Bøker av David Spiller

On 9th July 1943 Allied forces launched the greatest invasion the world had known upon Sicily, a small island disfigured by grinding poverty and the depredations of the Mafia.As the fighting unfolded, a young British soldier and an Anglo-Italian woman met by chance and reached an unusual understanding. In the two days they were to spend together she would assist his attack upon German soldiers who had killed his friend. Meanwhile he would support her revenge upon an abusive Mafia hoodlum.In the event, both parties became committed to more than they had bargained for.

Jean Costain is the young wife of a British intelligence officer garrisoned in Rangoon during the 2nd World War.The Japanese bombing of the city in 1942 finds British forces unprepared for war, and they soon fall back into northern Burma. Deprived of their protection, half a million members of the unpopular Indian community set out on the thousand-mile journey back to India.Unable to leave Burma by conventional routes Jean joins the exodus, along with her beautiful Indian maid and the maid's 11-year old daughter. They travel by jeep, by paddle-steamer and on foot through one of the hottest and most inhospitable jungles in the world, facing hunger, disease, hostile Burmans, gangs of deserters - and the Japanese. They mix with the exhausted British troops engaged in the longest fighting retreat of their history.As she tries to guide her little party out of Burma, Jean discovers much about her own resourcefulness, her attitudes to race and class, and her capacity for love.

It is 1964, and Chris Nash is 20. His mother is married to Reg, whom Chris thinks is his father. He is therefore astonished when she tells him that his real father was a pilot, John Gregson, killed during the 2nd World War in an accident training Australian air crews. Chris sets out to discover more about the little-known incident. He tracks down his father's only living relative, and visits the site of the crash, near a small church in Bedfordshire. In flashback we see what happened to Gregson during the three days before the accident. He conducted his last bombing flight over Germany, and was seduced by an actress called Sarah. He visited his fiancée (Chris's mother), who broke off their engagement; unknown to him she was pregnant with Chris.To commemorate the airmen who died in the crash, Chris organises a memorial stone in the Bedfordshire churchyard, and a church service. To his amazement a surprise guest turns up: an Australian who was the one survivor. In talking to local people who were involved in the accident, and to his father's former engineer, Chris comes to believe there were seven airmen on the plane, not six as previously believed. And when he locates Sarah, the actress who seduced his father 20 years earlier, she tells him something that plays havoc with the lives of his whole family.

It is May 1940 and people in the English coastal town of Ramsgate wonder what Britain's declaration of war with Germany will lead to. Then members of the British Expeditionary Force in France start dribbling back to Ramsgate harbour like defeated men. Gradually the truth emerges. Unless the 300,000 troops trapped on the French coast can be evacuated, Britain's war effort will be all but over.Amongst the private citizens volunteering to supplement the British navy's effort is the 21-year old Chrissie Sellick. Together with her father she crosses the Channel in their 30-foot motor yacht Blithe Spirit. They ferry troops from the beaches onto big ships lying offshore, then enter the maelstrom of Dunkirk harbour itself, exposed to the full force of German fire-power.Their story is intertwined with the exploits of two ordinary soldiers - a dispatch rider and a Territorial - who link up by chance to make the hazardous journey across France to Dunkirk, collecting a stray dog along the way.Chrissie Sellick is a female presence on the almost exclusively male scene of Dunkirk. In four days of relentless endeavour she faces both triumphs and tragedies, and realises that her sheltered life in Ramsgate will never be the same again.