The Contested Hours

Paris, 1942. The war is everywhere. But inside the quiet corridors of the Bibliothèque nationale, another battle is being fought—one measured in documents, archives, and secrets hidden in plain sight.

Margot Aubert is an archivist whose life revolves around preservation. Catalog the records. Protect the collections. Ensure history survives intact.

But some documents in the archive do not belong.

Carefully hidden within legitimate files are forged identity records—papers that protect people who would otherwise disappear under occupation.

When German cultural officer Emil Bauer arrives to investigate the provenance of several rare manuscripts, Margot's carefully balanced system begins to unravel. Bauer is intelligent, meticulous, and deeply knowledgeable about the archive's holdings. The more he studies the past, the closer he comes to discovering what Margot has hidden in the present.

Now every request for a file, every archival box opened, and every quiet conversation in the reading room carries new risk.

Because in occupied Paris, a single document can save a life. Or destroy it.

Adjacent Rooms is the first novel in The Contested Hours, an atmospheric historical suspense series set inside the hidden world of archives during World War II—where preservation, secrecy, and survival collide.