A tale of spies and secrets

What if the friendly neighbor who baked the best cakes in town was secretly working for the Soviet Union?

It sounds like the setup for a mystery novel. For author Katherine Reay, however, the premise behind “The Undercover Bookshop” has an intriguing connection to history.

Reay will bring that combination of books, secrets and Cold War espionage to Bluffton on Oct. 22 as the opening speaker in the University of South Carolina Beaufort Center for the Arts’ 2026-27 Lunch With Authors series.

Reay will discuss “The Undercover Bookshop,” her new historical novel being released Oct. 6 by Harper Muse.

“The Undercover Bookshop” takes readers to the winter of 1950 and the small Cotswold village of Great Rollright, England. There, newcomer Gemma Brown is trying to build the sort of picturesque village life she knows from her favorite mystery novels.

Gemma has trouble navigating some of the social expectations of village life, but mysteries are another matter. She sets up the village’s first bookstore and befriends Peggy, another newcomer, as well as Ursula Beurton, a talented baker who becomes a subject of local gossip.

Then Gemma starts noticing things that seem more at home in one of her novels.

Gemma’s suspicions pull her into an international story involving MI5, the KGB and a mystery that becomes far more consequential than the ordinary dramas of village life.

entirely fiction.

Reay drew inspiration from the real Ursula Kuczynski Beurton, better known by the code name Agent Sonya. According to publicity materials for the novel, Beurton was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, became a communist as a teenager and eventually worked as a Soviet intelligence agent in Europe and Asia. She settled in England in 1941 and fled to East Germany in 1950 as British intelligence pursued her.

Her story gave Reay fertile territory for exploring a question at the heart of historical fiction: What happens when the truth is already stranger than something a novelist might invent?

“The Undercover Bookshop” also taps into Reay’s interest in classic British mysteries. Its fictional heroine is an avid mystery reader whose knowledge of books begins to shape the way she interprets the strange events around her.

Reay is a bestselling and award-winning author who writes fiction and nonfiction. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern University and lives outside Bozeman, Montana, with her husband and, as her biography puts it, “too many dogs.”

Books aren’t her only longtime interest. Reay has been fly-fishing for about 45 years and says some of her best ideas have emerged while fishing streams in England, across the United States and as far south as Patagonia.

Her Bluffton appearance opens a Lunch With Authors season that will continue through April, bringing writers and readers together for lunch, conversation and book signings.

Katherine Reay will appear at noon Oct. 22 at the Belfair Clubhouse, 200 Belfair Oaks Blvd. in Bluffton, as part of the USCB Center for the Arts’ Lunch With Authors series.

Reservations are required at least seven days in advance. Books will be available for purchase and signing before and after the luncheon. Tickets and additional information are available through the USCB Center for the Arts ticket office or by calling 843-521-4145.