A compelling wartime drama for fans of Lucinda Riley, Rachel Hore and Katherine Webb
Detta works as a translator for a Nazi-run labour camp for French workers. One winter morning in early 1945, Detta passes a group of exhausted British prisoners of war who are being force-marched westwards. The following day she receives an urgent message to contact the local priest. He is harbouring a group of escaped British prisoners of war in the manse: can she help?
London, 1989. Miranda is a 19-year old photography student in London, in thrall to her older boyfriend, a journalist called Quill. In November the fall of the Berlin Wall is all over the news. Quill asks Miranda to come with him to Germany: before they leave, Miranda's grandmother gives her an old postcard of the village she was born in. Miranda hopes that working together in Berlin will help cement the cracks in her relationship with Quill, but one night his behaviour spills over into violence, and Miranda ends up fleeing through the rubble of the Berlin wall and into the East. As she travels further, she begins to suspect she's being followed by the Stasi. If she goes on, she worries that she'll be taken into custody and be accused of spying; if she turns back, it means returning to Quill.
At last her grandmother's photograph offers the solution. She tells people that she is going to find her family in the East. The Catholic church, and the manse, opposite where her grandmother once lived, are still standing. And the secrets of the past begin to be revealed.
Wartime secrets threaten one woman's life in the latest thrilling drama from the author of The Gunner Girl and The English Agent.
World-renowned war artist Dame Laura Knight is commissioned to paint propaganda portraits of factory girls and is sent to the ordnance factories in her hometown of Nottingham. At first she relishes the opportunity for a nostalgia trip, but when she starts work on a portrait of two particular women, Violet Smith, and her co-worker Zelah Fitzlord, memories begin to resurface that she has spent half a lifetime trying to forget.
Violet is an industrial conscript, and her wages help support a sprawling family back home in Kent. But working in munitions also meant freedom from a small-town mentality, and the disappointment of a first love turned sour. For Zelah, too, working in the gun factory meant escape: her dreams of the future were dashed in the carnage of the Plymouth Blitz, and she found refuge in the numbing repetition of manual work.
But, just like war artist Laura, Violet and Zelah have something hidden, mistakes that they have tried to leave behind with their old selves.
Will the night shift keep these women's secrets, or will the past explode into the present and change all of their lives forever?
From the best-selling author of The Gunner Girl - how far will two women go to survive WWII?
Having suffered a traumatic experience in the Blitz, Edie feels utterly disillusioned with life in wartime London. The chance to work with the Secret Operations Executive (SOE) helping the resistance in Paris offers a fresh start. Codenamed 'Yvette', she's parachuted into France and met by the two other members of her SOE cell. Who can she trust?
Back in London, Vera desperately needs to be made a UK citizen to erase the secrets of her past. Working at the foreign office in charge of agents presents an opportunity for blackmail. But when she loses contact with one agent in the field, codenamed Yvette, her loyalties are torn.
This unabridged audio version is read by Charlotte Strevens.
***Winner of the RNA Joan Hessayon New Writers Award 2016 ***
Perfect listening for fans of Katie Flynn, Margaret Dickinson and Ellie Dean! Meet the Gunner Girls - three women with one shared ambition: to join the ATS and do their bit for King and country.
Bea has grown up part of a large, boisterous Kent family. But she hasn't heard from her soldier sweetheart in months and her mother is controlling her life. She needs to take charge of her future.
Edie inhabits a world of wealth and privilege, but knows only too well that money can't buy happiness. She wants to be like Winston Churchill's daughter, Mary, to make a difference.
Joan can't remember anything of her past or her family, and her home has been bombed in the Blitz. Desperate, she needs a refuge.
Each one is a Gunner Girl: three very different women, one remarkable wartime friendship of shared hopes, lost loves and terrible danger.
This unabridged audio version is read by Julie Maisey.
