Six Great Books about Brave Female Spies
- The Bossy Bookworm
- Sep 19
- 5 min read
Tough women, secrets and smarts, and sneaky spying!
I love a peek at a secret world, and each of these books (all but one are fiction) offers that very thing: a look behind the scenes at spies, deception, danger, and uncovering the truth.
I also have another list of titles in this category, and all of the titles on that list but one are fiction as well, although multiple books listed are based on real figures from history: Six More Great Books about Brave Female Spies.
If you like stories about brave women during wartime, you might also like the books I listed on the Greedy Reading List Six Great Stories about Brave Women During World War II.
I'd love to hear: What are your favorite (fiction or nonfiction) books about tough lady spies?
01 The Unexpected Spy: From the CIA to the FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists by Tracy Walder with Jessica Anya Blau
I love a peek at a secret world, and in the nonfiction work The Unexpected Spy, Tracy Walder offers fascinating glimpses of her life as a CIA and an FBI agent.
This is the only nonfiction book on this list. Tracy Walder offers details of her life as a CIA and an FBI agent, including training details, political machinations, and significant and rankling discrimination against her because she was a woman.
Walder explores her own glowing pride in doing her job well and protecting others from danger. Her evolution into her present-day self and current profession was satisfying to witness.
I really liked this book, and I would’ve liked it to be twice as long with even more more more detail about all things spy-related.
For my full Bossy review of this book, please see The Unexpected Spy.
Co-author Jessica Anya Blau is also the author of Mary Jane, Shopgirls, and other books.
02 The Huntress by Kate Quinn
The character-driven post-WWII story was wonderful, with compelling and lush detail and a gutsy female pilot determined to help take down the Nazis.
This is the first of two Kate Quinn books on this list.
With the Nazis an increasing problem for the Soviet Union, Nina Markova joins the Night Witches, an all-female regiment of night bombers. But Nina's resolve and training are tested when she becomes stuck in enemy territory.
Quinn's character-driven post-World War II story was wonderful, with compelling and lush detail about tough female pilots; life in the Siberian wild; Boston; antiques and photography; and the patient, persistent, creative detective work carried out by the characters of Ian, Tony, and Nina.
You can see events unfolding while the characters involved remain unaware, but watching the pieces shift and click into place is immensely satisfying.
I'm in for all of the World War II-set books with tough, brave female protagonists, and especially female pilots, and I loved this book. For my full review, see The Huntress.
Kate Quinn is also the author of The Diamond Eye, The Huntress, The Rose Code, and The Alice Network as well as The Phoenix Crown and The Briar Club.
03 Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can't believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant. But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.
In Elizabeth Wein's young adult historical fiction novel, it's 1943, and a British spy plane has crashed in Nazi-occupied France. The plane's young pilot and its passenger are best friends, but only one of the girls survives.
"Verity," the survivor, is a secret agent who is captured by the Gestapo. Her Nazi interrogators offer her a way out: reveal her mission and confess her crimes, or be put to death--and it won't be fast and painless.
Verity writes her extended confession, revealing her past, her friendship with the pilot Maddie, and various secrets she's gathered while being a spy. Is she laying groundwork for her release, or spinning webs more complicated than her captors imagine?
This World War II-era story of female pilots and spies is written in two points of view. At first I found the structure of Verity's letters somewhat distracting, but it grew on me. And while the second section wasn't a complete surprise, I found it really satisfying.
Elizabeth Wein is also the author of many other novels, including additional novels in the Code Name Verity series.
04 The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.
Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale is set during World War II. The novel is about a family stretched to its limits in the face of the horrors of Nazi-occupied France.
Hannah's books and I don't always (or often) get along. I find myself distracted by small moments that don't seem to follow with the story she's laying out, and I can't dive into the tale.
But this book and I got along like BFFs. The Nightingale offers moments of bravery, scenes of terror, and acts of pure love. I found some moments melodramatic, even considering the naturally fraught wartime setting, but nevertheless I found Hannah's story really engaging.
I felt somewhat manipulated at the end of The Nightingale because of circumstances surrounding the modern-day point of view, but I was okay with it.
If you missed this book when it came out, it's one that's worth a slot on your to-read list.
Kristin Hannah is also the author of many other novels, including The Women.
05 Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin
There would be no dressing up as a maid. No cyanide slipped into his crystal glass of mineral water. The Fuhrer’s death was to be a loud, screaming thing. A broadcast of blood over the Reichssender.
Wolf by Wolf is the first book in Graudin's young adult duology (the second, Blood by Blood, is also great). The premise hooked me, but I loved Graudin's execution of the story even more.
In an alternate reality it's 1956, and Hitler and the Axis powers are taking over the world. Yael, a tough young woman who escaped from a concentration camp, has been training as a spy for years, while cultivating her hatred of the Nazis. Yael's goal: to win a ruthless, exclusive annual motorbike race through Axis-controlled lands. The victor of The Axis Tour will be granted an audience with Adolf Hitler at the celebratory Victor's Ball. At that ball, Yael plans to get close enough to the Fuhrer to kill him.
Oh, aaaand Yael has the power to skinshift so that she looks exactly like other people.
Buckle up for this one--it's unusual and fast-paced.
Graudin also wrote The Walled City.
06 The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
The idea made her sick and scared, but so what? Why did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done anyway?
In this second book on the list by Kate Quinn, the stories of two women—an imagined World War I spy from the Alice Network (which actually existed) in France, and an American socialite looking for her cousin in 1947—are brought together across the decades.
I loved the strong female protagonists and seeing their fire and grit and growth.
Both of the more modern-day storylines were wrapped up neatly as with a bow. I would have been in favor of having the romantic element being tied up without the Eve aspect, or having neither of them tied up at all, but the “end of movie”-type closure for both felt too convenient, and even a little dismissive of the complexities of the time and the specific difficulties of the characters' situations.
But I was fascinated by the World War I focus and in many cases the spy details’ basis in reality. I wished I’d known the information from the author’s note as I read the novel because of how much of the stories of the women’s lives was pulled from first-person records.
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