Toby Torlesse

During the harrows of WWII, Jo, a young shepherd along with the help of the widow Horcada, helps to smuggle Jewish children across the border from southern France into Spain.

It’s Christmas and the charming city of York, home to Jules, 16, and her dad, David, is decked out ready for the festive season. In many ways, David and Jules’ relationship is no different from that of most fathers and their sixteen-year-old daughters. He struggles to understand her, she refuses to communicate with him. He wants to be involved in her life, she wants her own space. In one important respect, however, David and Jules share a profound bond: the death of Jules’ mum, and David’s wife, in a car crash two years before. With both struggling to cope with everyday life in the shadow of their loss, Jules, inspired by happy memories of her mum, decides to take matters into her own hands.

Author Jonathan Stack, who has been so obsessed with trying to pen his magnum opus that he’s let his marriage to Samantha, who is also his agent and editor, break down to the point where she announces she’s leaving him for her business partner.