Elena Standish

On vacation from London on the beautiful Italian coast, 28-year-old Elena Standish and her older sister Margot have finally been able to forget some of the lasting trauma of the Great War. Touring with her camera in hand, Elena has found new inspiration in the striking Italian landscape, and she's met an equally striking man named Ian. Not ready to part from one another, she and Ian share a train trip home to England. But a shocking murder disrupts their agenda, forcing Elena to personally deliver a message to Berlin that could change the fate of Europe.

Britain's secret intelligence service, MI6, has lost contact with its informant in northern Italy, just as important information about the future plans of Austria and Nazi Germany is coming to light. And young Elena Standish, to her surprise, is the only person who can recognize MI6's man - because he is her former lover. Aiden Strother betrayed Elena six years ago, throwing shame on her entire family. Now, with so much to prove, Elena heads to Trieste to track down Aiden and find out what happened to his handler, who has mysteriously cut off contact with Britain.

On a family trip to Washington, DC, Elena Standish is delighted to visit her mother's parents for their anniversary and celebrate with influential friends of her grandfather, a prominent scientist. Even Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt will attend the party. But the event comes to a sudden and tragic end when one of the guests, Lila Worth, is run over by a car in the driveway outside. Elena realizes that Lila had been trying to tell her something, and when a call from Peter Lucas back home at MI6 confirms that Lila was a British spy, Elena pairs with the American secret service....

It is summer 1934, and Hitler is teetering on the edge of supreme power. Any small step forward could vault him toward European domination. When Britain's MI6 gets word that a German scientist has made a breakthrough in germ warfare, they send Elena Standish on a dangerous mission to get him out of Germany before he's forced to share his knowledge and its devastating power with Hitler's elite. But the British soon learn that it's more than just time that Elena is working against.

Not far from the sprawling grounds of Wyndham Hall, longtime MI6 agent John Repton's body is found with a bullet hole through the heart. The corpse's proximity to the estate sends ripples of concern through the intelligence community: Repton was killed while surveilling the members of a household with alleged ties to fascists—who threaten the security of the country as Hitler's control spreads across Europe. Elena Standish is assigned the case since she has a connection to the Wyndham family; Lady Wyndham's brother is courting Elena's older sister Margot.