Spitfire Song, (Paperback)

Life expectancy for a British fighter pilot in the summer of 1940 is short. Shorter still if your name's Jerome Jessup and you're still in training, then posted to a front line operational squadron. War in the air is a strange, often deadly business; routine patrol sorties interspersed with sudden scramble intercepts to confront German bombers and their Messerschmitt escorts.

Jerome's sister, Bell, joins the Air Transport Auxiliary ferrying warplanes. Supposedly an altogether safer occupation, but as Bell makes her landing approach to Hornchurch in a delivery plane, she's unaware there's a German Junkers 88 raider right on her tail. So... survival isn't a given. With luck, Jerome and Bell might see it through the duration, but meantime, getting on with things, just plain getting on with things, seems for the best. With loves on the ground to cherish and life in the tilting air to live, both these young pilots hang on the very cusp of their existence.