Staff Picks
Female Spies
- Kristin A.
- Monday, April 12, 2021
Collection
Female spies are more than just the femme fatales shown in moves and television. They must have ingenuity, talent, and more than just a little courage. From tales of real heroines from history, to espionage fiction inspired by the bravery of these women, these stories are full of intrigue, espionage, and thrilling edge of your seat storytelling at its best.
Three Hours in Paris
Published in 2020
In June of 1940, when Paris fell to the Nazis, Hitler spent a total of three hours in the City of Light?abruptly leaving, never to return. To this day, no one knows why. The New York Times bestselling author of the Aim?e Leduc investigations reimagines history in her masterful, pulse-pounding spy thriller, Three Hours in Paris . Kate Rees, a young American markswoman, has been recruited by British intelligence to drop into Paris with a dangerous assignment: assassinate the F?hrer. Wrecked by grief after a Luftwaffe bombing killed her husband and infant daughter, she is armed with a rifle, a vendetta, and a fierce resolve. But other than rushed and rudimentary instruction, she has no formal spy training. Thrust into the red-hot center of the war, a country girl from rural Oregon finds herself holding the fate of the world in her hands. When Kate misses her mark and the plan unravels, Kate is on the run for her life?all the time wrestling with the suspicion that the whole operation was a set-up. Cara Black, doyenne of the Parisian crime novel, is at her best as she brings Occupation-era France to vivid life in this gripping story about one young woman with the temerity?and drive?to take on Hitler himself.
Nancy Wake
SOE's Greatest Heroine
Published in 2009
Nancy Wake is one of the true heroines of World War II. Born in New Zealand, she was living in Marseille and was married to Frenchman Henri Fiocca when the Germans invaded. Nancy immediately became active in the Resistance movement, smuggling messages and food to underground groups in Southern France and helping refugees flee to Spain. By 1943 she was on the Gestapo most-wanted list. Their nickname for her, due to her elusiveness, was the "White Mouse." It was time for Nancy to leave France. After six escape attempts Nancy reached Britainwhere she promptly became one of the 39 women to join the British Special Operations Executive. Parachuted back into France, she became the virtual leader of a 7,000-strong branch of the Maquis. This book tells the extraordinary story of this exceptional woman. --Publisher
The Spymistress
A Novel
Published in 2013
Pledging her loyalty to the North at the risk of her life when her native Virginia secedes, Quaker-educated aristocrat Elizabeth Van Lew uses her innate skills for gathering military intelligence to help construct the Richmond underground and orchestrate escapes from the infamous Confederate Libby Prison.
The Lost Girls of Paris
Published in 2019
From the author of the runaway bestseller The Orphan's Tale comes a remarkable story of friendship and courage centered around three women and a ring of female secret agents during World War II.1946, ManhattanOne morning while passing through Grand Central Terminal on her way to work, Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. Unable to resist her own curiosity, Grace opens the suitcase, where she discovers a dozen photographs--each of a different woman. In a moment of impulse, Grace takes the photographs and quickly leaves the station.Grace soon learns that the suitcase belonged to a woman named Eleanor Trigg, leader of a network of female secret agents who were deployed out of London during the war. Twelve of these women were sent to Occupied Europe as couriers and radio operators to aid the resistance, but they never returned home, their fates a mystery. Setting out to learn the truth behind the women in the photographs, Grace finds herself drawn to a young mother turned agent named Marie, whose daring mission overseas reveals a remarkable story of friendship, valor and betrayal.Vividly rendered and inspired by true events, New York Times bestselling author Pam Jenoff shines a light on the incredible heroics of the brave women of the war and weaves a mesmerizing tale of courage, sisterhood and the great strength of women to survive in the hardest of circumstances.-- Publisher's description.
Who is Vera Kelly?
Published in 2018
"New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA. Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns the Cold War makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she's forced to take extreme measures to save herself. An exhilarating page turner and perceptive coming-of-age story, Who Is Vera Kelly? is a novel that introduces an original, wry and whip-smart female spy for the twenty-first century"-- Provided by publisher.
Code Name
Lise
Published in 2019
"The extraordinary true story of Odette Sansom, the British spy who operated in occupied France and fell in love with her commanding officer during World War II--perfect for fans of Unbroken, The Boys in the Boat, and Code Girls."--Provided by publisher.
Girl in Disguise
Published in 2017
Widowed and in need of a job, Kate Warne convinces Allan Pinkerton that a female detective can go places and do things a male detective cannot. Once hired, Kate becomes skilled at lock picking and surveillance, but she is best in disguise--as a prostitute, rich matron, spinster, clerk, Southern belle--an expert liar, playing a role. She investigates burglaries, bank robberies, embezzlement, counterfeiting, blackmail, and murder. Eventually earning the respect of her fellow detectives, Kate comes up with an ingenious plan to protect President Lincoln from a Southern assassination plot. During the Civil War, she must fight against a formidable adversary--notorious Southern spy Mrs. Rose Greenhow. Well-told and loaded with suspense and action, this historical novel about Kate Warne, the first female detective in 1850s Chicago, is superb.-- adapted from book review.
The Expats
A Novel
Published in 2013
Newly arrived in Luxembourg, mother and expat Kate Moore suspects that another American couple are not who they claim to be and as her paranoia grows, she becomes increasingly terrified that her own past is catching up with her.
A Woman of No Importance
Published in 2019
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "An incredible story of under-appreciated heroism." - USA Today, Five Books to Read This Week "A compelling biography of a masterful spy, and a reminder of what can be done with a few brave people ? and a little resistance." - NPR The never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and?despite her prosthetic leg?helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day. Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall?an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity. A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman's fierce persistence helped win the war.
The Alice Network
Published in 2017
In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie's parents banish her to Europe to have her 'little problem' taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.
Red Joan
Published in 2014
"Inspired by the true story of Melita Norwood, a woman unmasked in 1999, at age 87, as the KGB's longest-serving British spy, Red Joan centers on the deeply conflicted life of a brilliant young physicist during the Second World War...Risking both career and conscience, leaking information to the Soviets, but struggling to maintain her own semblance of morality, Joan is caught at a crossroads in which all paths lead to the same end-game: the deployment of the atomic bomb."-- Provided by publisher.
D-Day Girls
The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II
Published in 2019
"The dramatic, inspiring story of the extraordinary women recruited by Britain's elite spy agency to sabotage the Nazis, shore up the Resistance, and pave the way for Allied victory in World War II."--Provided by publisher.
American Spy
A Novel
Published in 2018
Marie Mitchell, a Cold War FBI intelligence officer, joins an undercover task force to undermine Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary Communist president of Burkina Faso, who she secretly admires and comes to love, in a novel inspired by true events.