From the best-selling author of Longbourn, a gripping, intricately voiced novel of one young woman’s unraveling during the Blitz—a story of WWII intrigue, love, and danger.
It is 1940 and bombs are falling on London. Watching from her attic window, Charlotte sees enemy planes flying in over the city and her neighbours’ homes turning to rubble. Still grieving for her beloved brother who never returned from France, Charlotte has moved away from her overbearing father and built a new life for herself. She works as a typist for the Ministry of Information, rents a room in a ramshackle house, and shares gin and confidences with her best friend, Elena.
Every day brings new scenes of devastation, and after each heartbreaking loss Charlotte comes to fear that something—or someone—else is responsible. Who is the shadow man that seems to be following her? Is her mind playing tricks? As Charlotte begins to hear the voices of her lost friends, her nerves become increasingly frayed. Soon she finds herself taken against her will to an asylum in the countryside, a place in which she has a painful history and no clear means of escape . . .Utterly riveting and hypnotic, The Midnight News is a love story, a war story, and an unforgettable journey into the fragile mind and fierce heart of an extraordinary young woman.