SIGN OF THE ALEPH
by lori hyland
Join novelist Lori Hyland as she explores the twists and turns of wartime Berlin and occupied Paris.
Working with a cast of characters not seen since Casablanca graced the silver screen, Lori provides an in-depth view of love, hope, anguish, corruption, theft, and revenge rarely seen in such a well-written historical novel.
Lori builds her world of gripping intrigue around Arlette, a young Jewish woman who loses her family to France’s Nazi occupiers. Seeking revenge, Arlette adopts a Christian identity that plays upon her Aryan looks and becomes a delivery girl for the Jeu De Palme art gallery; ground zero for artwork being stolen for Hitler’s museum and the personal collections of Hermann Göring and other high-ranking officers.
Sign of the Aleph carefully portrays the results visited upon a society overtaken by dubious ethics, single-minded methodologies, and an ability to run roughshod over the needs and interests of anyone not in power.
From the decay of the ancient catacombs to the corrupt priest entertaining senior Nazi officers with decadent bacchanals at the alter at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, this book will keep you on the edge of your seat from first page to last.
Join Lori Hyland as she explores the human impact and irony of the lowest and highest forms of survival and betrayal in occupied Paris. And see how a few fearless souls use their professions and relationships to fight for art and freedom.
It’s a story as relevant today as when it happened.
New York
by lori hyland
Lori Hyland shifts from wartime Berlin and occupied Paris to the streets of postwar New York in her powerful follow-on historical novel to Sign of the Aleph — a look at the Big Apple in the cultural and artistic times immediately following World War II.
Madame Jamette, former owner of Paris’ classiest, most respected brothel and one of the most heroic and bravest characters in literature, has moved to New York to open
The Gallerie 1.2.2 in Upper Harlem. Quickly, she gives the Gallerie recognition as the city’s new hotspot for art, music, and fashion — especially the impressionistic and so-called “decadent” art taking collectors by storm.
Along with Jamette is her best friend and confidant, Inspector Tourette, now working with European and American families who lost countless paintings and treasures to Nazi soldiers, thieves and hoarders. We become acquainted with some of the priceless works in Jamette’s private Gallery of Lost Souls, filled with treasures she secreted out of Paris, one step ahead of the Nazis. We’re re-introduced to Peter, the colorful, ostentatious
Maître d’ at Paris’ Ritz Hotel and source of Nazi secrets, and meet Chance, the former chauffeur to a Hollywood director who covertly helped Jews escape the Holocaust. Chance now works with Jamette as a gallery assistant, along with McDougal, one of the U.S. soldiers who helped Jamette get her paintings out of Paris
Along the way, readers immerse into the inner worlds of Jamette and her affinity for iconic painters Egon Schiele and Chaim Soutine, in particular, and the larger art world in general. Everything around them is bathed in reflections of the New York jazz and gallery scenes.
A story etched in elegance, sophistication, recent history, the art world and the fineries of life delivers at a crime thriller pace. The highlight is the fateful night Lohse and his team make their move on The Gallerie 1.2.2— and find Jamette, Tourette and their young associates to be far more resistant than they could have expected. The climactic scene is accentuated by a final mic-drop moment involving Tourette and Jamette.