As the clock ticks down the final minute of World War II in Europe, Steven Mayfield’s novel “Sixty Seconds” tells the stories of nine people on both sides of the Atlantic—a legendary war correspondent, a madwoman and her unwitting accomplice in a deranged assassination attempt, a fifteen-year-old girl singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Times Square, her soldier brother still in Germany, a Nazi war criminal undergoing interrogation, a German foot soldier frantically dodging Russian patrols as he attempts to surrender to Americans, and a Polish couple who endured the seemingly unendurable only to be separated by an ocean as they are about to become parents.

Individually and together, these seemingly disparate and yet inextricably intertwined people hurtle toward their own climactic finishes as midnight and the official beginning of V-E Day approaches on 7 May 1945.

The book was a finalist for the 2025 CIBA Ernest Hemingway Award (Wartime Fiction), and included on Literary Hub’s 100 Small Press Notables of 2025.

Registration recommended to save your seat.