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Staff Picks Format: E-Audiobook

A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell []

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This biography of a completely unsung WWII heroine reads like a spy thriller. In spite of what seems today incredible discrimination because of her gender, American Virginia Hall was instrumental to the creation of various undercover operations in Nazi occupied France, working for the British long before the US entered the war. The danger of those operations, descriptions of the conditions for the civilian population, and of the torture to which suspected members of the Resistance were subjected are not sensationalized. The narrator, Julie Stevenson, does an admirable job of distinguishing between the various, largely male, characters. This title is recommended especially to fans of Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope series, which are about a woman in similar circumstances in the SOE in the British secret service.

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