Excerpt from Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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Hitler was thumbing his nose from just across the Channel, and London had decided to move the children out again, all the ones who had come back and all the ones who had never gone. This time Noel was going with them; once again, he hadn't been consulted. Margery had packed his suitcase and Geoffrey had walked him round to Rhyll Street Junior School, like a prisoner under escort. Not that he'd had any thought of escape: being sent away with a classful of children he hated was still an improvement on life in 23B Mafeking Road.

When the whistle blew at St Pancras, he watched the guard slide backwards. The train moved from under the blacked-out roof and sunshine slapped him in the face. He wrote: I am sitting next to Harvey Madeley. His backside is so enormous that he is wearing his father's trousers cut down into shorts.

'Here we all are,' said Mr Waring, entering the compartment. 'The Rhyll Street Fifth Column. And young Noel with his pencil and paper. A child amang ye taking notes.'

'Where are we going, sir?' asked someone.

'All very hush-hush,' said Mr Waring. 'I have not been party to the plans.'

'Is it Wales?'

'Let us hope not.'

'They don't speak English in Wales,' said one of the Ferris twins.

The only discernible difference between the Ferris twins, wrote Noel, is that one of them is even more cretinous than the other.

'They eat squirrels in Wales,' said the other Ferris twin.

'I won't go anywhere with cows again,' said Alice Beddows.

'In Dorset I could see a cow out of every window. And I could smell a cow out of every window.'

'Corned beef,' said Roy Pursey, peering into the brown paper bag that the WVS woman had given him.

'Don't open those bags yet,' ordered Mr Waring. Everyone but Noel immediately opened their bags.

'The items those contain are for your foster mothers, not for consuming on the journey,' said Mr Waring, but Roy Pursey had already started to turn the key on the tin of corned beef. Noel watched as a thin pink wound began to gape around the top of the tin.

'Biscuits!' shouted Harvey Madeley.

'When we find ourselves at midnight, progressing at a walking pace up the north-west coast of Scotland,' said Mr Waring, 'you may come to regret your current greed.' He leaned back in his seat and opened a book.

Outside, London moved past very slowly. Most of the view was of backyards and washing lines, though if Noel squashed his cheek against the window, he could see enough of the sky to spot the odd barrage balloon.

'I need to go to the WC,' said Shirley Green.

'In Dorset,' said one of the Ferris twins, 'they only had an outside lav. That's why we came home. We wrote to our mum and she came and got us. She said if we'd stayed we'd have got typhoid. Mr Waring?'

'Hmm?'

'We're only allowed to go somewhere with an inside lav. Our mum said that we—'

'There wasn't even electricity where I was,' said Roy Pursey, interrupting. 'They used flipping candles.'

'Detention,' said Mr Waring.

'We're not at school, sir.'

'Nevertheless, my first act when we resume lessons will be to place you in detention for use of bad language.'

The train passed over a bridge and Noel glimpsed a lorryload of soldiers on the road beneath. If Hitler invaded, as he probably would, then the next time he came to London, the streets might be full of Nazis. Everyone would have to learn German. Uncle Geoffrey, as a member of the Conservative Party, would be lined up against a wall and shot.

From Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans Copyright © 2015 by Lissa Evans. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.