When the whole world is lying, someone must tell the truth.

Berlin, 1943. A group of high-society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer afternoon. They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo - revealing their secret to the Nazis'' most ruthless detective.

They form a circle of unlikely rebels, drawn from the German elite: two countesses, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, an ambassador''s widow and a pioneering headmistress. Meeting in the shadows, rescuing Jews or plotting for a future Germany freed from the Führer''s rule, what unites them is a shared loathing of the Nazis, a refusal to bow to Hitler and the courage to perform perilous acts of resistance. Or so they believe.

How did a group of brave, principled rebels, who had successfully defied Adolf Hitler for more than a decade, come to fall into such a lethal trap? And who betrayed them?

Undone from within and pursued to near-destruction by one of the Reich''s cruellest men, they showed a heroism that raises a question with new urgency for our time: what kind of person does it take to risk everything and stand up to tyranny?

PRAISE FOR THE ESCAPE ARTIST:

''Thrilling'' Daily Mail
''Gripping'' Guardian
''Heartwrenching'' Yuval Noah Harari
''Magnificent'' Philip Pullman
''Excellent'' Sunday Times
''Inspiring'' Daily Mail
''An immediate classic'' Antony Beevor
''Awe inspiring'' Simon Sebag Montefiore
''Shattering'' Simon Schama
''Utterly compelling'' Philippe Sands
''A must-read'' Emily Maitlis
''Indispensable'' Howard Jacobson