Excerpt from The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Uncle John was a sensible man and through the years had always seemed swiftly to understand whatever difficulty Hugh stammered out and would help talk the matter over until Hugh was convinced he had resolved some intractable problem all on his own. Hugh was no longer a small boy and now understood some of his uncle's wisdom to be the result of diplomatic training, but he knew his uncle's affection to be genuine. His own parents' parting words, as they left for a long-awaited year of travel, had been to apply to Uncle John in any case of need.

"Your uncle says they are all working feverishly to smooth things over, before everyone's summer holiday," said his aunt. "He tells me nothing, of course, but the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary spent much of the day closeted with the King." Uncle John was a senior official in the Foreign Office, and the usually sleepy summer precincts of Whitehall had been crammed with busy civil servants, politicians, and generals since the Archduke's assassination in Sarajevo. "Anyway he telephoned to say he met the schoolteacher and transferred her to Charing Cross to catch the last train, so she'll be getting in after dinner. We'll give her a late supper."

"At such a late hour, wouldn't it be kinder to deliver her to her rooms in town and maybe have Cook send down something cold?" said Daniel, ignoring Hugh's proffered dry sherry and pouring a glass of Uncle John's best whisky. "I'm sure she'll be horribly fagged and not up to a room full of people in evening dress." He tried to keep a neutral face, but Hugh detected a slight moue of distaste at the thought of entertaining the new schoolteacher his aunt had found. Since graduating from Balliol in June, Daniel had spent the first few weeks of the summer in Italy as the guest of an aristocratic college chum, and had developed a sense of social superiority that Hugh was dying to see Aunt Agatha knock out of his silly head. In- stead Agatha had been patient, saying, "Oh, let him have his taste of the high life. Don't you think his heart will be broken soon enough? When Daniel goes into the Foreign Office this autumn, as your Uncle John has taken such pains to arrange, I'm sure his friend will drop him in an instant. Let him have his hour of glamour."

Hugh was of the opinion that Daniel should be made to under- stand his place, but he loved his Aunt Agatha and he thought any continued argument might lead her to think he resented Daniel being her favorite. Daniel's mother, Agatha's sister, had died when Daniel was only five, and his father was a strange, distant sort of man. Daniel had been sent to boarding school a month after his mother's death, and Agatha had been his refuge in the Christmas and summer holidays. Hugh had always been torn about Christmas. He spent it at home in London with his parents, who loved him and made a great fuss of him. He would have preferred if they could have all gone down to Sussex to Agatha's house together, but his mother, who was Uncle John's sister, liked to be among her friends in town, and his father did not like to be away from the bank too long at Christmas. Hugh had been happy in the midst of piles of striped wrapping paper, huge mysterious boxes, and the dishes of sweets and fruits set all around their Kensington villa. But sometimes, when he was sent to bed and the music from his parents' guests drifted up to his room, he would lie in bed and peer out the window over the dark rooftops and try to see all the way to Sussex, where no doubt Aunt Agatha was tucking Daniel in with one of her wild stories of giants and elves who lived in caves under the Sussex Downs and whose par- ties could be mistaken sometimes as thunder.

"Don't be silly, Daniel. Miss Nash will stay here this evening," said Aunt Agatha, bending to switch on the electric lamp by the flowered couch. She sat down and stretched out her feet, which were encased in Oriental slippers embroidered, rather strangely, with lobsters. "I had to fight to bring the full weight of the School Board to bear on the governors to hire a woman. I mean to get a good look at her and make sure she understands what's to be done."

Excerpted from The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson. Copyright © 2016 by Helen Simonson. Excerpted by permission of Random House, A Penguin Random House Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.