Series:

Cassell Military Paperba

2 total works

Cover of Darkness Falls from the Air

Darkness Falls from the Air

by Nigel Balchin

Published September 1969
With ostentatious lack of concern, Bill Sarratt, his wife and her lover spend the war wining and dining expensively, occasionally sauntering out into the Blitz with cheerful remarks about the shattered night-life of London's West End. But beneath the false insouciance lies the real strain of a war that has firmly wrapped them all in its embrace. Wit may crackle at the same pace as buildings burn, but personal tragedy lurks appallingly close at hand.

Cover of The Small Back Room

The Small Back Room

by Nigel Balchin

Published December 1962

A true modern classic, THE SMALL BACK ROOM is a towering novel of the Second World War.

Sammy Rice is a weapons scientist, one of the 'back room boys' of the Second World War. A crippling disability has left him cynical and disillusioned - he struggles with a drink problem at home, and politics and petty pride at work. Worse still, he fears he is not good enough for the woman he loves.

The stakes are raised when the enemy begin to drop a new type of booby-trapped bomb, causing many casualties. Only Sammy has the know-how to diffuse it - but as he comes face to face with real danger, all his old inadequacies return to haunt him.

Can he, at last, prove his worth and put his demons to rest?