The secret guests /
Black, Benjamin, 1945-
The secret guests / Benjamin Black. - Large print edition. - 455 pages (large print) ; 23 cm. - Thorndike Press large print core. . - Thorndike Press large print core series .
"A novel."
Ahead of the German Blitz during World War II, English parents from every social class sent their children to the countryside for safety, displacing more than three million young offspring. In The Secret Guests, the British royal family takes this evacuation a step further, secretly moving the princesses to the estate of the Duke of Edenmore in "neutral" Ireland. A female English secret agent, Miss Celia Nashe, and a young Irish detective, Garda Strafford, are assigned to watch over "Ellen" and "Mary" at Clonmillis Hall. But the Irish stable hand, the housemaid, the formidable housekeeper, the Duke himself, and other Irish townspeople, some of whom lost family to English gunshots during the War of Independence, go freely about their business in and around the great house. Soon suspicions about the guests' true identities percolate, a dangerous boredom sets in for the princesses, and, within and without Clonmillis acreage, passions as well as stakes rise. Benjamin Black, who has good information that the princesses were indeed in Ireland for a time during the Blitz, draws readers into a novel as fascinating as the nascent career of Miss Nashe, as tender as the homesickness of the sisters, as intriguing as Irish-English relations during WWII, and as suspenseful and ultimately action-packed as war itself.
9781432880712 1432880713
2020007873
Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain, 1926-2022 --Fiction.
Margaret, Princess, Countess of Snowdon, 1930-2002 --Fiction.
World War, 1939-1945--Ireland--Fiction.
Families--Fiction.
Ireland--Fiction.
Historical fiction.
Thrillers (Fiction).
Large type books.
PR6052.A57 / S44 2020
823/.914
The secret guests / Benjamin Black. - Large print edition. - 455 pages (large print) ; 23 cm. - Thorndike Press large print core. . - Thorndike Press large print core series .
"A novel."
Ahead of the German Blitz during World War II, English parents from every social class sent their children to the countryside for safety, displacing more than three million young offspring. In The Secret Guests, the British royal family takes this evacuation a step further, secretly moving the princesses to the estate of the Duke of Edenmore in "neutral" Ireland. A female English secret agent, Miss Celia Nashe, and a young Irish detective, Garda Strafford, are assigned to watch over "Ellen" and "Mary" at Clonmillis Hall. But the Irish stable hand, the housemaid, the formidable housekeeper, the Duke himself, and other Irish townspeople, some of whom lost family to English gunshots during the War of Independence, go freely about their business in and around the great house. Soon suspicions about the guests' true identities percolate, a dangerous boredom sets in for the princesses, and, within and without Clonmillis acreage, passions as well as stakes rise. Benjamin Black, who has good information that the princesses were indeed in Ireland for a time during the Blitz, draws readers into a novel as fascinating as the nascent career of Miss Nashe, as tender as the homesickness of the sisters, as intriguing as Irish-English relations during WWII, and as suspenseful and ultimately action-packed as war itself.
9781432880712 1432880713
2020007873
Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain, 1926-2022 --Fiction.
Margaret, Princess, Countess of Snowdon, 1930-2002 --Fiction.
World War, 1939-1945--Ireland--Fiction.
Families--Fiction.
Ireland--Fiction.
Historical fiction.
Thrillers (Fiction).
Large type books.
PR6052.A57 / S44 2020
823/.914