Kerri Maher’s latest novel, The Paris Bookseller, is bound to appeal to fans of bestselling author, Natasha Lester. Not only does it take as its setting Paris during the 1920s, but it features at its core the little known history behind the setting up of the iconic Shakespeare and Co bookshop. Readers may be interested to know, as I was, that the Shakespeare and Co bookshop as we know it today is actually the second iteration of the store; the first having been set up in 1919 by Sylvia Beach and closed during the Second World War. Legend has it that the shop was ordered to be closed down after Beach refused to sell a copy of Finnegan’s Wake to a Nazi officer; but when the officers returned later there was no trace of the store to be found. Friends of Beach’s (among them, perhaps, Ernest Hemingway) had helped her to hide all traces that there had ever been a bookshop in that spot. But I am getting ahead of myself, and ahead of this wonderful novel. The Paris Bookseller is the story of Sylvia Beach, a young woman who loves books. She writes, true, but her real passion is for reading and for connecting books with readers. Inspired by the woman she loves, who runs a French language bookstore, American ex-pat Beach decides to set up an English language bookstore nearby; something she accomplishes with a little help from her mother’s savings account.