"Reprisal" by Ethel Vance, published by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1943.

Hard boards, original red cloth with dark-brown lettering on front board and spine [a little spine fade]; 5.1/2" x 8.1/2"; 334 pages, one page corner fold, very good condition.

"A German officer of occupation in the Brittany village of Rusquec is murdered; twenty hostages are destined to be shot if the murderer is not found within three days. The book centers around six people and their reactions to this murder and reprisal. Our of the intrigue, the horror, the fear, and the tension that the search of the German officers begets comes a love story at once tender and appealing, a picture of occupied France revealed in warmly human terms, and all the nerve-tingling drama which is characteristic of Ethel Vance. `Hard to put down' type of book." [a review]

Grace Zaring Stone (1891-1991) was an American novelist and short-story writer. She is perhaps best known for having three of her novels made into films: The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Winter Meeting, and Escape. She also used the pseudonym Ethel Vance.

Zaring Stone had used the pseudonym of Ethel Vance to write her anti-Nazi thriller Escape to avoid jeopardizing her daughter, who was living in occupied Europe during the Second World War. In 1955, Escape was translated into German and published in Germany as Die Flucht.

US: Priority (c.2-4 days) ---------- $12.50
Canada: 1st Class (c.2-6 weeks) ---- $28.50
World: 1st Class (c.2-8 weeks) ----- $42.50