THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE ESCAPE ARTIST

A THE ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Magnificent . . . Important and impressive'
DAILY TELEGRAPH

'Astonishing . . . Freedland is a master'
MICK HERRON

'Remarkable . . . This is how the best history books will be written in the future'
ANDREW ROBERTS

'Utterly gripping - and brilliantly told'
DOMINIC SANDBROOK

'Excellent . . . Perfect reading for this moment'
ANNE APPLEBAUM

'Utterly gripping, brilliantly researched and written'
ANTHONY HOROWITZ

'Compelling'
MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES

'Thrilling, humane, and deeply moving . . . Not to be missed'
DAVID McCLOSKEY

'Totally gripping and timely'
JONATHAN DIMBLEBY

When the whole world is lying, someone must tell the truth.

Berlin, 1943. A group of high-society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer afternoon. They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo - revealing their secret to the Nazis' most ruthless detective.

They form a circle of unlikely rebels, drawn from the German elite: two countesses, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, an ambassador's widow and a pioneering headmistress. Meeting in the shadows, rescuing Jews or plotting for a future Germany freed from the Führer's rule, what unites them is a shared loathing of the Nazis, a refusal to bow to Hitler and the courage to perform perilous acts of resistance. Or so they believe.

How did a group of brave, principled rebels, who had successfully defied Adolf Hitler for more than a decade, come to fall into such a lethal trap? And who betrayed them?

Undone from within and pursued to near-destruction by one of the Reich's cruellest men, they showed a heroism that raises a question with new urgency for our time: what kind of person does it take to risk everything and stand up to tyranny?