Books: "All the Ways We Said Goodbye" By Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White

All the Ways We Said Goodbye
By Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White
William Morrow; hardcover; $27.99; available today, Tuesday, January 14

Beatriz Williams is the author of eight novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Summer Wives, A Hundred Summers, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, A Certain Age, and The Golden Hour.


Along with Beatriz Williams for this effort is Lauren Willig and Karen White, and all of these esteemed authors have established loyal followings, especially on social media. They are at their best when they team together for their "Team W" books. 

Their new work historical fiction work, All the Ways We Said Goodbye, focuses on three intriguing women - an heiress, a resistance fighter, and a widow - whose lives are intertwined and transformed at Paris' glittering Ritz hotel.

In 1914 France, with war breaking out, Aurelie becomes trapped on the wrong side of the front with her father, Comte Sigismund de Courcelles. When the Germans move into their family's ancestral estate, using it as their headquarters, Aurelie discovers she knows the German Major's aide de camp, Maximilian Von Sternberg. She and the dashing young office first met during Aurelie's debutante days in Paris.

Despite their contrasting loyalties, Aurelie and Max's friendship soon grows into love, but betrayal shatters both of them, sending Aurelie back to Paris and the Ritz, home to her estranged heiress mother.

In 1942 France, Marguerite "Daisy" Villon, who has been raised by her indomitable, free-spirited American grandmother in the glamorous Hotel Ritz, remains in Paris with her daughter and husband, a Nazi collaborator, after France falls to Hitler. 

Daisy, despite a reluctance to put herself and her family at risk to assist her grandmother's Resistance efforts, agrees to act as a courier for a skilled English forger known only as Legrand. The more Daisy is drawn into Legrand's underground network, she commits increasingly audacious acts of resistance for the sake of the country and the man she holds dear, and uncovers a devastating secret in the process. This forces her to commit the ultimate betrayal, and to confront the shocking circumstances of her own family history.

In 1964 France, Barbara "Babs" Langford, had the love of her life in her husband, Kit, but their marriage was haunted by a mysterious woman known only as La Fleur. When Kit dies, an American lawyer, Andrew "Drew" Bowdoin, appears at her door. Drew has been hired to find a Resistance fighter turned traitor known as "La Fluer," and the investigation had turned to Kit. Babs, eager to learn more about the enigmatic La Fleur, joins Drew in his search, and it takes them to Paris and the Ritz, as well as unexplained places of the heart.