This week, on Thursday, April 29, the Friends of the Delaware County District Library is hosting two New York Times bestselling authors! Kate Quinn and Martha Hall Kelly will be chatting with each other about their recent releases that are both currently recognized as bestsellers. You are invited to join the conversation and send the authors your questions, as well.

Quinn, the author of “The Huntress” and “The Alice Network,” returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park, and the spy they must root out after the war is over in “The Rose Code.”

As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter – the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum.

Kelly’s million-copy bestseller “Lilac Girls” introduced readers to Caroline Ferriday. Now, in “Sunflower Sisters,” Kelly tells the story of Ferriday’s ancestor Georgeanna Woolsey, a Union nurse during the Civil War whose calling leads her to cross paths with Jemma, a young enslaved girl who is sold off and conscripted into the army, and Anne-May Wilson, a Southern plantation mistress whose husband enlists.

Inspired by true accounts, “Sunflower Sisters” provides a vivid, detailed look at the Civil War experience, from the barbaric and inhumane plantations, to a war-torn New York City, to the horrors of the battlefield.

The event will take place virtually on Zoom at 7 p.m. Cost is $5 for Friends members and $10 for non-members with all proceeds benefitting the Friends of the Library and its mission to advocate and raise funds for the Delaware County District Library.

Copies of each book can be purchased from Birdie Books in Westerville, which will donate 20% of the proceeds to the Friends of the Library. Free delivery is offered to Delaware and Franklin counties, and all books arrive with an author-signed bookplate.

Finally, what would a virtual book talk be without some coffee and sweets? Pick up a box of treats from Fat Girl Bakery in Lewis Center prior to the event. A box containing four iced sugar cookies, a large fudge brownie, a vanilla cake pop, and two vanilla macarons will cost only $20 and can be ordered and picked up between April 27-29.

All this information is found online at www.delawarelibrary.org or you can order your tickets directly from Eventbrite at quinnkelly2021.eventbrite.com.

If these novels pique your interest, you may also want to check out some of these read-alikes to “The Rose Code” and “Lilac Girls” listed below.

• “The Gown” by Jennifer Robson. Though the purposes of their jobs are very different (embroidery in Gown; code-breaking in Rose Code), the heroines of these engrossing historical novels form a strong bond and rely on the support of each other, despite their disparate backgounds.

• “The Secrets We Kept” by Lara Prescott. With well-researched historical details, these novels shine a light on the women behind pivotal aspects of the Cold War (The Secrets We Kept) and World War II (The Rose Code).

• “The Race for Paris” by Meg Waite Clayton. Offering insight into women’s experiences of World War II, these gripping, well-researched novels portray three women from America, France, and Germany (Lilac Girls) with disparate war roles, and female photographers scrambling to scoop their male colleagues (The Race for Paris).

• “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah. While the storylines differ in these World War II novels, both movingly portray courageous women in danger. The Nightingale features two French women resisting the Nazis, while Lilac Girls relates three perspectives: an American’s, a Frenchwoman’s, and a German’s.

• “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” by Heather Morris. Heart wrenching historical fiction based upon true stories, these stories of survival in Nazi concentration camps are alternately inspiring and harrowing. Both religiously diverse novels are testaments to the human spirit and the implacable evil that tries to snuff it out.