sussex (england)

Wilfred and Duncan spend their days catching butterflies in their backyard in Sussex, England, dreaming of escape, so when their mother elopes and their father takes up with other women, they decide to leave home, go to London, and buy an old tram, which introduces them to a variety of local celebrities and war heroes.

Linus Steinman, a 9-year-old mute refugee from Nazi Germany, and his number-spewing parrot appear to be at the center of a mystery in the 1944 English countryside.

Beatrice Lacey, destined by the social customs of eighteenth-century England to lose both her family name and her beloved Wideacre estate when she marries, decides to go to any lengths necessary to retain ownership of her ancestral home.

A retired, eighty-nine-year-old detective, living in the English countryside in 1944, finds his interest piqued when a man is murdered while trying to steal a German-speaking parrot that spouts an endless stream of numbers from a young Jewish refugee.