A heartbreaking and deeply compelling debut, Mrs. Sinclair’s Suitcase is a compulsive page-turner about thwarted love, dashed hopes, and family secrets—book-club fiction at its best.   Roberta, a lonely thirty-four-year-old bibliophile, works at The Old and New Bookshop in England. When she finds a letter inside her centenarian grandmother’s battered old suitcase that hints at a dark secret, her understanding of her family’s history is completely upturned. Running alongside Roberta’s narrative is that of her grandmother, Dorothy, as a forty-year-old childless woman desperate for motherhood during the early years of World War II. After a chance encounter with a Polish war pilot, Dorothy believes she’s finally found happiness, but must instead make an unthinkable decision whose consequences forever change the framework of her family.   The parallel stories of Roberta and Dorothy unravel over the course of eighty years as they both make their own ways through secrets, lies, sacrifices, and love. Utterly absorbing, Mrs. Sinclair’s Suitcase is a spellbinding tale of two worlds, one shattered by secrets and the other by the truth.   “A breathtaking, beautifully crafted tale of loves that survive secrets.” -- Kirkus Reviews (starred) “Musty books, unrequited love, and old family secrets combine to create a crackling multigenerational saga infused with passion, pathos, and evocative WWII-era historical detail. Plenty of book-club and cinematic potential in this irresistible page-turner.” -- Booklist “A solid debut . . . [that] may appeal to those who have also liked bookishly romantic stories such as Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society or Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry .” – Library Journal “Dorothea’s story riveted me from the start. Walters . . . bring[s] both history and characters alive.” – Historical Novels Review “A riveting debut with an impeccably researched past and charismatic present-day voices. Mrs. Sinclair’s Suitcase is like opening a literary treasure chest, full of sharp-edged gems glittering with all the beauty and heartache of humanity. You’re sure to carry this story with you wherever you go. I know I will.” —Sarah McCoy, author of the New York Times and international bestseller The Baker’s Daughter and The Mapmaker’s Children “A moving reminder that history is not just a pageant of world-shaking events, but a weave of individual lives that are often as inspiring as they are tragic.” —David R. Gillham, author of the New York Times –bestseller City of Women “Vivid and seductive, the tale begins in a blazing crash in World War II and twists through a tangle of mysterious circumstances, misunderstandings, and repressed desires. Irresistible . . .” —Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman, authors of the national bestseller Freud’s Mistress “Like forgotten letters and photos tucked inside secondhand books, secrets hide within the pages of Mrs. Sinclair’s Suitcase . Louise Walters has crafted a heartbreaking story of love and all its faces.” —Jessica Brockmole, author of Letters from Skye “Walters creates a totally absorbing world, and takes you right into the heart of her story. Beautifully done, and heartbreaking, too.” —Esther Freud, author of The Sea House and Hideous Kinky “A heartbreaking tale of loss, missed chances, and enduring love.” — Good Housekeeping (UK) “A first novel of great charm and assurance, beautifully told and utterly gripping.” — The Times (UK) Louise Walters lives in Northamptonshire with her husband and five children. Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase is her first novel. Chapter 1 8 February 1941   My dear Dorothea, In wartime, people become desperate. We step outside ourselves. The truth is, I love you and I am sorry that only now do I own it. You love me. I will not forget the touch of your hand on my head and on my neck when you thought I slept. The touch of love, no longer imagined. Nobody will touch me like that again. This I know. This is my loss. Forgive me, Dorothea, for I cannot forgive you. What you do, to this child, to this child’s mother, it is wrong. It is misplaced, like me, forced out of my homeland, perhaps never to return. You too will never return if you persist in this scheme. You will persist. Yet even now it can be undone. But I know you will not undo. Your soul will not return from this that you do. Please believe me. In welcoming the one into your arms, you must lose another. I cannot withstand. You know why. I do not enjoy writing these words to you. Actually, I cry. Once this war is finished—and it must finish— we could have made a life together. To spend my life with you has become my only great dream and desire. After our first meeting, as I rode away on my bicycle, I knew you were as important to me as water. I knew you were for all time, even as there is no time. I thought of marriage within minutes of meeting you. But it cannot be