Restitution - Tapa dura

February 1945. Europe is in ruins and the Red Army is searing its way across Germany's eastern marches, revenging itself upon a petrified population. The war is over, but for some the fight for survival is only just beginning.

Eliza Graham spent her biology lessons sitting at the back of the classroom, reading Jean Plaidy novels behind her textbooks. In English and history, however, she sat right at the front, hanging on to every word. At home she read books while getting dressed and cleaning her teeth, and during school holidays she visited the public library several times a day. At Oxford University she read English literature on a course that regarded anything written after about 1930 as too modern to be included. She retains a love of Victorian novels and the poetry of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Eliza s first novel, Playing with the Moon, was longlisted for Richard & Judy s Summer Read category and named one of the World Book Day 2007 Books to Talk About. Find out more about Eliza on her website, www.elizagraham.co.uk, and follow her on Twitter @Eliza_Graham.