As the Nazi war machine smashes into Poland, a young Jewish boy living near Warsaw is forced to flee with his aunt, Tania, and the two enter into a secret life of forged papers, false identifies, and constant movement.

"1942. Sadie Gault is eighteen and living with her parents amid the horrors of the Jewish Ghetto in Krakow, Poland, during World War II. When the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie and her mother are forced to seek refuge in the sewers beneath the city. Ella Stepanek is an affluent Polish girl living a life of relative ease with her stepmother, who has developed close alliances with the occupying Germans. While on an errand in the market, she catches...

"In the spring of 1942, young Elzbieta Rabinek is aware of the swiftly growing discord just beyond the courtyard of her comfortable Warsaw home. She has no fondness for the Germans who patrol her streets and impose their curfews, but has never given much thought to what goes on behind the walls that contain her Jewish neighbors. She knows all too well about German brutality--and that it's the reason she must conceal her true identity. But in befriending...

In this tale of a Polish family desperately trying to put itself back together after WWII, Silvana and Janusz travel to England where they attempt to put the past behind them. But the secrets they carry pull at the threads of their fragile peace.

Sixteen-year-old Catholic Stefania Podgórska has worked in the Diamant family's grocery store in for four years, even falling in love with one of their sons, Izio; but when the Nazis came to Przemsyl, Poland, the Jewish Diamants are forced into the ghetto (and worse) and only Izio's brother Max manages to escape, and Stefania embarks on a dangerous course--protecting thirteen Jews in her attic, caring for her younger sister, Helena, and keeping everything...

"Life is a constant struggle for the eighteen-year-old Nowak twins as they raise their three younger siblings in rural Poland under the shadow of the Nazi occupation ... Helena discovers an American paratrooper stranded outside their small mountain village ... Risking the safety of herself and her family, she hides Sam--a Jew--but Helena's concern for the American grows into something much deeper ... [as] Helena is forced to contend with the jealousy...

In 1944, the Polish city of Lwów has been liberated from Germany but is caught among the insurgent armies of several countries and its resistance fighter; in this city, loyalty comes second to self-preservation. In order to eat, Tolya joins the Red Army but is rescued by Ukranian freedom fighters after he murders a Soviet officer in the street. That doesn't mean he trusts them, though.

In her powerful debut, Hodgkinson takes on the tale of a family desperately trying to put itself back together after WWII.

"On a golden August morning in 1939, sisters Antonina and Helena Dąbrowska send their father off to defend Poland against the looming threat of German invasion. The next day, the first bombs fall on Warsaw, decimating their beloved city and shattering the world of their youth. When Antonina's beloved Marek is forced behind ghetto walls along with the rest of Warsaw's Jewish population, Antonina turns her worry into action and becomes a key figure...