Chasing Sylvia Beach (Paperback or Softback)

Lily Heller's affaire de coeur with Paris has existed almost as long as her love for books. Smitten with the city's literary Golden Age of the twenties, the young bookstore clerk from Denver dreams of a life like that of bold expatriate Sylvia Beach, who founded the famed Shakespeare and Company bookshop and became her own literary legend. 
 
An impromptu trip to the City of Light carries Lily further than her imagination ever took her. Arriving unexpectedly in 1937 Paris-penniless, friendless, and clueless-Lily must rely on her wobbly French and her wits. But a mysterious invitation offers her entrée into the glittering inner circle of Sylvia Beach herself. This clue leads her further into the complex and dangerous Paris on the brink of war-and it's not the friendly literary community she had imagined. 

Lily becomes a character inside the world that she had fantasized about-but with chilling consequences. In her quest to return home, Lily finds herself enmeshed in an undercover league of time-traveling bibliophiles. 

Charged with a daunting task, along the way Lily falls for a gallant young Frenchman, discusses the art of writing with Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, and runs afoul of a dashing Nazi agent. In order to escape unscathed, Lily must make choices that force her to reconcile her past and that may revise literary history forever. A celebration of a timeless city's allure, an engaging romantic fantasy, and a valentine to book lovers in every era, Chasing Sylvia Beach is a novel to savor and be spellbound by.

Cynthia Morris is the author of the Paris novel Chasing Sylvia Beach. She received a cultural grant from the Alliance Française de Denver, which allowed her to spend time at the Princeton University Library among Sylvia's artifacts. 

A Denver resident, Cynthia travels annually to Paris, where she leads creativity tours and writing workshops while chasing authentic detail for her novel. A certified coach since 1999, Cynthia helps writers and entrepreneurs bring their great ideas into form. 

She is the author of Create Your Writer's Life as well as several e-books on creative travel and productivity. Cynthia publishes a blog about the creative process through her company Original Impulse.