The Garden of Angels

Description

When a Jewish classmate is attacked by bullies, fifteen-year-old Nico just watches - earning him a week's suspension and a typed, yellowing manuscript from his frail Nonno Paolo. A history lesson, his grandfather says, and a secret he must keep from his father. Nico is transported back to the Venice of 1943, an occupied city seething under the Nazis, and to the defining moment of his grandfather's life: when Paolo's support for a murdered Jewish woman brings him into the sights of the city's underground resistance. Hooked and unsettled, Nico can't stop reading - but he soon wonders if he ever knew his beloved grandfather at all.

David Hewson is a former journalist with The Times, the Sunday Times and the Independent. He is the author of more than twenty-five novels including his Rome-based Nic Costa series, which has been published in fifteen languages. He has also written three acclaimed adaptations of the Danish TV series The Killing. @david_hewson | davidhewson.com

'I can thoroughly recommend this book . . . it has a strong message about fascism and about what happens to a country when people not only support and encourage it but also stand by and do nothing; are complicit in their silence. Masterful impassioned writing' - RICHARD ARMITAGE 'Vivid and compelling, The Garden of Angels is at once a richly wrought thriller set in WWII Venice and a powerful exploration of the grey areas in which we live in times of fear and oppression' - SARAH PINBOROUGH 'Gripping and powerful, The Garden of Angels richly evokes the tension and threat of Nazi-occupied Venice. A moving and important novel' - TESS GERRITSEN 'If you only read one book this year, read this one. Its essential truth about what happened in WWII and about what is happening now will both chill and inspire you. It's also a damn good story featuring fantastic characters - one of which is Venice herself' - BARBARA NADEL 'With a gallery of wonderful characters on both sides of the fence and never flinching from the atrocities committed by all parties, this is a gripping tale of pathos and heroism with a wonderful final twist that raises the book to a whole other level' - MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI 'Readers [will be] gasping in surprise, and Hewson expertly balances tense action and thoughtful emotion' - Publishers Weekly