In captivating style Giuffre tells what happens when she finds herself alone with her boys on Rarotonga, a tiny speck in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, 11,000 kilometres from home. She knows no one, the house she's been promised doesn't eventuate, and almost every other outsider is on a ten-day package tour.
Her unlikely saviour is Emily, an 82-year-old Māori woman with a large white house on the edge of the ocean, which the two women share with two callous missionaries, the ghosts of Emily's ancestors, and, briefly, a bizarre couple from Eastern Europe.
As time passes, ... more

In the early hours of 14 June 1940, Nazi troops paraded through the streets of Paris, marking the beginning of the city's four-year occupation. French troops withdrew in order to avoid a battle and the potential destruction of their capital. It wasn't long before German tanks rumbled past the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs Elysees to the Place de la Concorde.
The American community in Paris was the largest in Continental Europe, totalling approximately 30,000 before the Second World War. Although Ambassodor Bullitt advised those without vital business in the city to leave in 1939, over half of the Americans in Paris chose to stay. Many had professional and family ties to the city; the majority, though, had a peculiarly American love for the city, rooted in the bravery of the Marquis ... more