A heart-rending tale of two families fleeing the horrors of the holocaust. As violence and hatred sweep across Europe and the Middle East under the Nazis, this novel tells the story of two Jewish refugee families whose lives unexpectedly converge in post-war London. The story begins in the early 1940s in Budapest and Baghdad where,1600 miles apart, Jewish communities are being brutally purged by fascists. In different, but equally devastating circumstances, the Weisz and Haroun families flee their homes to seek safety in England. As both clans deal with the challenges, upheavals and horrors of the Holocaust and its legacy, their lives become intertwined after an unlikely twist of fate. Nine Love Letters is a poignant and tender novel about the enduring power of love across generations, based on real events.

During the Second World War, Miklos Hammer, a Hungarian Jew from Budapest, was a member of the forced-labour Jewish battalion in the Hungarian army. But as the Nazis accelerated their anti-Semitic policies, he was arrested, held in the Jewish ghetto of a strange town, and then transported, one of millions, to the death camps. This is the story of his survival, as he told it to Gerald Jacobs - a survival made possible only by his own determination to take advantage of a few fortuitous events.

This encounter with the past, and the discovery of his father Benny's diaries, leads Simon Pomeranski back to his childhood and the post-war days of the Astorians, a small group of criminals and traders in 'swag' who ran their business from Brixton Market and exercised their own particular brand of justice. From this wonderful assortment of characters we are introduced to 'Spanish Joe', the cultured Russian emigre, Sam 'the Stick', with his wounded machismo and penchant for violent retribution, and the dazzling songstress Estelle, among others. Front and centre in their world, though, is Benny himself, the autodidact owner of Pomeranski Gowns, whose passionate affair with Estelle marks the beginning of a new era for the Astorians. Both riotous and profound, this novel resurrects a vibrant era that deserves a place in our collective memory.