After the Darkness

This is a ghost story, a war story - but most of all a story about the resilience of the human spirit. It is compellingly written: from the outset, the Cohn family's flight from Nazi-occupied Paris holds the reader in thrall.

As tragedy piles on tragedy, the family is destroyed, leaving the ghosts of the two children, Lucie and Jean-Pierre to gently haunt Oliver, whose family has bought the house in Le Bouton d'Or in which the two died. It is Oliver who eventually lays them to rest.

The real triumph of this novel is that it illustrates the plight of Jews in the Second World War in an almost unbearably human and memorable way.

After the Darkness is a trade paperback and therefore more expensive than a mass market paperback (which is more flimsily bound), but do find the funds to buy it as a class set for Years 9-11.