by Audrey Magee
First published 2014
Peter Faber fights in the trenches on the eastern front when he decides to marry a stranger. The arrangement will give him three weeks of honeymoon leave away from the war. His bride Katharine Spinell lives in Berlin and sees opportunity in becoming a soldier's wife. If Peter dies in battle, she will collect a widow's pension. The two meet for their brief honeymoon and discover an attraction neither expected. Peter returns to fight at Stalingrad while Katharine climbs into Nazi high society through cunning and determination. As the war's momentum shifts, both Peter and Katharine face consequences they never anticipated. Their separate struggles reveal how ordinary people become entangled in extraordinary evil, and how love can emerge even from the most calculated beginnings.
Genres: romance, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, forced-proximity
Setting: Berlin, Stalingrad
Period: World War II
324 pages · Kindle Edition · Grove Press
Content warnings: violence, war