SELECTED AS A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK

Born and raised in America, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD programme in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment - a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin.

She recruited Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. When the first shots of the Second World War were fired she became a spy, couriering top-secret intelligence to the Allies. On the eve of her escape to Sweden, she was ambushed by the Gestapo. During a hastily convened trial at the Reichskriegsgericht - the Reich Court-Martial - a panel of five judges sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler overruled the decision and ordered her execution. On 16 February 1943, she was strapped to a guillotine and beheaded.

Harnack's great-great-niece Rebecca Donner draws on extensive archival research and newly discovered documents in her family archives in this astonishing work of nonfiction. Fusing elements of biography, political thriller and scholarly detective story, Donner brilliantly interweaves letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, survivors' testimony, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into a powerful, epic story, reconstructing the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history.

"Reads like a thriller . . . Written in a pacey, suspenseful present tense, it's biography with a pulse . . . a superb, sure-footed work of historical detection conceived with a powerful intelligence" - * Sunday Times *

"Astonishing . . . wilder and more expansive than a standard-issue biography . . . a real-life thriller with a cruel ending" - * New York Times *

"Donner questions what motivates someone to risk their life for the sake of their beliefs in a gripping story that reads like a political thriller" - * Observer *

"Written in a fizzing present tense, the book in places reads like a spy novel . . . Donner writes in beautiful, crisp prose (like her great-great-aunt, as quotes from Mildred's letters reveal) . . . The result is a work that transports us to a period now slipping from living memory but that contains vital lessons for our own time" - * Herald *

"A tour de force of investigation . . . gripping" - * Economist *

"A thrilling and inspiring book. It is a treasure trove for lovers of biography, new writing and the history of the Third Reich" - * Scotsman *

"A lively read . . . Mildred Harnack has received proper recognition at last" - * Financial Times *

"Pacey . . . an impressive piecing together of fragments . . . a memorial to Mildred Harnack" - * Spectator *