The Kennedy Girl by Julia Bryan Thomas (EXCERPT)

As the year winds down, let’s look ahead at one of the most anticipated releases of 2025!

In 1961 New York, a modeling scout appears seemingly out of nowhere, complimenting twenty-one-year-old Mia’s Jacqueline Kennedy look and offering her a one-way ticket to Paris. All she can think is: why not?

Even so, she’s a bit surprised to arrive and find that she does indeed have legitimate employment at a famous fashion house, strutting down runways, attending glamourous galas… and passing cryptic messages to unsettling strangers. Apparently, Jackie Kennedy is no longer the only woman for whom fashion and politics will dramatically collide.

From the far-reaching impact of the Cold War to the surprising relevance of fashion across societies to the significance of Paris in both history and fiction, Julia Bryan Thomas’ The Kennedy Girl expertly blends its themes in a refreshing and surprising way. It follows newly orphaned Mia, who abandons her ordinary American life in favor of the alluring Parisian fashion scene, where she finds herself embroiled in global espionage.

Read on for an excerpt from one of Mia’s covert operations…

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Later, she couldn’t say how it happened—­how a twenty-­year-­old girl from New York with no money or connections became involved in an international affair—­but it happened all the same. Nor could she say how she, Amelia Jocelyn Walker, found herself standing over the body of a man with a revolver in her hand and a hastily repositioned pin in her pillbox hat.

Mia looked at the body sprawled at her feet and then at the gun, which was still smoking. Although she hadn’t expected anyone to die, there was no doubting her role in these terrible events. The acrid smell of gunpowder filled the room, and she lowered the weapon in her hand as she debated what to do.

She didn’t want to admit it, but her current circumstances had come about the way all girls are made unwitting accomplices in crimes: trusting people in a world where no one can be trusted. For the world in 1961 wasn’t the beleaguered decade of the forties, when the war had been the focus of everyone’s lives, nor was it the quiet rebuilding of lives in the fifties, when Americans aspired to some sense of normalcy.

The decade of the sixties was an entirely different beast, even at its onset. People coming of age in that era were aware of the Cold War lurking in the background of their lives, East versus West. Yet over time, as is so often the case, the American people became inured to the distant threat and relegated it to the back of their minds. After all, there were more immediate things to think about. Fashion was changing. Harper Lee startled the literary world with her masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird. Civil rights demonstrators began to stage sit-­ins at lunch counters across the country. America was in the process of moving from the conservative presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a steady anchor of the nation during the 1950s, to the notably younger and more progressive administration of John F. Kennedy.

By 1961, most women were more interested in the life and fashion of their new First Lady than in international politics, Mia included, though she could perhaps be forgiven, being only twenty at the time.

Now, however, the body in front of her demanded her attention. Sliding the Colt.32 neatly into her pocketbook, she glanced up, catching her reflection in the mirror. She almost didn’t recognize the face staring back at her. Of course, there were the familiar deep-­brown eyes and wide lips, her chestnut hair pinned in a flawless chignon. Apart from slightly pink cheeks, she looked completely normal. But there was a veneer of sophistication and hardness that had never been there before. Her clothing was the only thing that was out of place. The blue Jacqueline Kennedy tailored skirt and matching jacket was meant for lunch at Les Deux Magots or strolling along the Seine, as if she were in a Deneuve film. Instead, she was standing over a body in a flat she had never been in before.

Mia made a quick calculation. A man was dead, a man who had trusted her. She bent over him, checking his pockets to see if he had anything that might link him to her, finding nothing. Then she stood, making certain nothing in the room was out of place. After slipping on her gloves, she turned off the lights and opened the door a crack before stepping into the corridor and locking it behind her.

She didn’t hurry as she walked to the staircase, then made her way down four flights of stairs. In the lobby, where the concierge was handing over a packet of mail to one of the residents, she locked her eyes on the door and went toward it with as normal a pace as she could manage. Outside, she turned left, toward the Jardin du Luxembourg, trying to calm her nerves. It was a fine morning. The sun was shining, and the blustery wind, which had terrorized Paris just the day before, had blown its way toward Strasbourg and into Germany, leaving behind a perfect summer day.

She strolled along the Rue des Écoles, looking at it as if for the first time. The windows of the buildings she passed were open as Parisians welcomed the good weather, pots of geraniums in riotous reds and pinks dotting the balconies. Passing the Sorbonne, she noticed a crowd of people coming and going. Mia had long wanted to go into one of the buildings and look around, envious of the stacks of books the students carried under their arms. Life held untold opportunities for them, she thought, wondering what she might have studied if she’d had the chance. Now, of course, it was a moot question. She was there to do a job, and then a job within a job, and it was too late to think of anything else.

A couple of blocks away, she spied a patisserie and went inside. It was a relief to be off the street in a nearly empty shop, although she knew that nowhere was truly safe. Opening her pocketbook, she ordered coffee and a croissant. She placed a handful of francs on the counter as the man handed her a small paper sack and a cup of coffee, which she proceeded to carry to the park.

She found a quiet area in the shade of the chestnut trees, where she sat in one of the ubiquitous green metal chairs. Steam rose from the coffee, which she did not sip. She might look composed on the outside, but inside her rib cage, her heart was racing. Setting the cup on the ground, she opened the bag and removed the croissant, which she proceeded to feed to the pigeons clustered at her feet. Then she took the revolver from her pocketbook and slipped it into the bag, crumpling it up as small as it would go. She rose from her chair and found an empty rubbish bin, tossing it inside.

Mia wandered through the gardens, wishing there was someone she could talk to who could help her make sense of what had happened. None of her fellow models at the House of Rousseau were reliable, and none of the men, however genial and accommodating they had been, were trustworthy, either. Even her roommates were not above suspicion.

She thought of speaking to Madame Fournier, who lived in the apartment next door. The older woman kept to herself, as most of their neighbors did, although it was clear she did not appreciate having a trio of young women in the adjacent flat who were prone to late nights and constant socializing. At the apartment where she had grown up in New York, Mia was used to busybodies and the gossip that arose when so many people lived in a single building and had expected such from the woman next door. Madame Fournier, however, did not pry or scold them, as the concierge sometimes did. She was polite, if frosty, in her demeanor.

But of course, Mia couldn’t speak to anyone without putting them in danger, and neither could she suddenly flee back home to the United States. She would be found as surely as the sun rises in the morning. There was still another piece of evidence to dispose of, and she had to buy some time one way or another to figure out what to do.

Because one thing she knew for certain: her life depended on it.

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From The Kennedy Girl by Julia Bryan Thomas. Copyright © 2025 by the author and reprinted by permission.

The Kennedy Girl by Julia Bryan Thomas will be published January 14 2025 by Sourcebooks Landmark and is available for pre-order from all good booksellers, including