In Europe, the 'hangover of war was still visible in a way you didn't see in New York.' Rose is a refugee amid a horde of displaced persons, a single grain of sand on a blasted, nearly obliterated beach, but Charlie is determined to 'solve for X' and find her.Įnter Eve Gardiner, a raging, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed WWI espionage agent who just might possess a clue to Rose's whereabouts. En route, Charlie hatches an alternative plan - to track down her beloved cousin Rose, lost somewhere in France.

Her domineering French mother hauls her off to Europe, heading for a clinic that will take care of her 'Little Problem,' as she calls her condition throughout the novel. Charlie's posh Bennington College existence gets derailed by an unwanted pregnancy. Unsolved puzzles and cryptic riddles crop up like weeds in a bomb crater, and as math-whiz Charlie puts it, 'There was always an answer and the answer was either right or it was wrong.' But her adventures turn out to be messy, non-formulaic and not so black and white, which after all is what makes life - and novels - interesting.

In the aftermath of World War II, Charlie is thrown together with a veteran female spy from the previous war in a high-stakes journey to locate disappeared figures from the past. Clair, the brainy college student at the center of Kate Quinn's exciting new novel, The Alice Network. 'Solve for X.' That's the phrase invoked repeatedly by Charlotte 'Charlie' St. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Alice Network Author Kate Quinn

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