After his wife is murdered and his house torched, a judge becomes the vigilante title character and seeks revenge on the criminals who destroyed his life.

When 10-year-old Willie is evacuated from the East End of London, he is chosen by Zander, 13-year-old son of an army captain, to be his companion in a rambling country house.

An Indian summer, 1942: "When I was thirteen, all I wanted to be was a hero." A young evacuee's response to the surrounding war-obsessed adult world seems the only one available to him, until he forms 'a particular friendship' with another boy, a Jewish refugee. This threatens the stability of his gang (who also mirror the racist/jingoist attitudes of adulthood), and he is caught in Forster's great liberal crux: your country or your friend?

After a nuclear war, a group of children at an isolated farmhouse debate what the outside world might be like. Soon one of them leaves the house to investigate, and finds out that things aren't the way they thought.