The house of rumour

A mind-bending, thrilling journey into 20th-century history and outer space - 'a brightly coloured portrait of our times that is alternatively intimate and epic . . . brilliant' (Independent on Sunday). In 1941, Larry Zagorski was a naïve young writer of science-fiction.

Seven decades on, he looks back on that crucial year and traces his place in a mysterious web - one that connects the Second World War with the Space Age, stretches from London to Cuba and Southern California, and links Ian Fleming with Rudolf Hess in a conspiracy that reverberates in the present. Could this be the secret history of the 20th century?

In a mesmerising novel peopled by spies and propagandists, the conned and the heartbroken, dreamers and fanatics, the question is: who will you believe?