Winter Games

Winter Games is a dazzling tale of secrets and betrayal: perfect reading for fans of The Bolter by Frances Osborne, and the writing of the Mitfords.

Munich, 1936. She doesnt know it, but eighteen-year old Daphne Linden has a seat in the front row of history. Along with her best friend, Betsy Barton-Hill, and a whole bevy of other young English upper-class girls, Daphne is in Bavaria to improve her German, to go to the Opera, to be finished. It may be the Third Reich, but another war is unthinkable, and the girls are having the time of their lives. Arent they?

London, 2006. Seventy years later and Daphnes granddaughter, Francie Fitzsimon has all the boxes ticked: large flat, successful husband, cushy job writing up holistic spas . . . The hardest decision she has to make is where to go for brunch - until, that is, events conspire to send her on a quest to discover what really happened to her grandmother in Germany, all those years ago.

A rip-roaring readEvening Standard

Theres never a dreary moment in this blast of a book . . . Johnsons descriptions are irresistibly exuberant . . . As addictively, fizzily invigorating as the Alpine air itselfDaily Mail

Johnson delivers a genuine sense of time and place . . . there isnt a dull sentence in this sure-footed novel Jenny Colgan, Telegraph

An excellent romp. Full of tally-ho Mitfordian charm . . . a witty, fast readRed

Excellent on period detail, the blundering innocent abroad and young heartbreak Sunday Times

The Jane Austen of W11Scotsman

Rachel Johnson is a journalist who has written two previous novels and two volumes of diaries. The Mummy Diaries, NottingHell, Shire Hell and A Diary of The Lady are all available now from Penguin.