Book Series: The Saga Series

Someone is trying to kill Lila Hilliard. During the Christmas holidays she returns from running errands to find her family home in flames, her father and brother trapped inside. Later, she is attacked by a mysterious man on a motorcycle… and the threats don’t end there. As Lila desperately tries to piece together who is after her and why, she uncovers information about her father’s past in Chicago during the volatile days of the late 1960s… information he never shared with her, but now threatens to destroy her.

Part thriller, part historical novel, and part love story, Set the Night on Fire paints an unforgettable portrait of Chicago during a turbulent time: the riots at the Democratic Convention… the struggle for power between the Black Panthers and SDS… and a group of young idealists who tried to change the world.

A Bitter Veil tells the story of Anna and Nouri, both studying in Chicago, who fall in love despite their very different backgrounds. Anna, who has never been close to her parents, is more than happy to return with Nouri to his native Iran, to be embraced by his wealthy family. Beginning their married life together in 1978, their world is abruptly turned upside down by the overthrow of the Shah, and the rise of the Islamic Republic.

Under the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Republican Guard, life becomes increasingly restricted and Anna must learn to exist in a transformed world, where none of the familiar Western rules apply. Random arrests and torture become the norm, women are required to wear hijab, and Anna discovers that she is no longer free to leave the country.

As events reach a fevered pitch, Anna realizes that nothing is as she thought, and no one can be trusted… not even her husband.

In July, 2014, A Bitter Veil was translated into German as Bitterer Schleier. It is available in both print and ebook formats and can be found here.

On the eve of the Cuban Revolution, headstrong 18-year-old Francesca Pacelli flees from her ruthless Mafia-boss father in Havana to the arms of her lover, a rebel fighting with Fidel Castro. Her father, desperate to send her to safety in the US, resorts to torture and blackmail as he searches the island for her.

So begins the first part of a spellbinding saga that spans three generations of the same family. Decades later the Pacelli family is lured back to Cuba by the promise of untold riches. But pursuing those riches brings danger as well as opportunity, and ultimately, Francesca must confront the lethal consequences of her choices. From the troubled streets of Havana to the mean streets of Chicago, Havana Lost reveals the true cost of chasing power instead of love.

Havana Lost is award-winning author Libby Fischer Hellmann’s tenth novel and third thriller that explores how strife and revolution affect the human spirit. Havana Lost is a testament to Hellmann’s gift for authentic historical detail as well as her talent for writing compulsively readable thriller.

Honors and Accolades:

• Finalist in Foreword Review Magazine’s Thriller of the Year contest 2013
• “Notable Page-Turner” in Shelf Unbound Magazine’s Book of the Year — 2014
• Honorable Mention in Chicago Writers' Association Best Fiction Book 2013

As World War II rages across Europe and the Pacific, its impact ripples through communities in the heartland of America. A farm girl is locked in a dangerous love triangle with two German soldiers held in an Illinois POW camp … Another German, a war refugee, is forced to risk her life spying on the developing Manhattan Project in Chicago … And espionage surrounds the disappearance of an actress from the thriving Jewish community of Chicago’s Lawndale. In this trio of tales, acclaimed thriller author Libby Fischer Hellmann beautifully depicts the tumultuous effect of war on the home front and illustrates how the action, terror, and tragedy of World War II was not confined to the front lines.

• Finalist for Foreword Magazine’s 2017 INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the War/Military Category.
• Winner of the IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Awards) Silver Medal in the War/Military Category in 2017.
• Finalist for the 2017 Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year award (Indie Fiction).

Contents:
The Incidental Spy (a novella) was originally published in 2015.
“The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared” (short story) was published in 2005.
P.O.W. (a novella) was published for the first time in 2017.

In 1968 two young Vietnamese sisters flee to Saigon after their village on the Mekong River is attacked by American forces and burned to the ground. The only survivors of the brutal massacre that killed their family, the sisters struggle to survive but become estranged, separated by sharply different choices and ideologies. Mai ekes out a living as a GI bar girl, but Tâm’s anger festers, and she heads into jungle terrain to fight with the Viet Cong. For nearly ten years, neither sister knows if the other is alive. Do they both survive the war? And if they do, can they mend their fractured relationship? Or are the wounds from their journeys too deep to heal? In a stunning departure from her crime thrillers, Libby Fischer Hellmann delves into a universal story about survival, family, and the consequences of war.

Honors and Accolades:

• Finalist, Foreword Magazine Indies Award, War and Military
• Finalist, IAN Books of the Year, Historical Fiction
• Finalist, 2020 Indies Next Generation Book Awards, Historical Fiction

As the Nazis sweep across Europe, Jewish teen Max and his parents flee persecution in Germany for Holland, where Max finds friends and romance. But when Hitler invades in 1940, Max escapes to Chicago, leaving his parents and friends behind. When he learns of his parents’ murder in Sobibor, Max immediately enlists in the US Army. After basic training he is sent to Camp Ritchie, Maryland, where he is trained in interrogation and counterintelligence.

Deployed to the OSS, Max carries out dangerous missions in Occupied countries. He also interrogates German POWs, especially after D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, where, despite life-threatening conditions, he elicits critical information about German troop movements.

Post-war, he works for the Americans in the German denazification program, bringing him back to his Bavarian childhood home of Regensburg. Though the city avoided large-scale destruction, the Jewish community was decimated. Max roams familiar yet strange streets, replaying memories of lives lost to unspeakable tragedy. While there, however, he reunites with someone from his past, who, like him, sought refuge abroad. Can they rebuild their lives… together?

This epic story about a Ritchie Boy is Libby Hellmann’s tribute to her late father-in-law who was active with the OSS and interrogated dozens of German POWs.