Have you ever had to choose between your work and your friends? Would you? If your life depended on it?

Based on the real-life events of a young female spy in London, The Imitator is a page-turning World War Two thriller with themes of espionage, coming of age and antisemitism with a plot twist that you won’t see coming and wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Out of place at boarding school, scholarship student Evelyn Varley realises that the only way for her to fit in is to be like everyone else. She hides her true self and what she really thinks behind the manners and attitudes of those around her. By the time she graduates from Oxford University in 1939, ambitious and brilliant Evelyn has perfected her performance.

War is looming. Evelyn soon finds herself recruited to MI5, and the elite counterintelligence department of Bennett White, the enigmatic spy-runner. Recognising Evelyn’s mercurial potential, White schools her in observation and subterfuge, and assigns her the dangerous task of infiltrating an underground group of Nazi sympathisers working to form an alliance with Germany.

Join author Rebecca Starford in-conversation with author and journalist Frances Whiting as they discuss her new novel The Imitator.

Bookings are essential as places are limited. To reserve your place, visit Eventbrite or phone the library.