More Than Just a Game
Laura Ellison Proctor
Type: Beta project
Genre: Historical fiction, action/adventure
Word count: 97,500
Warnings: Swearing
When American Mapmaker Maggie Scott agrees to help British Intelligence smuggle escape tools hidden inside monopoly game boards into WW2 Allied POW camps, she must defy MI9 protocols in order to connect with her estranged sister Hattie, trapped in occupied France.
Maggie Scott, an American mapmaker, is recruited by MI9 to develop escape tools for Allied POWs. She agrees on one condition: they help her find her estranged sister, Hattie. As Maggie helps smuggle gadgets into camps hidden in Monopoly boards and charity parcels, she discovers that Hattie, living under an assumed name, is working for a Resistance escape network MI9 secretly supports.
Hattie is being hunted. Known to the Nazis as the elusive White Mouse, she’s one of the most wanted women in occupied France.
When her cover is blown, Hattie must flee. As she prepares to cross the Pyrenees to safety, she receives a coded message from Maggie with a desperate plea: escort one last “parcel”—a downed airman Maggie may be falling for. Driven by guilt, duty, and the hope of reunion, Hattie turns back—risking everything for a man she’s never met and the sister she left behind.
Laura Proctor is a debut novelist whose love of history, travel, and character-driven storytelling inspired More Than Just a Game, her first work of historical fiction. A member of the Historical Novel Society and The History Quill, Laura researched the novel on location—retracing her characters’ journeys from the streets of London and Beaconsfield, where Maggie worked, to Marseille and Toulouse, where Hattie operated as a Resistance courier. She also visited Colditz Prison and hiked Hattie’s trail across the Pyrenees. Laura enjoys spending time with family, friends, and her two dogs, Hattie and Lillie.
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