Vienna. 1936. Three young friends--Leo, Elsa, and Max--spend a perfect day together, unaware that around them Europe is descending into a growing darkness and that events will soon mean that they are ripped apart from each other as their lives take very different directions... Inspired by a true story, this is an extraordinary novel that is as powerful as it is heartbreaking and shows the bonds of love, family and friendship allow glimmers of hope...

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation,...

"BERLIN, 1939. The dreams that Amanda Sternberg and her husband, Julius, had for their daughters are shattered when the Nazis descend on Berlin, burning down their beloved family bookshop and sending Julius to a concentration camp. Desperate to save her children, Amanda flees toward the south of France, where the widow of an old friend of her husbands has agreed to take her in. Along the way, a refugee ship headed for Cuba offers another chance at...

In November 1938, young Ruth Block is a Jewish girl in Frankfurt Germany, trying to cope with the ever tightening noose of Nazi oppression; her father's stationery store has been shut down, and her school closed; then one night her family's apartment is broken into, and her father is dragged out, arrested, and taken to a concentration camp--and it becomes clear that if Ruth and her best friend Miriam are going to survive they must somehow get out...