Haunted Home Renovation series, she also coauthored the Agatha Award–nominated Art Lover’s Mystery series with her sister.

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