The Secret Stealers: A Novel

A female American spy in Nazi-occupied France finds purpose behind enemy lines in a novel of unparalleled danger, love, and daring by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Beantown Girls.

Anna Cavanaugh is a restless young widow and brilliant French teacher at a private school in Washington, DC. Everything changes when she's recruited into the Office of Strategic Services by family friend and legendary WWI hero Major General William Donovan.

Donovan has faith in her--and in all his "glorious amateurs" who are becoming Anna's fast friends: Maggie, Anna's down-to-earth mentor; Irene, who's struggling to find support from her husband for her clandestine life; and Julia, a cheerful OSS liaison. But the more Anna learns about the organization's secret missions, the more she longs to be stationed abroad. Then comes the opportunity: go undercover as a spy in the French Resistance to help steal critical intelligence that could ultimately turn the tide of the war.

Dispatched behind enemy lines and in constant danger, Anna is filled with adrenaline, passion, and fear. She's driven to make a difference--for her country and for herself. Whatever the risk, she's willing to take it to help liberate France from the shadows of occupation and to free herself from the shadows of her former life.

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Published Apr 1, 2021

443 pages

Average rating: 7.3

10 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

Koriander
Jan 08, 2025
The Secret Stealers was my book club's August read. I liked it, but I agree with a lot of the reviews below. Set in 1942, Anna Cavannah is a young widow who was unhappily married and her husband died suddenly. She is lost, feeling guilty, and looking for a purpose in life beyond the society norms of "women should teach, marry and have babies". She gets a job through a family friend, Commander (?) Donavon who is in the process of creating and gathering an intelligence aggency - OSS- to help our allies in the war. Anna is recruited and initially works in DC, but finally gets what she truly wanted - an overseas assignment to act as a wire operating in Nazi occupied France. For me it was an interesting read, albeit a more Hallmark version of the war experience. It was a pretty quick read, with women friendships, romantic relationships which didn't really work for me regarding Anna, and "covert" operations as she worked undercover to discover and send over intel to the Allies. It was interesting that the whole group seemed to not pay attention to the "secrecy" part of their job as they seemed to discuss it freely and use their real names all the time. However, if you just went with the flow it was an interesting read that overall satisfied me.

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