"The True Story of Hansel and Gretel" by Louise Murphy

Poland in the last year of the war. Two Jewish children, fleeing the ghetto, using the German-sounding pseudonyms of Hansel and Gretel, are adopted by an old woman in a forest. But there is a Nazi major in the nearby village and a sinister SS commander arrives and the villagers are afraid that the old witch's new family might bring disaster on them all. As might the partisans.

This tale if so full of horror and cruelty and brutality and death that it was hard to read. Can they survive? And what will be the price paid if they do? Of course you have to keep going, to discover what happens to these two children in such a harsh environment. But there were times when I was so saddened that I wanted to put it down. But I was gripped.

Some of my favourite quotes:

• "Wasting a little shows you believe in tomorrow." (p 17)
• "God packed up and left Poland in 1939." (p 25)
• "If you had to be killed, she thought, it wasn't such a bad thing to be killed by a horse. It was a death unspoiled by any ideas at all." (p 93)
• "If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, he must have no pity." (p 187)

Mesmerising but terrible. 297 pages