This book is actually the riveting memoir of a modern former CIA agent who served for ten years in sixteen different countries throughout the Middle East and Asia. Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox A widow stationed abroad, she will go undercover in the French Resistance to try to make a difference both for her country and herself. The main character-Anna Cavanaugh-is actually a composite of several real women who worked for the Office of Strategic Services-precursor to the CIA-during World War II. Her reach even extended to the home of Jefferson Davis and her work assisting Union P.O.W.’s is eye-opening. From an abusive marriage to the stage, this dancer-turned-courtesan-turned-spy led a life that was anything but conventional.ĭespite being a slave-owning Richmond aristocrat, Elizabeth van Lew defies the Confederacy at the outbreak of the Civil War by gathering military intelligence and smuggling to the North information from the Confederate War and Navy. In this novel, Mata Hari awaits the verdict that will decide whether she lives or dies and recounts to a journalist the path that led her to the prison cell she now sits in. Rather than be forgotten, Mata Hari falls into the category of misunderstood female spies. Evading capture by the Gestapo and with a bounty on her head, Nancy must assume different code names and identities to confuse the Nazis and keep one step ahead of the enemy. Real-life Australian socialite Nancy Wake turns spy, kills a Nazi with her bare hands, and becomes the most decorated woman in World War II in this riveting novel. Bold and courageous, this “limping lady” will receive the Distinguished Service Cross for her service during the war. Despite having lost part of her leg in a hunting accident-and naming her prosthesis “Cuthbert”-Virginia becomes a pioneering spy early in the war and will be considered by the Gestapo to be the most dangerous of all the Allied Spies. Uninterested in gossip or balls, young Virginia Hall instead seeks to help the Allies win the war against Hitler by becoming a spy. Sisters of the Resistance: A Novel of Catherine Dior’s Paris Spy Network by Christine Wells Fortunately, in recent years, many of these real-life stories have been dusted off and transformed into books that will keep you gasping in disbelief and flipping the pages until all hours of the night. These women were wildly intelligent patriots willing to put their lives on the line for their country during times of horrific wars. Just like their male counterparts, women like Elizabeth Bentley, Catherine Dior, and Virginia Hall led lives packed with danger and intrigue, where a simple brush-past or meeting with a contact could turn deadly. When confronted with this strange reality, these female spies were vilified or perhaps worse, forgotten by history. However, no one expected that women-especially women of a certain age-could be involved in the dangerous world of espionage. In fact, Whittaker Chambers-whose story is very similar to Bentley’s-received a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984 for his contributions to “the century’s epic struggle between freedom and totalitarianism.” In the meantime, Elizabeth Bentley was dismissed as “hysterical” and “menopausal.” All this despite the fact that the FBI had corroborated her full testimony via the top-secret Project VENONA. Because Bentley was a female NKVD-spy-turned-FBI-informer-a combination America wasn’t quite sure what to do with-she was overshadowed both in life and after her death by Joseph McCarthy and Whittaker Chambers. While researching topics for my next novel, I stumbled across Elizabeth Bentley’s name and was gobsmacked that I’d never heard of this American spy who once ran the largest Soviet spy ring in America. “Few suspected women of spying, and certainly no one expected a middle-aged knitter to be surreptitiously gathering intelligence.” -Elizabeth Bentley, A Most Clever Girl
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