Very Far from Here — Dennis Hamley

It is April 1914 and war is only four months away. But it seems very remote from the seaside world of Eddy and Jim as they watch Harold's Bay Wanderers play football and listen to the conversation of their elders. However, two strangers have arrived in the village: Mr Brown. whose cycle shop is hardly ever open and who speaks with a strange-sounding accent, and Mr Foskett, who gives Eddy a terrible vision of the future, involving treachery, invasion, defeat and destruction. Are there enemy spies in Harold's Bay? If so, who are they? Eddy and Jim, determined to find out, watch and wait. But time runs out on them as the war in Europe starts and slices into the life of the village and even their own families.