The Ghosts Of Rome

by Joseph O'Connor

Published 30 January 2025

February 1944. Six months since German forces occupied Rome. Five weeks since Allied fighters landed at Anzio, fifty kilometres south. Their advance is meeting ferocious resistance.

Working inside the beleaguered city, the Contessa Giovanna Landini is part of the band of Escape Line activists known as ‘The Choir’. Their mission is to hide refugees and to help Allied soldiers escape from Rome, where things grow darker every day under the rule of Gestapo boss Paul Hauptmann.

One night, hurrying through the perilous streets in disguise, the Contessa comes across a man lying unconscious, dangerously injured. Taking him to safety, she finds he has no papers. Is he a partisan, an escaped prisoner of war, a double-agent, a deserter, a German? While he hovers between life and death, hidden in an Escape Line secret safehouse, the truth of his identity could mean the end for them all.