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Horst shares everything: every letter, every diary, every photograph, bequeathed, along with this castle, by his mother, Charlotte. He urges Sands to get to the bottom of the mystery of his father’s untimely end. Though this book club is ideal for introverts, that’s not to say it isn’t social. Silent Book Club is all about community. They think it’s important to put down our phones and be “real, live, breathing-the-same-air social”. Sure, nobody’s forcing you to make small talk over a glass of wine, but you can sit with a book and a friend in a cafe, and if you want to chat about what you’re reading — go for it! Our Shared Shelf was founded in 2016 by actor Emma Watson as part of her work with UN women. The online book club focused on intersectional feminist literature, including must-read books like The Handmaid’s Tale and powerful memoirs like The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. He was “against the racial theories”, he insists. “[He] didn’t see the Germans as supermen and all others as Untermenschen . He wanted to do something good, to get things moving.”

We discover recommendations for the best books to read in all sorts of places, whether it’s our bookworm friends, a Saturday morning spent browsing our favourite bookshop, the Richard & Judy Book Club, a new book-to-screen adaptation, or BookTok! The authors we find, the books we fall in love with and even the genres that we immerse ourselves in all have an impact and accompany us through life. Sixty years after the event, Otto’s youngest son, Horst von Wächter, is still haunted by his father’s death. He believes Otto was murdered in Rome in 1949. It’s treacherous terrain, but in Sands we have an incomparable guide who finds a kind of redemption on every road of the human experience, though never at the expense of responsibility or truth. The outcome is a feat of exhilarating storytelling – gripping, gratifying and morally robust. In 1945, wanted by the allies, Von Wächter evades capture, surviving as a fugitive for three years in the Austrian Alps before coming under the protection of a Vatican bishop, Alois Hudal.

A professor at UCL and renowned international barrister who has been engaged with human rights violations in Chile, Guantánamo Bay, Congo and Iraq, Sands grapples here with material left unresolved at the end of East West Street, where Von Wächter, though indicted in 1945 for mass murder, is the man who escapes justice, the one who gets away. An unlikely friendship develops as Horst looks to Sands, inheritor of his own and strangely interconnected family tragedy, to help him do the work that he cannot do alone: to exonerate his father’s soul. Now, this book club is a vibrant online community with a beautiful aesthetic and over 130k members. The club has hosted guest recommendations from a stellar cast of artists, musicians, writers and directors; including Grayson Perry, who went for Praise of Shadows, Greta Gerwig, who gave The Argonauts her seal of approval, and Sally Rooney, who chose Daniel Deronda. Small talk? No, thanks. Homework? Pass. Silent Book Club is all about enjoying books, company, and beverages — without having to think of something smart to say. Founded in 2012 by a couple of friends who liked to read in companionable silence, Silent Book Club now has over 240 “chapters” (that’s a group) who gather across 30+ countries to read together in silence. Three months in, Von Wächter is taken ill under mysterious circumstances. Two monks drop him off at the nearby Santo Spirito hospital, under a false identity. Four days later, he’s dead.

As well as phenomenal fiction, we also have children's books for all ages and interests. From learning to read, to bedtime stories, to books for older readers; the next book to steal your little one’s imagination and nurture their love of reading is just around the corner. Online at WHSmith you’ll find the classics that you know and love from your own childhood, such as Roald Dahl as well as fantastic new authors such as David Walliams, Jeff Kinney and Tom Fletcher. Books introduce us to new worlds, exciting characters and possibilities that ignite our imagination. Whether it’s a dangerous Thriller that gets your heart racing, or a quirky debut with a distinct voice you just can’t put down; a great book can whisk you away somewhere new and stay with you for a lifetime. He is the inhabitant of the family seat – “a vast, dilapidated, empty, magnificent castle” in Upper Austria bequeathed to him by his mother. He’s also the last defender of his father’s honour and, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Horst refuses to believe that his father was a criminal at all. Von Wächter evades capture, surviving as a fugitive for three years in the Austrian AlpsSands is unflinching, though, where Horst cannot be. He pursues the details and we are left with the unsettling, discordant portrait of a man who is conceivably a passionate husband and devoted father, but irrefutably a war criminal with blood, including that of Sands’s own family members, on his hands. His evidence is, at best, circumstantial – letters and diaries, the artefacts of a life that he says speak to his father’s basic decency. But in spite of himself, Sands hears him out. He finds he likes Horst. He sees him as “gentle and open, seemingly with nothing to hide” and Horst in turn seems to need Sands. He says he brings relief to his “solitude”. Reese Witherspoon has her name in the credits of some of the most sparkling book-to-screen adaptations to date; including Wild, Big Little Lies, and Little Fires Everywhere. But her love for a great story extends beyond turning it into a hit series.