From bestselling author Lydia Kang comes a spellbinding WWII mystery about hidden identities, wartime paranoia, and the tantalizing power of deceit.

The Half-Life of Ruby Fielding (releasing May 1, 2022 from Lake Union Publishing) takes place in Brooklyn in 1942, when war rages overseas as brother and sister Will and Maggie Scripps contribute to the war effort stateside. Ambitious Will secretly scouts for the Manhattan Project while grief-stricken Maggie works at the Navy Yard, writing letters to her dead mother between shifts.

But the siblings' quiet lives change when they discover a beautiful woman hiding under their back stairs. This stranger harbors an obsession with poisons, an affection for fine things, and a singular talent for killing small creatures. As she draws Will and Maggie deeper into her mysterious past, they both begin to suspect she's quite dangerous-all while falling helplessly under her spell.

With whispers of spies in dark corners and the world's first atomic bomb in the works, the vistor's sudden presence in Maggie's and Will's lives raises questions about who she is and what she wants. Is this mysterious woman someone they can trust- or a threat to everything they hold dear?

Excerpt

It was a startling sound, her voice.

Maggie was used to only ever hearing Will speak within their small apartment. Even then, there had been scant words between them, and not an iota of discord. Without a syllable uttered, Maggie knew when Will wanted another cup of coffee, or an extra serving at dinner. When she was more tired than usual, Will would soundlessly rise from the kitchen table, touch her shoulder to gently pry her away from the sink, and wipe the dishes himself.

The only other feminine voice that had ever existed within these walls was their mother’s ambivalent one. She had always sounded like she was asking a question, even when making a statement. Dinner’s ready? I think I have a cold? I’m not sad?

This woman’s voice was so very different.

For one, it was deeper than Maggie’s girlish voice, and her mother’s hesitant one. Husky almost, as if cigarette smoke had entangled the woman’s vocal cords and lured them to a permanently deep register.

“Please,” the woman rasped again, just as Will pushed the bedroom door back open. Maggie was filled with a thousand questions. Who was this stranger? Why had she been unconscious? Where did she come from?

But as Maggie started to ask, the woman’s eyes fluttered.

She pushed herself off the pillow in an attempt to sit up, but the muscles of her forearms spasmed, and she sank back onto the bed. Her eyelids fluttered closed as unconsciousness took her again.

Will turned toward the kitchen, but Maggie tugged his sleeve.

“Will. No. She asked us not to call the police.”

“She could be trying to rob us, Mags. She could be a s-“ he stopped before saying spy. Everyone in the country was paranoid about spies. It was only a few months ago when German spies had been dropped off by U-boat on the beaches of Amagansett, a hundred miles east of New York City. And six days before pearl Harbor, thirty-three men in a Nazi spy ring had been rounded up.

Saboteurs and spies were not fiction. Will was always suspicious, more than an ordinary citizen. He didn’t want her to know much about his work, but he’d let it slip once- just once- that General Groves was the boss of his boss. Rumor had it that Grove’s work, and hence Will’s, could end the war.

“Look at her,” Maggie whispered, leaning toward Will’s good right ear, as she did whenever she needed to speak softly. “What could she steal? Her clothes alone are worth more than our rent.”

Will hesitated. She knew what he was thinking. There was no telephone nearby. Mrs. Jardin in the house next door had been wanting to buy one, but installations were on hold due to the war- so he’d have to ask someone else. Their neighbors would surely want to know the who-what-where-why-and-hows of the phone call. Even if they didn’t ask, the entire party line would be listening. Her brother was mortally allergic to gossip, and not only because of the secrecy of his work.

Maggie, though-she had a weakness for gossip. She lingered at doorways to hear snippets of conversations when she made her dimout rounds, and leaned closer to the neighbors waiting in the long lines at the grocery. Everyone else’s lives seemed vastly more interesting than hers. And now, Maggie was on the verge of owning her very own kernel of gossip.

“Please, Will. We ought to help our fellow human beings, don’t you think? She’s probably running away from a beau who’s been cruel to her. Or had a fight with her parents. Leave her be, just one night! I’ll nurse her better, and she’ll be on her way.”

“You’d open up an infirmary if I didn’t protest,” Will growled. But Maggie felt elated. The joke meant he was near to giving in. It was time for him to leave anyway. His classes started soon, and the trolley trip to Brooklyn College took nearly forty minutes.

She gave him one last puppylike eyebrow raise.

Will sighed. “All right. One night.”

She clasped her hands together like a child who’d just been given a new Raggedy Ann doll and followed him to the kitchen. Will gathered his shoulder bag with his schoolbooks, scooped the congealed supper of panda into his mouth. His portion was gone in three swallows. He tore off a hunk of stale crust from the bread box and left.

Maggie watched out the window of their tiny parlor as he lumbered down the street and disappeared around the corner.

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About the Author

Lydia Kang is an author and internal medicine physician. She is a graduate of Columbia University and New York University School of Medicine, and she completed her training at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She lives with her family in the Midwest.