Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken

by Nita Tyndall

Genres: YA Historical Fiction; YA LGBT & Pride; YA Romance

Synopsis

“A heartbreaking and bittersweet novel about the need for queer joy even in the midst of the horrors of war. The ending had me in tears.”—Malinda Lo, New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of Last Night at the Telegraph Club

For fans of Ruta Sepetys and Malinda Lo, a heart-wrenching queer historical YA romance set in the Swing Youth movement of World War II Berlin

Charlotte Kraus would follow Angelika Haas anywhere. Which is how she finds herself in an underground club one Friday night the summer before World War II, dancing to contraband American jazz and swing music, suddenly feeling that anything might be possible.

Unable to resist the allure of sharing this secret with Geli, Charlie returns to the club again and again, despite the dangers of breaking the Nazi Party’s rules. Soon, terrified by the tightening vise of Hitler’s power, Charlie and the other Swingjugend are drawn to larger and larger acts of rebellion. But the war will test how much they are willing to risk—and to lose.

From the critically acclaimed author of Who I Was with Her, this beautifully told story of hope, love, and resistance will captivate readers of Girl in the Blue Coat and Last Night at the Telegraph Club.

Release date: October 18, 2022

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 320

Sample

Prologue

10. august 1945

ALLIIERTEN-BESETZTES DEUTSCHLAND

IT BEGAN the summer before the war. An urgent, thrumming summer, the summer we were fifteen, the summer Geli was obsessed with Heinrich. Not some boy we knew, fair-haired and porcelain, but the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine. She’d found a book of his poems, and despite the fact that his words had been forbidden since 1933—or maybe because of it—she clung to that book like a lifeline.

War was coming, but we didn’t know it yet. We were too young to remember what it had been like before. We grew up in shadows, threats looming overh ead, and by the time we paid attention to them, it was too late.

We were often together, she and I, staying awake late into the night. Our bodies close, our arms touching, her voice softly reading those verses.

“Do you think,” she whispered to me one night, “that it’s really possible? Being so in love with someone like Heine was?”

“Ich weiß nicht,” I replied. I don’t know.

But I did know, because Heine’s longing was spelled out plainly in every word she read me, reaching inside me and threatening to expose my own longing for her.

“What about you?” I asked her. “Do you believe it’s possible? That kind of love?”

Her breathing was deep and even; I assumed she was asleep, for she did not answer me.

It was only later, looking back, that I realized she never had.

She dragged me to the club first, before Minna and Renate joined us. She took me because out of all of us, I was the one who was by her side.

I was always by her side.

To the very end, I was by her side.

I promised her I would be.