Exciting alumnae news from Roberta Rich '63! She recently had her fourth historical novel, The Jazz Club Spy, published by Simon & Schuster! Read more about the book below.

From the author of the “riveting” (Chicago Tribune) The Midwife of Venice comes a sweeping historical novel following a Jewish woman attempting to bring justice to her family on the eve of World War II.

New York City, 1938: At the height of the Great Depression, when President Roosevelt is trying to keep America out of World War II, Giddy Brodsky is lucky to have a job as a cigarette girl at a Manhattan jazz club. Nevertheless, she dreams of establishing a cosmetics business and leaving the Lower East Side tenements behind. She has lived there with her family ever since they fled Russia, forced to emigrate after a group of Cossacks burned down their village.

Giddy tries to focus on the future until, during an evening streetcar ride, she thinks she recognizes one of the Cossacks who changed her life forever. Determined to get answers, she enlists the help of Carter van der Zalm, the Chief Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island, who is hunting the same man. He suspects the Russian is involved in an assassination plot that will destroy American and Soviet relations, and he recruits Giddy to spy for him. But when she finally tracks down the man they’re both seeking, she finds herself in the middle of a shocking political conspiracy that changes everything she once believed to be true.

“It was a lot of fun to write and I hope it will be fun to read as well.” - Roberta Rich ‘63