The comfort of ghosts
(Audiobook CD)

Read by Orlagh Cassidy.

"London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion--the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Soon after a demobilized British soldier, ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, takes shelter with the group, Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and is deeply puzzled by the children's reticence. Their stories are evasive and, more mysteriously, they appear to possess self-defense skills one might expect of trained adults in wartime. Her quest to bring comfort and the promise of a future to the youngsters and to the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie's first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental aircraft. As Maisie picks apart the threads of her dead husband's life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true. This final assignment of her own choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie Dobbs and her family, but serves as a fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people of Britain at the close of the Second World War"-- Provided by publisher.