The Huntress
In the forests around Lake Rusalka in 1945, an SS war criminal known as die Jägerin vanishes after the fall of the Reich. Nearly a decade later, a former British war correspondent and a Soviet night-witch pilot both arrive in postwar Boston on her trail, and collide with the shy seventeen-year-old Jordan McBride, who has just acquired a new stepmother from Austria that her photographer's eye is quietly beginning to doubt. Kate Quinn interlaces Jordan's 1950s Boston, Ian's postwar Nazi-hunting across Europe, and Nina's terrifying Soviet-front flying record into a single, accelerating story of pursuit and recognition. Rooted in the real Night Witches and Nuremberg-era Nazi hunts, the novel is one of her most propulsive historical thrillers about women at war.
Themes & atmosphere
Also by Kate Quinn
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What you might want to know about The Huntress
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In 1946, English journalist Ian Graham hunts down Nazi war criminals across postwar Europe, hunting one woman in particular. In 1950 Boston, seventeen-year-old Jordan McBride senses that her father's new fiancee is hiding something. In wartime Russia, Nina flies a Po-2 bomber with the Night Witches.
The Huntress is fictional but inspired by real Soviet women pilots in World War II, including the Night Witches, and by real postwar Nazi-hunters. Kate Quinn researched the documented history extensively.
Yes, loosely. Kate Quinn's WWII novels (The Alice Network, The Huntress, The Rose Code, The Diamond Eye, The Briar Club) share themes and occasionally minor characters but each is independent.
The Huntress was written by Kate Quinn, published in 2019 by HarperCollins Publishers.
The Huntress is 560 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Huntress takes most readers 8 to 12 hours to finish.
The Huntress is a standalone novel by Kate Quinn, not part of a series.
The Huntress is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.