I read a ton of fiction - historical, contemporary, literary, commercial, I love it all.

Historical tends to be my bailiwick.

Sight is one of the most easily deceived senses. I could make a coin disappear and your eyes would believe it gone, even if it were merely up my sleeve.

Logic only tells us what's there; it can't really address what isn't. Even the most devoted empiricist must admit that we have no hope of understanding the universe. Some things are unknowable.

Andrée De Jongh story led me to other stories of women who joined the Resistance in France. I found literally dozens of memoirs written by women who had become spies and couriers and helped to create the escape network. These women were like action-star heroes.

In doing the research, I found myself consumed by a single, overwhelming question, as relevant today as it was seventy years ago: When would I, as a wife and mother, risk my life - and more importantly, my child's life - to save a stranger? That question is at the very heart of The Nightingale. I hope that everyone who reads the novel will ask themselves the question.

My next guest [ for party with five favorite fictional characters] would be Scarlett from Gone With The Wind. I mean, come on, I have to know if she ever got Rhett back.