Berlin, 1943. A group of high-society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer afternoon.

They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo - revealing their secret to the Nazis' most ruthless detective. They form a circle of unlikely rebels, drawn from the German elite: two countesses, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, an ambassador's widow and a pioneering headmistress. Meeting in the shadows, rescuing Jews or plotting for a future Germany freed from the Führer's rule, what unites them is a shared loathing of the Nazis, a refusal to bow to Hitler and the courage to perform perilous acts of resistance.

Or so they believe. How did a group of brave, principled rebels, who had successfully defied Adolf Hitler for more than a decade, come to fall into such a lethal trap? And who betrayed them?Undone from within and pursued to near-destruction by one of the Reich's cruellest men, they showed a heroism that raises a question with new urgency for our time: what kind of person does it take to risk everything and stand up to tyranny?

Magnificent . . .Important and impressive'  DAILY TELEGRAPH

'Astonishing . . .Freedland is a master'  MICK HERRON

'Remarkable . . .This is how the best history books will be written in the future'  ANDREW ROBERTS

'Excellent . . .Perfect reading for this moment'  ANNE APPLEBAUM

'Utterly gripping, brilliantly researched and written'  ANTHONY HOROWITZ

'Compelling'  MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES 'Thrilling, humane, and deeply moving . . .

Not to be missed'  DAVID McCLOSKEY 

'Totally gripping and timely'  JONATHAN DIMBLEBY