The untold story of female snipers
in WWII and the secret hunt for the
most evil Nazi of all.

NightSparrow_r2

About The Night Sparrow

Coming spring 2025

Determined to seek revenge for her family, murdered in the Minsk ghetto, Elena enrolls in the Central Women’s Sniper Training School in 1942. Eight months later, she’s part of an all-girls sniper platoon on the eastern front. Soon, she’s ashamed of her low tally of kills. Then, she’s injured, re-deployed as an interpreter, and entangled in a secret hunt for the most evil fascist of all.

About Shelly

Shelly Sanders is the author of The Night Sparrow, coming spring, 2025 from HarperCollins, as well as the Canadian bestseller Daughters of the Occupation, and several other historical fiction novels. She graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in English Literature and Ryerson University with a graduate degree in journalism.

Her work is inspired by her Russian Jewish ancestry, and she is especially drawn to untold stories about little-known women who defy expectations.

IMGM5764_mina 55 (1) (1)
81AMS7wuK3L._SL1500_ (1)

Also by Shelly

ON SALE NOW!

Daughters of the Occupation “vividly recreates the nerve-wracking fear and carnage of wartime Riga, as well as the city’s feeling of grim paranoia during the late Soviet period.”
–Kirkus, Starred Review

Latest Blog Post

Shura (Sara) Erenshtein: A Tribute to a Latvian Jewish Sniper from her daughter, Fira Erenshtein

When the Germans invaded Latvia in 1941, few Jews left Riga—their news had been censored for years so they didn’t know how the Nazis were treating Jews elsewhere in Europe. Shura Erenshtein, however, fled Riga for Uzbekistan on the last available train with her parents, four siblings, and three nieces and nephews. Two of Shura’s siblings and her mother died during their WWII escape from Latvia,…

Read More