The Listeners
#1 New York Times bestselling novelist Maggie Stiefvater dazzles in this mesmerizing portrait of an irresistible heroine, an unlikely romance, and a hotel—and a world—in peril.
January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles.
Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front lines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.
Meanwhile FBI Agent Tucker Minnick, whose coal tattoo hints at an Appalachian past, presses his ears to the hotel’s walls, listening for the diplomats’ secrets. He has one of his own, which is how he knows that June’s balancing act can have dangerous consequences: the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal.
June has never met a guest she couldn’t delight, but the diplomats are different. Without firing a single shot, they have brought the war directly to her. As clashing loyalties crack the Avallon’s polished veneer, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.
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Maggie Stiefvater
Maggie Stiefvater writes stories that feel like waking dreams, where reality and myth move together in ways that seem both inevitable and strange. Beloved for The Raven Cycle and The Scorpio Races, she has become one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary young adult fantasy. Her books are not only about magic but about mood, about the electric charge between characters, and about the beauty and danger of the unknown.
She grew up in Virginia, a homeschooled teenager who spent more time with sketchbooks, instruments, and notebooks than anything else. By sixteen she had already written dozens of novels, a private training ground for the voice that would later draw readers around the world. Her early life still lingers in her work: the wild landscapes, the haunting music, the fascination with cars and speed, and the sense that imagination is never fully separate from the everyday.
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