Alys Peterson: beautiful, pampered and rich, she wanted for nothing - except understanding . . . and love. Tragedy had touched her life, but her parents had been too concerned with their standing in society to care.

Tara Kelly: gritty and talented, raised in the slums of Sydney - she had been mistress to a gangland boss while still in her middle teens. But she had taken a bitter revenge on her lover and was now in fear of her life.

Sweeping across the continent of Australia during World War II, Women and War is a compulsive story of love and hate, bravery and fear, passion and quiet, and deadly determination.