The Midnight News

It is 1940 and bombs are falling on London. Watching from her attic window, Charlotte sees enemy planes coming in over the city, and her neighbours' homes destroyed. Still grieving her beloved brother who never returned from France, Charlotte has moved away from her overbearing family and built a new life for herself. She works as a typist for the Ministry of Information, rents a room on the top floor of Mrs Callaghan's ramshackle house, and shares gin and confidences with her best friend, Elena. On her way to work she often sees the boy who feeds the birds - a source of unexpected joy amidst the rubble of the Blitz. But every day brings new scenes of devastation, and after another heartbreaking loss Charlotte comes to fear that there is something - or someone - else at work. Who is the shadow man who seems to be following her. Or is her mind playing tricks on her again. As Charlotte begins to hear the voices of her lost friends, her nerves become increasingly frayed, and others fear for her sanity. Soon she finds herself taken back to Summer Fields, a place in which she has a painful history and no clear means of escape. Riveting, heart-stopping and deeply moving, The Midnight News is the unforgettable new novel from Jo Baker, bestselling author of Longbourn, plunging the reader into war-torn London and the mind of a brilliant, observant but increasingly disturbed young woman. The result is a stunningly imagined novel of nail-biting suspense, with the sweetest love story running through it.