Vienna, 1937. When beautiful American Kitty becomes engaged to Austrian diplomat Edgar, she finds herself thrown into a very different world in Europe, and soon longs for home. But when the woman designing her wedding dress, Judith, takes Kitty under her wing, she sees the city of Vienna in a new light–a city of culture and music that she can explore with her new friend.

Londoner Madeleine Grant is studying at the Sorbonne in Paris when she marries charismatic French journalist Giles Martin. As they raise their son, Olivier, they hold on to a tenuous promise for the future. Until the thunder of war sets off alarms in France. Staying behind to join the resistance, Giles sends Madeleine and Olivier to the relative safety of England, where Madeleine secures a job teaching French at a secondary school. Yet nowhere is safe. After a devastating twist of fate resulting in the loss of her son, Madeleine accepts a request from the ministry to aid in the war effort.

1938: Magda has led a sheltered life in her small village until the day she is forced from her home by the invading Nazi army. Torn away from her family and the only place she has ever known, she is offered refuge in an alpine villa owned by brilliant Dr, Tauber and his talented, beautiful wife. But despite having friends in high places, the Jewish Taubers are living on borrowed time. When the Gestapo come to arrest them, Magda is asked to protect something more precious than the silver and jewels they leave behind. Their newborn son Samuel.

For Iris, each visit to her mother in St Mabon’s Cove, Cornwall has been the same—a serene escape from the city. But today, as she breaths in the salt air on the doorstep of her beloved childhood home, a heavy weight of anticipation settles over her. Iris knows she’s adopted, but any questions about where she came from have always been shut down by her parents, who can’t bear to revisit the past. Now, Iris can’t stop thinking about what she’s read on the official paperwork: BABY GIRL, FRANCE, 1939 – the year war was declared with Nazi Germany.

Germany, 1945. As the ground shakes and the air raid sirens wail, Katja holds her tiny baby to her chest. She pictures Karl’s handsome face and kind blue eyes, her breath catching at the thought of him heading back to the front. She must never tell anyone about the letters she delivered for him or the other secret she is hiding....

Paris, 1943. German soldiers drag me out onto the cobbled street and push me toward the waiting truck. I force myself to face forward as tears stream down my cheeks. If I look back, they’ll know. I can’t let them find my baby girl....

1940. Cora Mayhew came to Paris to search for her birth mother and stayed to work for the resistance movement. When Cora's train is struck by Nazi bombs, the only thoughts on her mind as she staggers from the wreckage are to escape to return to her family, and to post the heart-wrenching letter clutched in her hand. Then a German soldier finds and saves Cora. Max Heller is nothing like she would have expected: kind, good-humoured and selfless. Cora can't help falling in love with him as he helps to plot her escape.

Germany, 1941: I stroke the blonde curl away from my daughter’s face, and my heart swells. I never imagined having children, and I never thought I’d love someone this much. Clara is the most precious thing to me. I whisper to her that I will do everything I can to keep her safe.

For months, Marianne’s resistance network has carried out courageous missions from a remote farmhouse in Southern Provence, aiding the Nazis’ downfall. But one fateful night, they are viciously ambushed as German soldiers storm in, scattering, capturing or killing every last person there. Mourning the loss of her friends, Marianne will need every ounce of courage to survive. Not only has her life as a secret agent been critically compromised, but her heart has been shattered. Because Jack, her darling fiancé and fellow spy, fled in the chaos–and is accused of being a traitor.

London, 1933. At first glance, Austrian opera singer Elsa Mayer-Braun has little in common with the young English typist she encounters on tour. Yet she and Hattie Featherstone forge an instant connection—and strike a dangerous alliance. Using their friendship as a cover, they form a secret society with a daring goal: to rescue as many Jews as possible from Nazi persecution. Though the war’s outbreak threatens Elsa and Hattie’s network, their efforts attract the covert attention of the British government, offering more opportunities to thwart the Germans.

Occupied Poland, 1942: Despite the constant presence of German soldiers in her village, Emilia is allowed certain freedoms as a midwife—the most precious is innocently cycling past Nazi checkpoints to the homes of expectant mothers on her rounds. But Emilia has a secret: for years she’s also been visiting the hidden Jewish mothers and working for the resistance…until she is betrayed.

Sophie Dix fled Stuttgart with her brother as the Nazi regime gained power in Germany. Now, with her brother gone and her adopted home city of Paris conquered by the Reich, Sophie reluctantly accepts a position restoring damaged art at the Jeu de Paume museum under the supervision of the ERR—a German art commission using the museum as a repository for art they’ve looted from Jewish families.

It is 1936, and Nancy Wake is an intrepid Australian expat living in Paris who has bluffed her way into a reporting job for Hearst newspaper when she meets the wealthy French industrialist Henri Fiocca. No sooner does Henri sweep Nancy off her feet and convince her to become Mrs. Fiocca than the Germans invade France and she takes yet another name: a code name. As Lucienne Carlier, Nancy smuggles people and documents across the border and earns a new nickname from the Gestapo for her remarkable ability to evade capture: The White Mouse.

Stumbling through the terrifying wrought iron gates of Auschwitz, Jewish author Etty Weil longs for her apartment overlooking the Seine, where she used to laugh with friends, her shelves full of records and her beloved typewriter by the wide window. Now she looks on in horror as a young girl, Danielle, is ruthlessly torn apart from her sobbing mother. Etty has always longed for the warm embrace of family: and trapped inside the maze of barbed wire, she takes fourteen-year-old Danielle under her wing and soon comes to cherish her like a sister.

All her life, Zofia has found comfort in two things during times of hardship: books and her best friend, Janina. But no one could have imagined the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. As the bombs rain down and Hitler’s forces loot and destroy the city, Zofia finds that now books are also in need of saving. With the death count rising and persecution intensifying, Zofia jumps to action to save her friend and salvage whatever books she can from the wreckage, hiding them away, and even starting a clandestine book club.