Steamy, sensitive, and skillfully written page-turner was the first lesbian pulp--and a 4-million-copy bestseller.

Tereska Torres (1923-2012) escaped Nazi-occupied France in 1940 and became a secretary to Free French leader Charles DeGaulle in London. Over her long career, she wrote some 20 books (novels and memoirs), with translations published here by Knopf, Dell, Simon and Schuster. Torres married the American literary figure Meyer Levin during the war; he would later translate many of her novels. Torres continued to live and write in France until her death at age 92.