A guilty secret haunts young widow Else as she tries to drown her conscience among the glittering lights of 1920s Berlin.

Else’s husband August returned from the Great War shattered in mind and body. Soon after, she finds herself a widow. Her best friend Hans, a gay man who also lost his partner in the war, joins her on a mission to disappear. There’s no work to be found in the devastated economy, nothing for them to build. But dance parties, cabarets, and hallucinatory nightclubs fill the tormented streets of the Weimar Republic, beacons in the night.

Hans introduces Else to Mae, a sophisticated bonne vivante who teaches Else new ways to forget. But as inflation rises and the social order crumbles, Else finds that her dark secrets refuse to be blotted out. At last, she must reckon with her ghosts—or let Mae’s treacherous friendship destroy everything that is left of her.

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Coming June 30 2026

Praise

“Part Cabaret, part Maria Braun, this intimate novella is a timely parable of a woman—and a nation—staggering toward madness.”

— Katharine Coldiron, author of Ceremonials

“A vivid snapshot of what life was like in Berlin between the wars, clear-sighted and powerful, and impeccably composed. Despite being a historical piece, it feels all too relevant today.”

— Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World

“A compelling and nuanced work of historical fiction that transports us back to the Berlin of the 1920s, in all its glitz, squalor, and desperate hope. Thoughtful, gripping, and wonderfully alive.”

— David Leo Rice, author of Drifters

“As bleak and beautiful as Berlin itself. Surprisingly tender and brutal.”

— Lindsay Lerman, author of What Are You and I’m From Nowhere

“Amy DeBellis writes like a conjurer, spinning her Weimar Berlin out of blood-light and shadow, hunger and grief. The dust of dead hope floats through the pages of The Widening Gyre—can anything grow where it settles? This novel will haunt you with its unanswerable questions, which linger long after the end.”

— Joanna Ruocco, author of Dan

“Devastatingly intoxicating, The Widening Gyre left me hollowed out, yet wholly satisfied, like clinging to the vanishing fragments of a dream. Featuring a cast of outsiders bound by grief, seeking oblivion and sanctuary in the smoke-filled cabarets of 1920s Berlin, DeBellis offers her readers the fragile hope of a streetlamp on the darkest night.”

— L.L. Madrid, author of My Lips, Her Voice

“Amy DeBellis's The Widening Gyre finds its protagonist slowly making her way towards rock bottom in Weimar Germany, even as the society around her begins its own slide into fascism and intolerance. It's a haunting story of unnerving agendas and grim secrets, told in a way that evokes both the heated rush of a delirious night on the town and the existential hangover that usually follows.”

— Tobias Carroll, author of In the Sight