A magnificent epic of love war & Russia from the international bestselling author of TULLY & ROAD TO PARADISE Leningrad 1941: the white nights of summer illuminate a city of fallen grandeur whose palaces & avenues speak of a different age when Leningrad was known as St Petersburg. Two sisters Tatiana & Dasha share the same bed living in one room with their brother & parents. The routine of their hard impoverished life is shattered on 22 June 1941 when Hitler invades Russia. For the Metanov family for Leningrad & particularly for Tatiana life will never be the same again. On that fateful day Tatiana meets a brash young man named Alexander. The family suffers as Hitler's army advances on Leningrad & the Russian winter closes in. With bombs falling & the city under siege Tatiana & Alexander are drawn inexorably to each other but theirs is a love that could tear Tatiana's family apart & at its heart lies a secret that could mean death to anyone who hears it. Confronted on the one hand by Hitler's vast war machine & on the other by a Soviet system determined to crush the human spirit Tatiana & Alexander are pitted against the very tide of history at a turning point in the century that made the modern world.