Well I felt quite emotionally drained after reading this story! I felt I knew Edith, Dori and Adeline. I was with them every step of the way in their search for Kurt and Elisabeth and for justice to be done. The research into this story is immense, the names, the faces, the places, the countries and of course all those wonderful recipes all came together to make this story come alive. The horrors of the Second World War are vividly told and we are not spared - as it should be! Unputdownable! I understand this is Celia Rees first adult novel - I sincerely hope it is not her last!

4.5 stars

Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook is set mainly in Germany in the first few months after the end of World War Two, a period when there was a scramble for power out of the wreckage of war. Into this scenario walks Edith Graham, a frustrated teacher who wants to do more with her life.

Offered an opportunity by a distant relative, Edith takes a job in Germany helping to start schools for children displaced by war, but she has also signed the official secrets act and has been asked to watch and listen for information which might lead to the arrest of war criminals.

As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that not everyone hunting Nazi party members wants to bring them to justice. Britain, America and Russia are all interested in the top scientists and medical doctors and have their own plans for these people - while Edith’s friend Dori is searching for missing British agents who disappeared under suspicious circumstances close to the end of the war.

Before Edith went to Germany she was asked by Dori to send her coded information about what was going on, because the she felt hampered in her search for a mole in the SOE (Special Operations Executive). Edith devised a message coding system using recipes, to send Dori her news.
I really enjoyed this story, as it took me to an era connected to the World War which was also the start of the Cold War and one I know very little about; I was quite shocked by some of the things that I read, especially about the war criminals and other Nazi party members.

The women in this book were the highlights for me; they shone through clearly and there were several great characters, all easily distinguishable. The male characters were harder to picture and I did get a little muddled between some of them and with which operation they belonged to, although this may have been deliberate in a double-crossing espionage style. I also liked the coded recipe idea and looked forward to guessing the messages between the lines of ingredients.

To sum this story up; a different type of World War Two story with an espionage theme which gave me much to think about especially with the advancements in science and medicine which took place in Germany during the war and where that information went after the war.

"Miss Graham's War" is a rattling good post war spy thriller set in Germany. Most of the action is in 1946 when Germany has been divided into zones controlled by various winning countries, including Britain, the USA and Russia. Edith Graham is assigned to the CCG with the task of setting up schooling for German children in around the severely bombed city of Lubeck. Along the way she mixes with people from different military and ex-military backgrounds, including Vera Atkins who was head of the French division of SOE.

The book highlights the struggles of the losers in the war and the duplicity of the victorious powers. At the same time as the Nuremberg Trials are taking place there are tussles to recruit Germans who carried out dubious research as part of their country's war efforts. This is a complex but very readable story as well as being interesting and informative.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publishers for the opportunity to review this book.

Really enjoyable journey through post-world war 2 Germany. The eponymous Miss Graham travels to Germany to help re-establish education services, but her role is a shield for more covert activities and she soon finds herself embroiled in hunts for Nazi war criminals, particularly a doctor she knew before the war.

Pacy story with some good twists and turns. Great for anyone who likes their history as readable fiction.

A gripping though emotionally difficult read which conjures up all sorts of feelings: anger, sadness, acute wish for justice. Set in 1946, mostly in Germany, the novel reflects very well the steps undertaken to restructure Germany with its numerous displaced persons, refugees. Edith is officially sent to Lübeck to help the organisation of education in the British sector. However, unofficially she is asked to spy to help find War Criminals. That is when it gets interesting: the concept of justice is not the same for everyone. For some, it means trial, for others revenge. Another concept emerges : catching war criminals to use their knowledge acquired through experience for so-called medicine improvement..... Edith becomes entangled in this spying net, not knowing whom she can trust. She is a person of integrity, trying to do the right thing.....
The novel is lightened up with many food recipes which also play a role in the story.
A good read which remains full of suspense till the very end.
Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this novel for free.
This is the review shared on Goodreads, Amazon and various Facebook book groups. However, I need to add here that the German used in the novel is most of the time incorrectly spelled. Just so that you know.

Celia Rees is a very successful author for several best-selling young adult books, Miss Graham's War is her first "adult" novel ...........and it's very good.

Edith Graham spent the Second World War Teaching and looking after her Mother. Feeling as if she's not "done her bit" and jaded by her humdrum life in England she applies for a post in Germany with the Central Control Commission tasked with rebuilding the shattered education system. after the War. Her distant cousin ,and sometime lover,Leo is "something in intelligence" and appears to be unsurprised that she gets the post......and wants a favour. Leo isn't the only one and Edith finds others with different agendas also vying for her help.

This is a great read set in the chaos of post-war Germany with the desolation and dire plight of the German population as a background, various intelligence services, supposedly on the same side, plotting and scheming against each other while vile and dangerous war criminals find themselves protected by various Allied authorities and in demand for their dubious "skills".

There are quite a few factual threads to the story that might shock the unenlightened. The Allies did turn a blind eye to former Gestapo officers pretty much running the post war police force,they did use known Balkan Nazi war criminals to form resistance groups in their own countries, treatment of the German civilians post war by the conquerors was appalling and disgusting and there is evidence that certain factions of British intelligence deliberately sacrificed brave men and women to suit a shadowy agenda.

Edith is a great character , already with mixed feelings about the "favours" she been asked to do she finds herself at the centre of a spider's web of intrigue,double-dealing, plotting and scheming in the volatile cauldron of post-war Germany.

Edith Graham wanted to do her bit. She has spent the war at home teaching whilst looking after her mother.

She is determined to do her bit in the aftermath and joins the Control Commission rebuilding post war Germany

This brings her to the attention of the legendary Vera Atkins who needs her help to track down her missing SOE girls.

Edith's cousin Leo who is something "hush hush" wants her to look for German friends from before the war who became high ranking Nazis.

Add in the Anericans,Russians and black marketeers in post war Germany and we have a tale of espionage with many twists and turns.

A great first adult novel from Celia Rees!

World War II has just ended, and Britain has established the Control Commission for Germany, which oversees their zone of occupation. The Control Commission hires British civilians to work in Germany, rebuild the shattered nation and prosecute war crimes. Somewhat aimless, bored with her job as a provincial schoolteacher, and unwilling to live with her stuffy genteel parents any longer, twentysomething Edith Graham applies for a job with the Commission—but is instead recruited by the OSS. To them, Edith is perfect spy material!

“Miss Graham’s War” is different, a quiet slant on a spy story, quite powerful and very effective. The preface and prologue provide a delicious and tasty twist. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

3.5/5.

Celia Rees is very well known for her Young Adults fiction; ‘Miss Graham’s War’ is her first published novel for adults. Has she adapted her style and her focus successfully? Most emphatically, yes!
Over the course of the novel we become familiar with the different factions determined to profit from post-WW2 Germany as well as those who are keen to help the homeless and vulnerable overseas. Edith Graham, German speaking and bored of being her mother’s companion, is newly employed as an educational assessor and facilitator in Lubeck, with the gargantuan task of encouraging street children back into school. However, even before she has left England she realises that she has also been chosen for this task because she knows Kurt von Stavenhow and his wife, Elizabeth. The former has been working within the infamous Nazi experimental medical corps and must pay for his crimes. Can Edith find him and play a part in his capture?
As the narrative progresses, the reader begins to understand, alongside Edith, that post-war morality is decidedly murky. A number of different organisations are keen to find Kurt, and for different reasons. Celia Rees creates a large cast of characters, helpfully introduced in the first chapter (set in 1989) without resorting to stereotype. In particular, the female characters are really memorable. The reader soon begins to appreciate what they all mean to each other, yet Rees allows just enough ambiguity for the reader to be kept on tenterhooks as the arrangements to entrap von Stavenhow become ever more complex.
This is a gripping read which reminds us of the heinous experiments carried out by Nazis in the name of science whilst never being gratuitous in its descriptions of these evils. ‘Miss Graham’s War’ highlights how and why many war criminals escape justice whilst also celebrating the work of those determined to ensure that they do not.
My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK, Harper Fiction for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

Edith Graham had always done her duty, being a good teacher and caring for her mother while every one else did their bit for the war. It was her turn now, to go to Germany to help set up schools in the aftermath of WWII. Thanks to her cousin, Leo, she got the job but it wasn’t how she imagined it, it was far worse, and she was struggling to make any impression. Her extra job, from Leo, was to help find Kurt, a lover from before the war, who was a member of the SS.

This is a powerful read, with a heroine with such warmth, honesty and realism. It portrays the post war Germany so well, showing that although the war had ended, the condition for the survivors were brutal, harrowing and at times heart breaking. It also portrays the Allies in a light we don’t want to believe, but know how true it was, employing the pick of the scientists and engineers regardless of what horrors they had committed during the war. It also shows how the end of the war didn’t stop good people trying to find out what had happened to their comrades who had been captured by the enemy. A slightly slow start but none the worse for that, it had me gripped, with a twist I wasn’t expecting. Compulsive read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Miss Graham Cold war cookbook is set just after WW2. Edith Graham is a teacher and wants to do more with her life, so she decides to join the British control commission as an Education Officer. To be sent to Germany to Lubeck to re-establish schools. She is also asked by the British intelligence service to find her ex-boyfriend Kurt who is now a member of the SS to defect to America and pass messages though a cookbook to find the whereabouts of a woman that just happens to be Kurt’s wife but also a British agent that has disappeared behind enemy lines.
I thank Harper Collins for a copy of this book. I didn’t realise that this book already published last year.
This book is a great insight to what happened after WW2 ended. How British agents searched for Nazi’s not to punish them for what they done. But to recruit them and gather information of their abilities.
It also showed the atrocities of what took place in the camps and also the hospitals. Where even children if they had some disability was treated or killed.
I did enjoy this story and found the recipes in the book interesting. It has great characters and storyline, but it thought it dragged on a bit too long 4 stars from me.

What a brilliant book, it was an excellent read with a twist at the end which I wasn’t expecting. Loved this one. My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

In 1946,Edith travels to Lubeck, Germany, to help set up schools for German children and the displaced young in a country still reeling from war and an ultimate loss. But Edith also has another mission, find a former beau of her youth who became to be a Nazi doctor and is now wanted by the British and Americans, as well as the Russians. In the form of recipes, Edith relays information back to her handlers as she embarks on a journey of danger, espionage and treachery.

This book started off a bit clunky for me but it grew stronger and stronger until I was hooked onto the pages, and could not put it down. At the start of the book, the story felt a bit weak and confusing for me as we were getting a lot of names that didn't mean anything yet and because we were meeting people Edith already had wartime connections with, it kind of felt we were being thrown into the middle of a conversation and trying to catch a thread.

However, as soon as Edith arrived in Germany and her work began, I felt myself really hooked by the story. I don't think I've read many other books set in Germany directly after WW2 when the country was completely devastated, civilians and refugees were starving and desperate and there was no government to run anything so the Brits and Americans who had their own interests in mind were doing a lot of the controlling.

I really liked the viewpoint of this - Celia Rees didn't shy away from the awful, hard to imagine, deeds of Nazi officers and doctors, as well as the sneakiness of the civilians who worshipped Hitler and his ilk. But she also made clear the suffering of the average German, and the people who were left to pick up the pieces when the SS did a runner, leaving a broken country behind them. I also really appreciated that neither the Brits or Americans were the big heroes in this tale - in fact, they were both as slimy and treacherous as each other and out for their own gain rather than making someone actually pay for what they did (which honestly was scream-inducing).

The female characters in this book are excellent - in fact, it is a female driven novel with the males just swooping in now and again to receive or give information or just be there as a brief distraction in the form of love making. Edith, Adeline and Dori were all fabulous characters and all different from each other - Edith, gentle yet intelligent, Dori smart and ruthless and Adeline was the sweeter one but ready to tell a story no matter how hard it would be. And then we had Elizabeth, Molly and Frau Schmidt on the other side - very different women but all powerful and big on the page in their own way.

As I said earlier, the story builds as plans are made and we are eventually standing on an Italian balcony with Edith not knowing what is about to happen. This book doesn't have a lot of action or gunfire, instead it is of hidden code, and fake smiles and an espionage built by women both good and evil.

Around the chapter 40 mark, I went back and read the very first chapter again as I suspected something (I was right) and it made the end even more thrilling for me.

I really enjoyed this, a different type of WW2 novel from ones I've read before where the real heroes are the women who joined up in bravery to go behind enemy lines and much more often than not, they never came back.

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3 Nazi-dodging, Recipe writing stars ***

I really like WW2 historical novels, and so when I saw this Cold War-based historical novel for request on #Netgalley I was really intrigued. I hadn't expanded my reading of historical novels past ww2, and the Cold War period is a a period of history I really enjoy learning about so I just had to read it. Thanks to the Publisher and the author - I was given an ARC in exchange for review.

I hadn't really considered what had happened to all the spies, and intelligence reporting after the end of WW2, and was really fascinated reading the story of the people who were posted to areas of Europe to find out what was going on with the Nazis and SS Officers after the Allies had claimed victory. IT appears that if anything, the intelligence gathering only increased - with no clear common goals and an open playing field in Germany, there were many parties from many sides all working to different agendas - some of them from the same country working against each other. This tale, whilst fictional really made me think about Germany after the war and I was really surprised I hadn't really considered it before. What did happen to all those families that claimed loyalty to the Fuhrer whilst the war was on? What did happen to all those thousands of soldiers that did unspeakable things - did they all really just return to normal life as if nothing had happened? Or did the families stay in the shadows, plotting, conspiring, reminiscing on the 'good old days' planning to stand up and go again if the 'Fourth Reich' was to come to fruition?

I also was really surprised and haunted to read about all the displaced person's accounts from neighboring countries, and how the end of the war did not necessarily mean all their problems were solved. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Prussia, Romania - all these countires faced further horrors. Their countries no longer existed as they knew them, if not completely converted into another country, then they had been invaded by the Russians and faced further horrors. They found themselves not welcome anywhere - Germany was too full of it's own problems to assist refugees, and England and America were only intent on having solved the 'War' and protecting Germany from the advancing Russians. Their choices were go home and be raped and beaten by Russian soldiers, or live on the streets in Germany hoping for a better life. I've read books and memoirs from Eastern European authors about their plights DURING the war - but never after, and I am saddened to realise that the war was not the end for them.

This book details lots of different perspectives on the issues on the ground after the war and prompted some real thinking points. What WAS the right thing to do with the Nazis after the victory? Were they useful to advancing science or should they have been punished for their heinous crimes? I am of the thinking that all countries involved in helping to assist these despicable creatures escape justice after the end of the war are almost as culpable as Hitler himself. I am disgusted in my own Country for potentially allowing this to happen. Straight on to the next enemy - Russia - instantly forgetting who we had been fighting for 6 years and why. Whilst marketed as 'Cold War' truthfully this book wasn't really set or focused on the Cold War. I was thinking it would be set in 60s era Cold War, but the majority of the action in this book happens in 1946, directly at the end of WW2 and set in Germany - not Russia or the US. It only really is 'Cold War' in that the Russians are present and trying to take advantage of the situation in Europe.

The clever use of recipes as a distraction in the submission of spy reports was an idea that appealed to me. Sadly, whilst every chapter was started with a recipe - I didn't really understand if there were hidden reports within them. If there were they were so cleverly coded that I didn't understand them. I also found that at times I got confused on who was working for who and to what aim. I was losing track of what the current mission was and who it was that our main protagonist Edith was working for during each point. For these reasons I have knocked a couple of stars off what would have been a 5 star novel.

I am really glad I read this though, and grateful for the thought-provoking and sensitive subjects breached of Jewish settlement in Israel/Palestine, and the re-location of Nazis and SS after the war to 'Western countries.' I am off to find some more accounts of what happened to these pigs after the war......

This was an absorbing read about a German speaking teacher who goes to Berlin after the war ostensibly to set up a school but also as a spy. This was a tense thriller which some good characters and non stop action.

Edith Graham had led a comfortable and sheltered life before the War. There were , of course, changes during the War eg she had taught German at a girls' Grammar School but give the society she lived and moved within it remained... .comfortable. After the War she wanted to break out and accepted a job in Germany helping to re-establish an education service for the impoverished children, many who were living in abject poverty. A young lady, Edith, was somewhat naive and not terribly worldly. She was surprised when asked to look out for former Nazis and particularly those who sought to look after themselves helping in the rebuilding of Germany when they should perhaps have been being prosecuted for War crimes. Here were conflicting demands which grew in complexity when she was asked to seek out and spy on a German Aristocrat and his wife. She had been his lover in the UK before the War and had had hopes of marrying him.
All of this brought personal danger to Edith, aggravated by the fact that Russian and American spies were often searching for the same people. Their interests were not always contiguous and they could react mercilessly if their interests were compromised..
Where does the Cookbook come in? Edith constructed an alter ego, a cook who produced recipes which looked innocuous but in fact included coded messages sent to a friend in the UK.. Tensions increase, who can one trust, can emotions and personal feelings be kept in check? Celia Rees has produced a cracking thriller with convincing characters and plot lines. Was it really like this in Germany at the time?. I, for one, believe it could have been. I encourage you to read it to see what you think..

Recommended

A story of life after WWII where each chapter contains a recipe. Are they just simple recipes though or maybe coded messages?
A tale unfolds of love and loss and how the war affected these people.
The end of the WWII leads into the Cold War and this recipe/cookbook author finds herself in sticky situations and caught up in continuing the fight for justice.
A multi layered read which keeps you wondering if the characters are who they say they are and the secrets they hold.
A well written book with a very satisfactory dramatic ending.
My thanks go to the author, publisher and Netgalley in providing this arc in exchange for a honest review.

Really enjoyable read with a very interesting way of communicating. This is a post war story. Loved the characters.

This was an completely enthralling and gripping read which is far from the cosy read I was expecting.

Firstly I enjoyed learning more about post war Germany which is a setting seldom used in a book. It was quite sobering to see the hardships suffered by many, particularly the children and see how many people had been displaced during the war years. The author has clearly done her research as she perfectly blends fact with fiction throughout the book which helps bring the era to life.

Edith was a fantastic main character who I warmed to instantly. She was an incredibly strong, intelligent woman and it was really interesting to follow her on her spy missions. My heart was in my mouth at some of the events in the book which had me worrying about her safety and hoping that she would be alright.

This is far from the cosy read I’d been expecting from the title and it’s actually quite gut wrenchingly sad in places. I often found myself having to stop to think for a little before continuing as it was so emotional but I wanted to find out what would happen. The tension in the book is slowly increased until it becomes almost unbearable and absolutely impossible to put the book down. There is always something going on and lots of shifting loyalties which made me unable to trust anyone properly. It’s a story that will stay with me for a long time and I can’t wait to read more from this author.

Huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and to Harper Collins for my copy of this book.