The Light over London

One morning while passing through Grand Central Terminal on her way to work, Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. Unable to resist her own curiosity, Grace opens the suitcase, where she discovers a dozen photographs - each of a different woman. In a moment of impulse, Grace takes the photographs and quickly leaves the station. Grace soon learns the suitcase belonged to a woman named Eleanor Trigg, leader of a network of female secret agents who were deployed out of London during the war. 

A captivating novel based on the story of the extraordinary real-life American woman who secretly worked for the French Resistance during World War II - while playing hostess to the invading Germans at the iconic Hôtel Ritz in Paris 

Germany, 1944. Taken from the camps to serve the Fuhrer himself, Anke Hoff has been assigned as midwife to one of Hitler’s inner circle. If she refuses, her family will die. Torn between her duty as a caregiver and her hatred for the regime she’s now a part of, Anke is quickly swept into a life unlike anything she’s ever known - and she discovers that many of those at the Berghof are just as trapped as she is. Soon, she’s falling for a man who will make her world more complicated still.

Germany, 1943. The choices she makes will change her life forever. Growing up in Hitler's Germany, Charlotte von Klein has big dreams for the future. Her mind is full of plans for a sumptuous wedding to her childhood sweetheart, Heinrich, while working for the Luftwaffe, proudly giving her all for the Fatherland. But in 1943, the tide of the war is turning against Germany, and Lotte's life of privilege and comfort begins to collapse around her.

War has engulfed Europe and now the Pacific, and Australia is fighting for its future. For spinster Flora Atkins, however, nothing much has changed. Tending her dull office job and beloved brother and father, as well as knitting socks for the troops, leaves her relatively content. Then one day, a stranger gives her brother a white feather and Flora's anger propels her out of her safe life and into the vineyards of the idyllic Mildura countryside, a member of the Australian Women's Land Army.

Elderly and in poor health, Mary fulfils her wish to herself to live out her last days on Bruny Island with only her regrets and memories for company. A long time ago, her late husband was the lighthouse keeper on Bruny, and she'd raised a family on the wild windswept island, until terrible circumstances forced them back to civilisation. The long-buried secret that has haunted her for decades now threatens to break free, and she is hoping to banish it once and for all before her time is up.  

The last time Valerie was in Paris, she was three years old, running from the Nazis, away from the only home she had ever known. Now as a young woman all alone in the world, Valerie must return to Paris, to the bookshop and her sole surviving relative, her grandfather Vincent, the only person who knows the truth about what happened to her parents. As she gets to know grumpy, taciturn Vincent again, she hears a tragic story of Nazi-occupied Paris, a doomed love affair, and a mother willing to sacrifice everything for her beloved daughter.  

When young English nurse Sibyl Lake is recruited as a spy to support the French resistance, she doesn’t realize the ultimate price she will end up paying. She arrives in Colmar, a French town surrounded by vineyards and swarming with German soldiers. Her fear is dampened by the joy of being reunited with her childhood sweetheart Jacques. Sibyl’s arrival has not gone unnoticed by Commander Wolfgang von Haagan. She realizes that letting him get closer is her best chance of learning enemy secrets. Yet despite her best intentions, Sibyl finds that betrayal does not come easy to her.

Christmas 1926: the Forbes family are hosting a celebration at Eden Hall. Eighteen-year-old Daisy is preoccupied by a sense of change. Overnight, her relationship with Stephen Jessop, the housekeeper’s son, has shifted, and every encounter seems fraught with tension. Before the festivities are over, Daisy has received a declaration of love, a proposal and a kiss - from three different men. Unable to bear the confusion, she flees to London. By the following summer, Daisy has bowed to the persistence of the man who proposed to her. 

Paris, 1942: When Jessica May's successful modelling career in Manhattan is abruptly cut short, she is assigned to the war in Europe as a photojournalist for Vogue. But when she arrives the army men make her life as difficult as possible. Three friendships change that: journalist Martha Gellhorn encourages Jess to bend the rules, paratrooper Dan Hallworth takes her to places to shoot pictures and write stories that matter and a little girl, Victorine, who has grown up in a field hospital, shows her love. But success comes at a price.

When Martha’s beloved father dies, he leaves her two things: a mysterious stash of letters to an English woman named "Catkins" and directions to a beach hut in the English seaside town of Wells-Next-the-Sea. Martha is at a painful crossroads in her own life and seizes this chance for a trip to England - to discover more about her family’s past and the identity of her father’s secret correspondent.

Seraphine Mayes and her brother, Danny, are known as the summer-born Summerbournes: the first set of summer twins to be born at Summerbourne House. But on the day they were born their mother threw herself to her death, their au pair fled, and the village thrilled with whispers of dark-cloaked figures and a stolen baby. Now 25, and mourning the recent death of her father, Seraphine uncovers a family photograph taken on the day the twins were born featuring both parents posing with just one baby. 

Darby Thorne is a college student stranded by a blizzard at a highway rest stop in the middle of nowhere. She’s on the way home to see her sick mother. She’ll have to spend the night in the rest stop with four complete strangers. Then she stumbles across a little girl locked inside one of their parked cars. There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, no way out because of the snow, and she doesn’t know which one of the other travelers is the kidnapper.

1954: When 16-year-old Hungarian Elizabeta arrives in Australia with her family, she is hoping to escape the hopelessness of life as a refugee in post-war Germany. Her first stop is the Bonegilla Migrant Camp on the banks of the Murray in rural Victoria, a temporary home for thousands of new arrivals, all looking for work and a better life. There, Elizabeta becomes firm friends with the feisty Greek Vasiliki; quiet Italian Iliana; and the adventurous Frances, the daughter of the camp's director.

London, 1944. Two young nurses meet at a train station with a common purpose: to join the war effort. Scarlet longs for the chance to find her missing fiancé, Thomas, and to prove to her family - and to herself - that she's stronger than everybody thinks. Nursing is in Ellie's blood, but her humble background is vastly different from Scarlet's privileged upbringing. Though Ellie puts on a brave face, she's just as nervous as Scarlet about what awaits them in France.