The Written Word in WWII in the Novels of Madeline Martin

Listen in as I chat with Madeline Martin, the bestselling author of novels set in World War II along with dozens of romance novels. Madeline joins me on The Art In Fiction Podcast to discuss her three novels listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction: The Last Bookshop in London, The Librarian Spy and her latest novel, The Keeper of Hidden Books. 

Highlights include:

• Why Madeline chose books as her way into stories about WWII
• Why The Keeper of Hidden Books is set in Warsaw
• The role Poland and the Polish Resistance played in WWII
• The theme of The Keeper of Hidden Books
• Two short readings from The Keeper of Hidden Books
• Book banning in WWII Poland and contemporary United States: parallels?
• The Librarian Spy and its setting in Lisbon and Lyon
• Fado in Lisbon
• The Blitz and The Last Bookshop in London
• Research about London during the Blitz from memoirs contained in the Mass Observation published in the 1930s and 1940s in England
• Differences between historical fiction and historical romance
• Advice about research methods
• Madeline's next novel
• What Madeline is currently reading 

Press Play now & be sure to check out The Keeper of Hidden Books, The Librarian Spy and The Last Bookshop in London on Art In Fiction.

Madeline Martin's Website

Music Credit
Paganology, performed by The Paul Plimley Trio; composed by Gregg Simpson

This website contains affiliate links. If you use these links to make a purchase, I may earn a commission. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Thank you.

Pro Writing Aid
ProWriting Aid is a grammar checker, style editor, and writing mentor in one package. Click to get 20% off.

Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists. Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.

Also, check out the Art In Fiction website at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2200+ novels inspired by the arts in 10 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.

Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany and Love Among the Recipes. Find out more on her website.

Transcript

Carol Cram:

Hello and welcome. I'm Carol Cram, host of the Art In Fiction podcast. This episode features Madeline Martin, author of three historical novels set in World War II and all included in Literature category on Art In Fiction: The Last Bookshop in London, The Librarian Spy and her newest novel, The Keeper of Hidden Books.

Madeline Martin lives in sunny Florida with her two daughters, one incredibly spoiled cat and a man so wonderful he’s been dubbed Mr. Awesome. She is a die-hard history lover who will happily lose herself in research any day. When she’s not writing, researching or ‘moming’, you can find her spending time with her family at Disney or sneaking spoonfuls of Nutella while laughing over cat videos. She also loves to travel, attributing her fascination with history to having spent most of her childhood as an Army brat in Germany.

Welcome to the Art In Fiction Podcast, Madeline.

Madeline Martin:
Thank you so much for having me here today.

Carol Cram:
I'm just delighted to talk to you today. I haven't actually read a lot of World War II novels recently, and so I really enjoyed diving into all three of your novels that are set during the war, and they all revolve around books, which is why I chose them for the Literature category on Art In Fiction. 

So let's start by talking about why you chose books as your way into stories about World War II.

Madeline Martin:
So, for me, being a reader has been such a big part of my life and books are such a ubiquitous part of my life. I'm either thinking about a book that I want to read or that I'm currently reading. As an author, I'm thinking about things that I want to write about or even just everyday life seeing something that reminds me of what I read in a book once. And so a lot of times we kind of write what we know. We write some of our characters of some of our traits, and for me, I really have just sort of gravitated toward books about books and books about readers because it's something that is just a huge passion of mine.

Carol Cram:
Well, of course, we all love books because we are writers, and I think that's what I enjoyed so much about your novels is that they reminded me of how much I loved so many of the books that your characters would be reading, particularly The Last Bookshop in London and the most recent one, The Keeper of Hidden Books. Just the joy that people got out of these books, many of which I've read myself. And it kind of reminded me that, oh yeah, right, those are great books. So that was a real gift.

Madeline Martin:
I'm so glad you enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun for me, not only exploring books that have really meant something to me that I've read. I mean, dating back from high school all the way through current-day books that have really meant something to me and really had an impact on my life and getting to incorporate those into my characters’ lives, but also really taking a step back and thinking about what I really love about reading. I think that when it comes to passions, a lot of times we just enjoy them and we don't really take a step back and objectively look at why we love them. And getting to do that as far as getting to write aspects of that into my books has been a really wonderful experience.

Carol Cram:
Yes, as I said, it is lovely to be reminded why we love reading so much and it becomes so important for your characters because they are in the middle of a war. Let's talk about The Keeper of Hidden Books, your newest novel, and it is set in Warsaw during the war, which is very unusual for me. I've never actually read a book set in Warsaw. So why did you decide to write a book set in Warsaw?

Madeline Martin::
Part of it is because my family actually is from Poland, and I kind of wanted to connect with my roots. And now I know that with my family, being from Poznan Poland and me researching Warsaw is really kind of saying that I've gone to North America to research my family's rots and I'm in the United States, but really they're from Canada. It really is because of the way that it was divided up before Poland really became a unified independent country. So that was the initial part of it. And the secondary part of what really drew me to Poland was that they had the most unified and really comprehensive resistance movement in all of Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. I mean, it's just incredible what they were able to accomplish because they were so, they worked so well as a team. And so that was part of what drew me to it initially.

Carol Cram:
Yes, I didn't know that at all. I knew nothing about Polish resistance. I'd heard of the Warsaw Uprising, which of course is part of your novel, but not about the greater Polish resistance. So that was fascinating. I think that's one thing I really enjoyed about the book is learning new history.

Madeline Martin:
I really absolutely love research and I love history and getting to really delve into a lot of that historical detail and incorporate that into my book really was such a wonderful part of writing this story. And I've had a lot of readers who have said that after reading my book, they had a whole list of things they wanted to go back and research more, and they were amazed to find how much of it was really true. In fact, when doing research for this book, I used over a hundred nonfiction books and I went to Warsaw for two weeks for research, and I ended up with over 15 spiral-bound notebooks that were filled with handwritten notes.

Carol Cram:
That's incredible. You were in Warsaw for two weeks. How did being in Warsaw help you write the book? Because it's 70 years later.

Madeline Martin:
For me, I do try to travel to the places that I'm writing about. It's one of those things where, first of all, it kind of takes a black-and-white perspective for me, and then when I go there, it's like it fills in all of the gaps with these bright, vibrant colors, and it just really brings everything to life. You get to see what the air feels like, the temperature, you get to walk in the streets, you get to taste the food, you get to speak the language because I always try to learn the language of every place that I go to as well. You get to go to the museums and really see a lot of the displays that they have, the details that they give that you really can't find anywhere else. For example, when I was writing The Librarian Spy, and I know we'll get into that in a little bit, but for example, they have all of this beautiful mosaic work on all of the walkways called Calta, and it's basically like a basalt and limestone sort of mosaic that they make, and it's absolutely gorgeous and it is treacherous, slippery, especially with the city of Seven Hills.

And so I never would've known how slippery those were if I hadn't gone there and actually walked uphill and my feet kind of slid out underneath me a couple of times. And so really getting to go onsite, it really truly makes such a difference for me at least being able to recreate that world.

Carol Cram:
Well, it's those little details that make all of your novels so compelling. It's obvious that you do a lot of research and it's not like it's too much research. It's just enough to give you a flavor of the place. Yeah, I love to go and visit the places I'm researching as well. It's a great excuse for travel.

Madeline Martin:
Well, that's definitely true. I'll always take a tax-free vacation. Well, not vacation, but research trip for sure.

Carol Cram:
Exactly. Oh yes, me too. So what would you say the theme of The Keeper of Hidden Books is? I mean, there's friendship, there's patriotism, there's sacrifice. What would you say?

Madeline Martin:
Oh, gosh, that's a good question because there really are sort of a lot of themes but I think for me overwhelmingly, I think the most important thing would just be bravery. How incredibly brave the men and women were who fought back against the Nazis during the Warsaw Uprising, how brave it was of the librarians to actually risk their lives, to save these books, to keep them from disappearing forever, to keep them from being looted by Nazis and still being able to operate the library to give people hope in really horrible, treacherous times, even though it could cost them their lives.

Carol Cram:
That was an interesting point of view in the novel that there's so many World War II novels that are pretty grim, and there's lots of grimness in these novels, but there's also, you're showing how people in these terrible, terrible times needed the joy that they got from reading.

Madeline Martin:
And that's something that I really wanted to make sure that I brought to all of my books.

Carol Cram:
So you were going to read me a little bit from The Keeper of Hidden Books. Would you like to do that now?

Madeline Martin:
Yes. Sort of some preface before I read these two individual sections. The first one is actually sort of in reference to the Secret Book Club that my character has that's initially called the Anti-Hitler Book Club, but it does eventually get a much better name for it, part of this book club. And the reason why it was so important was that I wanted each of these books that Sophia read to sort of peel back the layers on her perspective of the world around her and make her kind of see things in a different light because she has changed as a person from the books that she has read. And all of these books that she's reading have been banned by Hitler. These are the books that they're being told to pull off of the shelves. These are the books that are being sent away to be pulped.

And I really, this honestly was like a labor of love, honestly, putting all of this book list together because I had to make sure they had been translated into Polish. I really wanted these books to be ones that were poignant for certain aspects of her life. And they were also books that I had to make sure that I had either read or had the ability to read before writing this book. And so this particular quote is in reference to the book list that's been selected for the Anti-Hitler Book Club. 

There was power in literature. Brilliant and undeniable books inspired free thought and empathy and overall understanding and acceptance of everyone. And the pages of books that were burned and banned and ripped apart for pulping. Zofia had found herself. These were the parts of her that were human and strong and loving parts that understood lives she had never led.

So that's the first quote. And then the second quote really is about remembering everything that happened in Poland. And for me, this specifically was very important because I feel like even though everybody knows that World War II started in Poland, I don't know that a lot of people really know a lot of the details about what happened in Poland. I personally really didn't know the extent of it until I really dug into my research. And so this was something that was another point that was really important for me to kind of make sure that my book made. So this quote is:

We cannot let the atrocities and persecution of the Jews slip between the cracks of history, nor can we let the memory of those brave men and women who fought for freedom and what is right disappear in the turning pages of time. The world also needs to remember to never take for granted what has been gifted to us through the sacrifice of others, the right to an education and learning the power and luxury of freedom and the beauty to appreciate the routine of simple everyday life.

Carol Cram:
Oh, thank you. It was interesting that first quote you read about banned books because the whole time I was reading your book or actually listening to your book, because I had the audio book version, I was thinking how modern this book is, all of this stuff about banning books, which is now unfortunately still in the news. Did you know that when you were writing the book?

Madeline Martin:
I have a tendency to put on blinders when I'm writing where I just really completely immerse myself in that specific time period. And it wasn't actually until I was reading through the galleys, for those of you who are listening that might not know what galleys are, that basically is sort of the last read-through that you get to do before the book goes to print. And I was procrastinating, so I was reading through the news, and I live in Florida, and I happened to read an article that was talking about a fresh list of books that were being banned from the public schools here in Florida. And I realized how it really struck me then how incredibly and unfortunately timely this book really is. And my hope is that because I wrote this book without an agenda, that it really does sort of sink in a little bit more and really just organically broadens hearts and minds and hopefully changes people's perspective on book banning because of the significance that it plays in The Keeper of Hidden Books.

Carol Cram:
Exactly. Because your book shows just how dreadful it is and just what the repercussions of banning books it might seem, oh, just banning a few books, that will be fine. But no, it gets worse and worse and worse. And I found as I was reading it, I kept thinking, wow, this is really timely. But as you said, you didn't write it with that agenda in mind, which is why it makes it more interesting or makes it more compelling, actually. And I think more important. So you're right, I think it's an aspect of this book that I hope will really help it get into people's hands. It's an important book that you've written.

Madeline Martin:
Thank you. I really do appreciate that.

Carol Cram:
So let's talk a little bit about The Librarian Spy. And I've also really enjoyed this because I've spent a lot of time in Lisbon. I love Lisbon.

Madeline Martin:
Lisbon’s beautiful.

Carol Cram:
Oh, isn't it a great city? So why did you choose Lisbon to set this novel, Lisbon and Lyon?

Madeline Martin:
Well, Lisbon was neutral during World War II, and the actual librarian spies that were sent from America to do reconnaissance really did come from, or did go into, neutral countries. So there were spies who were, and really, I mean, spies is really sort of like a loose phrasing. I mean, really, they were sent there just to gather intel. They went into bookshops and to libraries and stationaries stores looking for books and pamphlets and anything else that they could find that came from the axis being Germany and Japan and Italy to send back to America for them to analyze to see what could possibly be gleaned from that. And then as far as Lyon, on one hand, I have an American who's looking for whatever kind of publication they can find that can possibly offer insight for America. And on the other side, I thought, and this is a woman that I had actually read, a woman who actually existed during World War II, she worked in Lyon, which was the capital of the French resistance for the underground printing press.

She actually operated the press itself to create these clandestine newspapers. Her name was Lucian, and she was just such an incredible woman. And so I had read about her doing research for another book idea that unfortunately never came to fruition, and I never forgot about her. And so when I was doing this research for The Librarian Spy, I thought, what a perfect woman to counter this American librarian looking for publications than a woman who's creating these clandestine publications that are coming in from the French resistance. And so that's really how I ended up getting the idea for both of those characters.

Carol Cram:
Oh, that's wonderful when you can find a real character in order to base your character on. It was very interesting how you managed to put together the story of Ava in Lisbon and Elaine in Lyon, because as I'm reading or listening—I listen to a lot of audio books—you bring this together and when you do I think, wow, that was really well done. I really enjoyed that. Did you plot that ahead of time?

Madeline Martin:
Oh yes, absolutely. In fact, it's interesting because like I said, I did travel during summer of 2021, so some countries were open and some were not. At the time, France had opened up, but Portugal was still closed. So I went to France individually on my own or with my oldest daughter. She came with me for that trip. And so while I was there, I actually also got to one quick little aside when I was at the French Resistance Museum there in Lyon, they had the actual printing press that Lucian had used during World War II to make those actual papers, which was so incredible to get to see in real life, especially for somebody who is such a lover of history. But so after I got back from France, I actually wrote all of Elaine's characters’ point of view, and then Portugal opened about a month later.

So then I went to Portugal, and right after that I went to DC and then when I came back, I wrote all of Ava's perspective, and I had the two individual stories because I had mapped them out initially. They really do, their lives really do parallel side by side in many ways. I tried not to make it super obvious, but they really do have very parallel experiences to one another. And so it was completely 100% plotted out, and I just zipped the whole thing together, how it was plotted out, moving the chapters around side by side. And then I did a read-through before I sent it off to my editor, and I don't know how, but it all worked out perfectly. And I toasted to myself that night because we're always pretty hard on ourselves. But in that particular case, I was like, oh my gosh, you did it.

Carol Cram:
Good for you. That's really difficult to do. Well done. As we said earlier, I really enjoyed all of the detail about Lisbon. You're really good at detail. I find it very inspiring as a novelist myself, getting those little tiny details in like the slippery, I walked on those streets. I know they get very slippery and the hills and the fado. I'm so glad you included fado. I'm a huge fan.

Madeline Martin:
Was the most amazing thing ever. For people who are just, who don’t know what fado is, it is basically this music that is specific to Lisbon. It's usually a solo singer and one or two guitars, and it really is just, it's mournful, but it's beautiful and it touches your soul in just the most incredible way. If anybody ever goes to Lisbon, please, please, please make time to go see a show that does fado.

Carol Cram:
Oh, absolutely. And we've seen it in Lisbon, in Coimbra and in Porto, and they're different, all three of them. My husband's also a musician, so we always try and see music and fado. It's indescribable. I'm so glad you got that in there. I really, as I said, aside from the war story, just the details you got about Lisbon really made me want to go back to Lisbon. So The Last Bookshop in London, now we're in London. I love the fact that you have three or four different locations for all your books. It's very eclectic. So why London? This is the first of your World War II novels, right? So why did you decide to do this one?

Madeline Martin:
Well, I actually was sort of inspired by this particular article that I found that was talking about a night in December, 1940 during the Blitz when Paternoster Row was bombed, and Paternoster Row was really the heart of the publishing industry for England itself and really in London. So it was basically where they had printers, they had publishers, and they also had warehouses there as well. So the night that this bombing happened was really exactly how I describe it in the book where the Thames was at its lowest, the water mains were completely broken, and really there was nothing anybody could do but just watch all of these books burn. 

And in the end, it took three days for the fires to eventually burn out, and over 5 million books were destroyed, which was especially devastating because of all the rationing going on as well. So you couldn't just recreate these books and prior to the bombing happening, they even had these warehouses that would be able to have a 24-hour turnaround time on books that people in London requested from bookstores, which, I mean, that even beats Amazon, right? So I mean, it was really profound how many books were destroyed in this. 

And it kind of got me thinking about books and the book communities that really surround, especially independent bookstores. I'm a huge fan and lover and advocate for shopping independent bookstores and just the heart that goes into so many of them. And I thought, what about if there's this one bookstore that survives the blitz and really does what it can to sort of bring in the community? And that's kind of what got the idea started for The Last Bookshop in London.

Carol Cram:
It was a great idea because as we mentioned earlier, the books that you chose to have Grace read to people gets them through the Blitz, which put a really human face on the Blitz. We've all heard of the Blitz, but I haven't read that many novels that are actually set during the Blitz from the point of view of the people on the ground. How did you research about the Blitz?

Madeline Martin:
Well, I mean, I just really dig into a lot of nonfiction. They also had referred what they call the Mass Observation, which was this initiative that really was funded by the people who started it. It was initially supposed to be people recording their thoughts every single day surrounding everything happening with the Royals, with Wallis Simpson and marrying, I believe it was, oh my gosh, now I'm like the King or the Prince. I think it was the Prince.

Carol Cram:
Edward the Eighth, yes.

Madeline Martin:
So that happened to really segue into World War II. So they thought, let's just keep this going and have people write down their thoughts and everything and what they're experiencing every single day that's going on. So really, you end up having this compendium of all of this internal experience that people are having regarding the war before, during and after World War II. And it really is one of those things that is so helpful for people who go back and do research because not only do you get the details about day-to-day life and how people are feeling, because it really is sort of endemic when we're doing this research to figure out how everything is happening with these people. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? How are they reacting? In fact, one of the examples that I like to use is with The Last Bookshop in London when I talk about this, when I do my book tour, and that is at one point in time, Buckingham Palace was bombed, and that's not a spoiler, it's just history.

But when Buckingham Palace got bombed, I kind of take a step back and I think, well, what would happen if the White House got bombed? And I think America would want to kick some butt, we would want vengeance. But when Buckingham Palace was bombed, the Queen said, well, now I can look the East End in the face, the East End being the part of London that got hit in the Blitz in the very beginning, the worst. And the people in England looked and said, look at the King and Queen. They're being bombed just like we are. And so really the whole point of the Blitz was to demoralize the people in England, and really it ended up bringing them together. And so finding those firsthand accounts was really integral to be able to put together how I wanted those characters to behave that would be the most realistic.

Carol Cram:
What a wonderful resource. What was it called? 

Madeline Martin:
The Mass Observation.

Carol Cram:
And how many people were in that? How many stories?

Madeline Martin:
Oh, I think there's hundreds of people. So it's such a huge collection that a lot of times books will break up certain chunks of it, but I'm not even aware of where I can even locate the entirety of it. I think it would just be a huge, huge, huge amount. And you have to think too, I'm sure that a lot of it was also lost in the Blitz itself. So these are the ones that survived.

Carol Cram:
Wow, I've never heard of that. So that was a government initiative.

Madeline Martin:
I don't believe it was government. I think it was a private sort of thing that was done.

Carol Cram:
Wow. I have to look that up.

Madeline Martin:
It's really interesting. Yeah, a lot of people felt like it was sort of invasive because people were talking about their neighbors and without their permission, of course, because you're just basically recording almost in a diary. And so people are kind of talking about all the neighborhood gossip and everything, and some people were a little put off by that.

Carol Cram:
Well, yes, I could see that from one standpoint, but from our point of view as novelists, that's a gold mine. You must have really enjoyed having access to that. You've recently switched over to historical novels from more romance or other types. Now that you're writing historical novels, what's one thing you've kind of learned from writing them that is maybe different, that's something you didn't realize before with all your other books?

Madeline Martin:
So yeah, I had written historical romance initially. I had written over 30 historical romances before switching gears and doing historical fiction. And when I was writing romance, it was funny because I started out writing the 1700s, and then I thought, oh, what would it be like to write a medieval? So then I spent a year researching medieval, and I started writing medieval. And then I thought, oh, what about Regency? And then I spent a year researching Regency and started to write Regency. And so when I got the idea, because I've really always wanted to write a historical fiction, it was very intimidating though, just because of the amount of research. And we always wonder if we're going to be good enough to be able to do something that we kind of have our dreams set on sometimes. And so when I got to the point where I started to write The Last Bookshop in London, I really delved into all of the research for London and that time period. 

And when the book came out, I realized I love research, which I think is why I kept jumping around to the different historical genres and historical romance was just because I really loved losing myself in that year of research and letting myself live in that completely different world so that I could write about it as seamlessly, hopefully, as possible. And so that's definitely one part is that I realized that I really enjoyed the research of it.

Carol Cram:
What would you say the difference is between historical fiction and historical romance?

Madeline Martin:
Well, with historical romance, the primary focus is always going to be on the relationship between the hero and the heroine. And so that's always going to be the main relationship that really takes the forefront. And when writing historical fiction, first of all, the history itself is almost like another protagonist of the book. It really is that important. And the other aspect of it is that you really have the opportunity to explore deeper relationships with other people, with mothers, fathers, or even parental figures, best friends, siblings, children, et cetera. And really kind of getting to just focus wholly on those and not having to feel like it's deviating from the relationship that you should be sticking with I would have with romance.

Carol Cram:
Yeah. So you get a wider palette, I guess, of historical fiction, correct?

Madeline Martin:
Yes.

Carol Cram:
Yeah, no, I like what you said about historical, the history itself becomes a character in an historical fiction novel. That's actually very true.

Madeline Martin:
I think that it takes more work doing that than it does anything else.

Carol Cram:
Absolutely. Well, I don't know. It's all hard work. We talked a lot about research and how much you love research. What would be some advice to authors about your research methods?

Madeline Martin:
I would say probably just if you're having a hard time figuring out where to start, go to the bibliography of a book that gives you some information on what you're looking for and start scouting through the bibliography to see what books you can find that can help you dig a little bit deeper.

Carol Cram:
That's good advice. Thank you. Yes. I like that. Sometimes we forget to look at the bibliographies and the footnotes.

Madeline Martin:
Yeah. It's funny because I remember when I was a little girl in school and hearing about the bibliography, I was like, boring. Who's ever going to use that? And now I scour bibliographies.

Carol Cram:
I know. Yeah, no, they're great. I love those too. So you're also saying that you research for about a year before you write a novel, and yet you're so prolific. How do you do all this?

Madeline Martin:
Well, it's funny. I used to write around six to eight books a year before I was writing full-time. I was a business analyst. And with romance to really make headway in that particular genre, you have to be prolific, you have to write very quickly. I mean, for the most part, there are obviously exceptions to that, but for me, I had to write quickly to be able to make any headway in the romance genre. And so yes, I wrote about six to eight books a year, and now my research takes about 10 months. Usually I'll put about 10 months into research, and then I realize, oh my gosh, my book is due in two months. And then I frantically write the book.

Carol Cram:
Wow, you can do it that quickly. Well done. 

Madeline Martin:
Yes. But again, I've written over 40 books. I think it's over 40, I don't even remember anymore. So I can write very quickly. And I also plot out very, very, very thoroughly when it comes to my books. So really, I'm basically just following the plot that I've already laid out for myself.

Carol Cram:
So it's a discipline, then you just stick to it and keep going. And that's another thing for people to realize that there is a lot of discipline involved in writing, especially at the level that you're writing.

Madeline Martin:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's so easy to let it all slip away. And then you realize I don't have a book and my due date is in a week.

Carol Cram:
Yes. I'm actually at that point right now anyway. But what are you working on now? You do have another one in the works I see on your website. Do you want to talk about it or is it too early?

Madeline Martin:
Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm going back to England with this book. This one is called The Book Lovers Library. Again, about books, a book about books. And this one, I know this one is about a widow whose daughter has to be evacuated during Operation Pied Piper, and she works at a lending library called the Book Lovers Library, where she starts to find herself after having not even realized that she's been lost. So that's just a little bit about it. And for the people who loved The Last Bookshop in London, there is a point where she's going to have to go to London and there may or may not be some cameos of characters that you love.

Carol Cram:
Oh, that's fantastic. Where is it at in England?

Madeline Martin:
Nottingham?

Carol Cram:
In Nottingham. Oh, that's not an area. I know. I lived in England for four years, but I actually never went to Nottingham.

Madeline Martin:
That's awesome. Nottingham was really beautiful. I got to go there in March this year with my youngest daughter.

Carol Cram:
Yes. I love going to England. I went to university there actually.

Madeline Martin:
Oh, that's awesome.

Carol Cram:
Yeah. I've got two novels set there. So what's currently on your nightstand? What are you reading right now for pleasure?

Madeline Martin:
So I am currently reading, actually, it's funny because, so Eliza Knight is a good friend of mine, and I had read her book Starring Adele Astaire when she had just finished writing it because we usually read each other's books before they come out. But I hadn't read it after its publication. So it came out not too long ago. So I'm listening to it all over again. It's called Starring Adele Astaire, and it's actually about Fred Astaire's sister Adele, who back in the day was actually more popular than even Fred was. And it's really just such a brilliantly written book. I absolutely am loving it a second time.

Carol Cram:
We do have that novel listed on Art In Fiction. Thanks so much, Madeline, for talking to me today.

Madeline Martin:
Thank you so much for having me on. I really do appreciate you taking the time to do it. And thank you for reading all my books too. I really do appreciate that.

Carol Cram:
Well, that was my pleasure. 

I've been speaking with Madeline Martin, author of The Last Bookshop in London, The Librarian Spy and her newest novel, The Keeper of Hidden Books, all listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction at www.artinfiction.com. Be sure to check the show notes for a link to Madeline’s website at www.madelinemartin.com. You'll also find a link to a 20% discount on a subscription to Pro Writing Aid, a fantastic editing tool for writers. If you are enjoying the Art In Fiction Podcast, please help us keep the lights on by donating a coffee on the Ko-Fi website. The link is in the show notes. 

Also, please follow Art In Fiction on Facebook, and don't forget to give the Art In Fiction Podcast a positive review or rating wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks so much for listening.