astridcartesian.com / ARC Team
Read It
Before
The World Does.
Join the Advance Reader Copy team for Operation Nachthexen — and be among the first to hold this story.
The Novel
Operation Nachthexen
It is 1943. Nadezhda "Nadya" Kozlova — a pilot with the Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment — is shot down behind German lines on a routine mission.
She doesn't make it back to her regiment. She surfaces inside a partisan cell with a single objective: sabotage a German weapons facility before the women still bombing overhead pay the price.
Coordinating her ground operation with the Night Witches flying overhead, Nadya must navigate forced labor camps, a German defector she isn't sure she can trust, and the weight of a war that never asked women to survive it—only to win it.
History as action. Not academia. The women who flew 30,000 missions in canvas biplanes deserve a story that moves at the same speed they did. — Astrid Cartesian
Why This Story Matters
They Were Real.
Most of the World
Still Doesn't Know It.
The Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment was an all-female unit that flew under cover of darkness in Po-2 biplanes — canvas and wood aircraft originally built for crop dusting. They cut their engines on final approach, gliding silent over German positions to drop their payloads before the enemy could react.
The Germans called them Nachthexen — Night Witches. The name was fear wearing the shape of a slur. These women flew anyway.
Operation Nachthexen is built from primary research: aircraft specifications, mission logs, named pilots, real sorties. The fiction earns its place inside the facts.
```This is also a story about resistance — what it costs, what it demands, and what happens when the machinery of authoritarianism meets women who refuse to be erased. The history is not distant. It is instructive.
```The Exchange
What ARC Readers Get.
What ARC Readers Do.
Early Access
You receive a full advance copy of Operation Nachthexen before it is available to the public — ahead of any publication date.
The Review
In exchange, I ask for one thing: an honest public review, posted on or around release day — on Goodreads, Amazon, BookTok, your blog, wherever your audience lives.
No Cheerleading Required
I'm not looking for praise. I'm looking for genuine responses from readers who engaged seriously with the book. Critical reviews are as valuable as glowing ones.
Inside the World Now
As an ARC team member, you'll get access to The Nachthexen on Substack — deep research, character histories, and essays that build the world before the manuscript arrives.