From MIRIAM IN THE SHADOWS by John Winn Miller, published by June 2026 by Bancroft Press. Reprinted by permission:
Ten minutes. That was all the time Miriam had to make it from the office to inside her first target, the gallery with the trapped liquid oxygen canisters marked A-Stoff. It was dark inside, so she clicked on her flashlight and strolled in, inspecting the ceiling and walls as she had done dozens of times throughout the mine. She shivered at the thought of being buried there under the fallen roof. But she had to press on.
Several canisters had been dug out by the prisoners and were still intact. Setting down her purse and clicking off the flashlight, Miriam expertly cut off a chunk of the plastic explosives with Vogel’s dagger, stuck it to the back of a canister, and fished out two pencil timers from two different tin cans. She tugged out the safety pins and plunged them deeply into the plastic explosives. Standing, she clicked on her flashlight to check her watch: 10:45 p.m. Right on schedule.
When she stepped out of the gallery into the tunnel bustling with prisoners and civilians lugging equipment and canisters, she caught the one-eyed Kapo gawking at her. She looked away as if she hadn’t noticed and set off at her usual brisk pace, covering her mouth to cough.
Along the way, she passed the gallery with the metal-caged elevator Vogel told her was forbidden. Guards stood by the elevator shaft where Professor Ziegler, the nuclear physicist, paced, hands behind his back. She picked up her pace to the second target.
She had gained nearly a minute on her timeline and made it by 10:49 p.m. but was wracked with exhaustion and fever. The gallery, with its wooden support beams, was filled on one side by a long stack of high-test peroxide canisters labeled “T-Stoff” under hanging lights. Looking around as if lost, Miriam waited until no one appeared to be watching her and disappeared into the gallery, shining her flashlight on the cracks between the wooden panels on the roof. At the end of the gallery, Miriam slipped behind the rack, set down her purse, and stooped to retrieve the explosives.
“What have we here?”
Flinching, Miriam looked up at the one-eyed Kapo. “Oh, nothing. Just checking the structure for the professor.” She rose to face him.
Holding his wooden clogs in his hand so he made no noise when he snuck up on Miriam, the Kapo moved in closer with a greasy smile, his ragged pajamas stinking of sweat and feces.
Miriam retreated, tripping over her purse, until her back slammed into the wall between two beams.
“You’re a busy little bee, aren’t you? Going from one gallery to the next. What could you be doing?” Dropping his clogs, the Kapo pressed his body against her, sniffing the perfume on her neck, oblivious to the sweat rolling off her cheeks.
“Please, stand back,” she said in a hoarse voice.
He didn’t move. Instead, he slapped his hands on the beams on either side of Miriam, trapping her and nearly suffocating her with his foul breath. When he leaned in to kiss her, Miriam erupted in a paroxysm of barking coughs, spraying saliva all over his face and driving him back. “Damn you, bitch.” He reached out for Miriam’s throat.
She grabbed his wrist and twisted it until he howled. Before he could pull away, she kicked him hard between the legs with her knee, chopped up with an open right hand underneath his chin, snapping his head back, and forced him against the opposite wall, banging his head with a loud crack.
Just as he collapsed to the floor, an announcement blared over the camp loudspeaker for the workers to store their tools and prepare to exit. Miriam glanced at the entrance. No one had seen or heard the scuffle. With all her might, she dragged the dazed Kapo behind the rack.
Suddenly, he seized her right leg. She struggled to get free, but the Kapo wouldn’t release his grip. With her left foot, she kicked him repeatedly in the head. His grip loosened. She jumped with both feet onto his chest. And jumped again. And again, until his ribs cracked, and his breath gushed from his lungs like a busted gas line. Kill or be killed.
His attempts to scream came out as a shrill whisper. He choked and gasped, fighting to inhale. His pale face turned red, then blue, and his eyes bulged. After checking his pulse, Miriam reached for her purse to continue setting the explosives.
“Fräulein, what happened here?” The female guard tapped her bullwhip on her gloved hand, squinting suspiciously at Miriam.
“Thank God you came in. He was trying to rape me. I was so afraid.”
“The noise I heard sounded like a fight.”
“It was,” Miriam said in a trembling voice. “I had to fight for my life. You saved me.”
“Why are you in here?” the guard said. But before Miriam could answer, she pointed her bullwhip at one of the metal cans carrying the pencil timers that had spilled out of Miriam’s overturned purse on the floor. “What’s that?”
Miriam scooped it up along with her purse. “Cigarettes. I hand roll them myself and store them in these old cans. Want one?”
“We’re not allowed to smoke in the mine, as you should know by now. What else do you have in your purse?” She reached for the long leather strap.
Miriam dropped the bag, which crashed to the floor with a loud thud. “I am so sorry.” She squatted and stuck her hand in the purse. Springing to her feet, she plunged Vogel’s dagger into the guard’s neck, slicing it vertically, just as she had been trained. Unable to do anything but gurgle, the guard crumbled. Miriam shoved her body behind the rack and peeked around it at the tunnel. The coast was clear.
With calm efficiency, Miriam cut off a chunk of the plastic explosives with the bloody dagger, pressed it on a canister, yanked out the pencil timers’ safety pins, and jammed them in.
By the time she stepped out of the gallery and into the tunnel, it was 10:55 p.m., now two minutes behind schedule. Aching all over her feverish body, she wiped the sweat off her brow with her sleeve, shocked that it was speckled with blood. Turning toward a wall, she pulled out her gold compact and examined her face in the mirror. More blood. She spat on her handkerchief and scrubbed off as much of it as she could. Although there were still stains on her sleeve and jacket, Miriam had to move on.
Hurrying through the tunnel, she passed the forbidden gallery, where Professor Ziegler, in his white lab coat and rubber gloves, walked behind four pairs of emaciated prisoners carrying shoebox-sized metal containers on wooden boards with handles. SS guards led them out of the tunnel and toward the octangular, domed room. Clickety-clacks echoed from the brass Geiger-Müller counter in Ziegler’s hand. Radioactive waste must be in the boxes like I saw in the film. Heading for the rockets. I cannot stop now. Even if the radiation explosion kills us all.
Peggy C Saga #3
On the eve of D-Day, the fate of the world hangs not on the beaches of Normandy, but deep within a secret Nazi facility in occupied France. Here, in a claustrophobic, slave-driven mine codenamed Noball 109, German scientists are racing to perfect a terror weapon that would render the Allied invasion obsolete: atomic-tipped V-2 rockets aimed at the heart of London.
Enter Miriam Maduro, a ghost haunted by her past. A brilliant and courageous Dutch-Jewish SOE agent, she has already been captured, tortured, and escaped the Nazis once. Now, the British pull her from the shadows for an offer she can't refuse: undertake a suicide mission to infiltrate and destroy the rocket facility, and they will guarantee safe passage for her young son and sister from Palestine to England.
For Miriam, it's not about patriotism; it's a mission fueled by a mother's fierce love and a survivor's desperate need for redemption. Running parallel is a story of love and betrayal. Captain Jake Rogers, the American merchant marine who previously rescued Miriam and is the father of her child, is recruited by a charming Ian Fleming for a seemingly simple naval diversion.
But the mission is a setup, a pawn in the toxic, real-life rivalry between Britain's spy agencies. Betrayed by MI6 and left for dead, Rogers is captured by the Germans. The two storylines collide in one heart-stopping moment. Deep undercover, Miriam unfolds a German newspaper and sees Jake's face staring back at her from the front page. She is now faced with an impossible choice: complete her world-saving mission and let the man she loves perish, or risk everything—the war, D-Day, the lives of millions—to orchestrate a daring rescue? Her answer is what makes Miriam in the Shadows an unforgettable tour de force. She will do both.
Grounded in meticulous historical research and packed with authentic spycraft, the novel is a blueprint for a blockbuster. It's The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare meets Terminator 2, with the intellectual heft of Oppenheimer. A gripping combination of a ticking-clock thriller, a prison break, and a romance-under-fire, this third volume of the acclaimed Peggy C Saga is a commercially explosive property with built-in franchise potential, ready to captivate readers and Hollywood alike.
Thriller Spy | Historical [ Bancroft Press, On Sale: June 2, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781610887113 / eISBN: 9781610887137 ]
John Winn Miller is an award-winning investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, editor, newspaper publisher, screenwriter, movie producer, and novelist.
As a reporter at the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader, Miller was part of a team of reporters that wrote a series that helped trigger educational reform in Kentucky. It won the Society of Professional Journalists’1990 public service award, top honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the first $25,000 Selden Ring award, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
He also was a reporter at the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal/Europe; executive editor of the Centre Daily Times in State College, PA, and the Tallahassee (FL) Democrat as well as the publisher at The Olympian in Olympia, WA, and the Concord (NH) Monitor.
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