When the Berlin Wall went up, Gerta, her mother, and her brother Fritz are trapped on the eastern side where they were living, while her father, and her other brother Dominic are in the West--four years later, now twelve, Gerta sees her father on a viewing platform on the western side and realizes he wants her to risk her life trying to tunnel to freedom.

"Slip behind the Iron Curtain into a world of smoke, secrets, and lies in this stunning novel where someone is always listening and nothing is as it seems. Noah Keller has a pretty normal life, until one wild afternoon when his parents pick him up from school and head straight for the airport, telling him on the ride that his name isn't really Noah and he didn't really just turn eleven in March. And he can't even ask them why, not because of his Astonishing...

Marta is a young girl who saw thirty miles of barbed wire appear across her city overnight, separating Berlin into West and East -- with Marta's home on the Communist Bloc-controlled Eastern side. Then, just a month ago, Marta's brother became a victim of schiessbefehl, the standing order to fire upon anyone who dared pass into the West. With her family and nation both fractured, Marta will soon be faced with a promising -- but dangerous -- opportunity....