Book excerpt: “Robert Westbrook’s novel strips the gilt off the Hollywood Golden Age to reveal the seamier underside. The Torch Singer begins with an ending, a scene of murder and mayhem on St. Valentine’s Night in 1956 Beverly Hills and unravels the many and various threads of the lives and careers that took them there.” Time Out The Torch Singer is a sweeping historical saga that takes the reader from the horrors of Nazi-occupied Poland to the glittery excesses of Hollywood in the 1940’s and 50’s: the rise and fall of Sonya Saint-Amant, a singer who schemes her way to fame and glory breaking all the rules. Book One, An Overnight Sensation, charts the rise of Sonya from the age of 17 in 1940, a girl dreaming of being an understudy at the Krakow Opera when Nazis raid the theater. After witnessing the summary execution of her mother by German soldiers she escapes Poland and makes her way to London. Using guile and beauty, she finds passage to America in 1943 on the Mauretania, a dangerous North Atlantic crossing on a troop ship full of men. As the ship steams north into Arctic waters evading enemy submarines, Sonya almost wins at a high-stakes game of love . . . only to arrive in New York alone and desperate but determined to become a star. “A masterpiece of storytelling. A book of constant intrigue which from the outset creates that delicious paradox of it being immediately clear that nothing is ever quite as it seems.” Daily Mail “Robert Westbrook is a born storyteller and a bit of a magician.” Ally Sheedy The Torch Singer is an unforgettable journey through the shadowlands of fame.