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The Last Light in Delft
In the frozen winter of occupied Delft, when lanterns are treason and warmth is a crime, a dying portrait painter follows an outlaw light down forbidden stairs and finds a glassblower who refuses to let the dark win.Anya Sokolova trades faces for bread and borrows time from doctors she cannot afford. Max Volkov keeps an illegal furnace alive past curfew, shaping molten glass into birds that remember flight in a city that has forgotten how to dream.
Together, in a hidden loft that smells of coal smoke and possibility, they invent an inventory of chipped cups, defiant blue bowls, a lens that doubles every lantern into a small rebellion. They trade oranges for futures, sketches for heat, and—slowly, stubbornly—names spelled right for the first time.
But winter keeps its own ledger. Inspections tighten like frost. The canal waits with black patience. And consumption, that quiet thief, counts Anya’s breaths while Max teaches fire better grammar than fear.
A breathtakingly lyrical tale of art as resistance, love as heat, and the devastating grace of choosing light even when morning is not guaranteed.
For readers who wept over All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, or The Night Portrait—this is the heartbreaking, luminous historical love story you have been waiting for.
Some fires are worth dying for. This is theirs.
Together, in a hidden loft that smells of coal smoke and possibility, they invent an inventory of chipped cups, defiant blue bowls, a lens that doubles every lantern into a small rebellion. They trade oranges for futures, sketches for heat, and—slowly, stubbornly—names spelled right for the first time.
But winter keeps its own ledger. Inspections tighten like frost. The canal waits with black patience. And consumption, that quiet thief, counts Anya’s breaths while Max teaches fire better grammar than fear.
A breathtakingly lyrical tale of art as resistance, love as heat, and the devastating grace of choosing light even when morning is not guaranteed.
For readers who wept over All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, or The Night Portrait—this is the heartbreaking, luminous historical love story you have been waiting for.
Some fires are worth dying for. This is theirs.
41 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 21, 2025
About the author
Sarah Bailey
55 books14 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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