Nicola Barber and Cassandra Campbell share the narration of this spy story set primarily during the Cold War. Twins Iris and Ruth have not spoken in years, not since Iris and her family defected to Russia when her husband was revealed to be a Soviet mole. In 1952, Ruth agrees to travel to Moscow with a U.S. diplomat to try to extract her sister from the USSR. Barber performs the chapters about Iris in a soft, expressive voice, conveying Iris’s resignation to a difficult marriage and a life that seems out of her control. Campbell’s lively delivery of Ruth’s chapters fits the twin’s sassier, stronger personality. Both narrators employ believable British and Russian accents and vary their deliveries to fit the mood and action of the story. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

04/12/2021

Williams (Her Last Flight) captivates with the story of an American woman’s effort to reunite with her twin sister after her defection to the Soviet Union. In 1952, Ruth Macallister, a secretary in New York City and de facto manager of a modeling agency, receives a visit from FBI agent Sumner Fox with questions about her twin sister, Iris, whom she has not seen for 12 years. Sumner tells Ruth her sister defected to Russia in 1948 with her husband, Sasha Digby, a former diplomat who worked with the twins’ brother at the U.S. embassy in Rome in 1940. Now that the KGB suspects Sasha of working as a double agent, the Digbys’ lives are in danger. Sumner devises a plan to have Ruth travel to Moscow to help Iris during her pregnancy, and he will accompany her undercover as her spouse. Ruth and Sumner’s efforts to extract the Digbys from the Soviet Union, however, are complicated by the KGB. Williams sharply observes the inequities women faced at the end of WWII and the simmering suspense of the Cold War. Historical fiction fans will be riveted by the complex family relationships and the intriguing portrayal of espionage. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM Partners. (June)

I think Beatriz Williams is writing the best historical fiction out there. It’s lush with period detail but feels immediate.”  — Elin Hilderbrand  

“A thrilling novel of spying, duplicity and bad decisions during the heart of the Cold War…the plot races into white-knuckle territory.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Williams has a sure hand in this deceptively quiet novel, told from the perspective of three different women. She expertly shifts between family drama and a suspenseful espionage plot, and makes every word and note count." — Library Journal (starred review)

"Superb...Williams has created her own vivid plot wound around a true story.” — Seattle Times

"Fans will be riveted by the complex family relationships and the intriguing portrayal of espionage." — Publishers Weekly

"A captivating Cold War page-turner." — Real Simple

“This is Williams at the top of her game." — Historical Novel Society

“Williams imagines the adventures of a world-famous aviator, who disappears in 1937 during a solo, around-the-world flight, in this engaging tale of courage, intrigue, and adventure…Williams builds irresistible tension with the alternating timelines as the fate of Irene and Sam unfolds with shrewd twists and turns that build to an unexpected jolt. Williams’s fans will devour this meaty tale." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Her Last Flight

“Beatriz Williams deftly fits together the characters, stories, and themes that the narrative services into a cohesive whole. The pieces all align perfectly, and she has shaped them together brilliantly. Her Last Flight is a gem of a book.” — New York Journal of Books on Her Last Flight

“Inventive...What if Amelia Earhart had not only survived her last flight, but found true romance.”  — Kirkus Reviews on Her Last Flight

“Williams captivates…Historical fiction fans will be riveted.” — Publishers Weekly

The Golden Houris pure golden delight Beatriz Williams is at the top of her game.”  

This is Williams at the top of her game."

Beatriz Williams deftly fits together the characters, stories, and themes that the narrative services into a cohesive whole. The pieces all align perfectly, and she has shaped them together brilliantly. Her Last Flight is a gem of a book.

I think Beatriz Williams is writing the best historical fiction out there. It’s lush with period detail but feels immediate.” 

Beatriz Williams deftly fits together the characters, stories, and themes that the narrative services into a cohesive whole. The pieces all align perfectly, and she has shaped them together brilliantly. Her Last Flight is a gem of a book.

01/01/2021

In 1948, when Iris Digby disappears from her London home with her diplomat husband and two children, rumors abound: were they eliminated by Soviet intelligence, or did they defect? Four years later, after receiving a postcard from Iris, twin sister Ruth Macallister poses as the wife of a counterintelligence agent to travel to Moscow and whisk the Digbys from behind the Iron Curtain. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

2021-01-27
Twin sisters find themselves caught up in a Russian spy ring at the height of the Cold War.

In 1952, Ruth Macallister, a former fashion model and the power behind the throne at a Manhattan modeling agency, receives a postcard from her twin sister, Iris Digby—sent from Moscow. When FBI man and former Yale fullback Sumner Fox comes sniffing around, Ruth at first withholds this information, but later the two will team up, pretending to be newlyweds, to go to Moscow with the intent of extracting Iris from the clutches of the Stalin regime. Or at least that’s Ruth’s intent—Sumner’s mixed motives are a source of more confusion than intrigue. The 1952 sections, narrated by Ruth, alternate with Iris’ story, set in 1948 Great Britain, detailing how her marriage is foundering. She always knew her husband, Sasha Digby, was a spy for the Russians, a mole embedded in the U.S. diplomatic corps. Lately, however, his drunkenness appears to have rendered him all but useless to his handlers. Iris met Sasha during the sisters’ prewar Roman holiday in 1940 and, infatuated, married him in haste. Sasha’s frequent all-night benders have definitely debloomed the rose. The 1948 narrative slows down the present action without really adding much crucial insight into how, or why, Sasha and Iris end up defecting, with their children, to Moscow or even why, after his poor performance, Moscow would want him. Making occasional appearances in the 1952 timeline is Lyudmila Ivanova, a tough-as-nails KGB operative and a single mother due to her informing on her husband, who was sent to the gulag. He’s not the only family member she’s turned in. Lyudmila has been assigned to monitor expat defectors like Sasha. Iris is the most fully developed and sympathetic character here. Ruth is another iteration of the wisecracking dame who has appeared in so many Williams novels, and Lyudmila seems patterned after Greta Garbo in Ninotchka, except that this doctrinaire minion of Stalin wouldn’t be caught dead in a rom-com.

A cumbersome plot weighs down this would-be spy thriller.