A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell.  In 2011, I was helping my daughter find a subject for her sixth grade biography project, and we stumbled upon the American World War II spy, Virginia Hall.  As we read more, I wondered how it was possible I’d never heard of her. Hall’s story seemed made for Hollywood!  Well, she’s finally being plucked from the shadows.  In addition to this wonderful biography there are two others, and a feature film is in the works.  On paper, Hall was not a likely candidate for espionage.  Not only was she born in 1906 into a patrician Baltimore family, but she also lost part of her leg in a hunting accident. Nothing would stop her, though.  Despite her gender and her prosthetic leg (which she nicknamed “Cuthbert”), she became such a menace that the Gestapo named her the “most dangerous of all Allied spies.” In and out of occupied Paris and Lyon, she organized resistance fighters and safe houses, while outsmarting double agents, the (dreadful) Vichy, and the Nazis.  Her exploits included a hair-raising escape on foot over the Pyrenees, wooden leg and all (after which she went back for more).  She was courage, grit, determination and honor personified.  It will make your blood boil to read about the discrimination she faced when she returned to the CIA after the war, but at least she is getting her due.