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 Fuhrer'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?

'An astonishing true story of courage, love and betrayal, told with the verve of a thriller. Freedland is a master'

MICK HERRON

'The Traitors Circle rivals Freedland's superb The Escape Artist. Totally gripping and timely'

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY

'Haunting and heart-poundingly suspenseful . . . Freedland's powerful story-telling has intense resonance in today's darkening world'

SINCLAIR MCKAY

'As tense as a thriller yet perceptive, thoughtful and thoroughly researched'

KATJA HOYER