13 Thrilling True Spy Books and Memoirs 

Have you heard of Gertrude Bell? There’s a good chance you haven’t, even though she’s been called “the female Lawrence of Arabia” and may have been one of the most powerful women in the British Empire. 

In this “monumental biography” (New Yorker), author Georgina Howell introduces readers to “a scholar and a spy whose extraordinary career spanned the heyday of the British Empire and culminated in the creation of Iraq” (Washington Post).

While you may not have heard of Gertrude Bell before now, once you’ve read about her incredible exploits, you won’t soon forget her.

Antonio Mendez is a celebrated spy, named one of the fifty “all-time stars of the spy trade” by the CIA. He’s also the bestselling author of Argo. 

“Mendez spins a good tale,” and in this one-of-a-kind tell-all authorized by the CIA, he gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at his many years spent as one of the agency’s most trusted operatives (Library Journal).

Working as a document-forger and master of disguise for undercover assignments all over the world, Mendez gives a peek behind the curtain at the real-life work that goes into being a spy, in the midst of some of the most dangerous operations ever undertaken.

When Freddy Mayer was sixteen, his family was among the last German Jews to successfully flee the Nazis’ rise to power. Settling in the United States, Mayer tried to enlist the day after Pearl Harbor, only to be rejected as an “enemy alien” because of his former nationality. 

That wasn’t the end of his story, though. Recruited by the Office of Strategic Services, Mayer parachuted into Austria, where he posed as a Nazi officer and a French POW, operating behind enemy lines to provide vital intelligence that helped the Allies win the war. 

Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eric Lichtblau tells Mayer’s “exhilarating” story, based on extensive research and interviews conducted with Mayer shortly before his death at the age of 94 (Wall Street Journal).

What’s it like to work for the CIA? Few people would know better than Jack Devine, who was an agent for over thirty years, eventually becoming the acting Deputy Director of Operations. 

During that time, he helped to run Charlie Wilson’s War, passed missiles to the mujahideen, tangled with double-agents, and so much more, all of which he brings to light in this “entertaining chronicle” (Washington Post).

Dive into what is described as, “a sophisticated, deeply informed account of real life in the CIA that adds immeasurably to the public understanding of the espionage culture” (Bob Woodward).

Everyone knows Ernest Hemingway as the troubled, Nobel Prize-winning author of some of the most beloved books in American letters. But was he also a spy? 

Through “fascinating new research” (New York Review of Books), Nicholas E. Reynolds, a former historian at the CIA Museum, reveals the truth about Hemingway in an “important” (Wall Street Journal) bestseller.

Ultimately, he illuminates Hemingway’s secret life—how it influenced his fiction and may have contributed to his death. In an “engrossing story” (Kirkus Reviews), Reynolds “looks among the shadows and finds a Hemingway not seen before” (London Review of Books).

Few names are as synonymous with intrigue as Mata Hari, the Dutch exotic dancer who, in 1917, was arrested, tried, and executed, accused of treason leading to the deaths of more than 50,000 soldiers. But who was Mata Hari, really? 

A brilliant, beautiful, and multilingual woman who seemed to travel pre-war Europe with impunity, hobnobbing with some of the most powerful men on the continent, her story is brought to light in this “engrossing” book (Bloomberg News) that is “both suspenseful and shocking” (Los Angeles Times), yet “told with clarity and understanding” (Kirkus Reviews).

It’s a story that could have come straight out of an espionage thriller, as everyday people are revealed to be deep-cover Russian agents, passing sensitive secrets to their KGB handlers during the Cold War. 

Except, in this case, it’s true. In a book that is “gripping and brilliantly researched” (Christopher Andrew, author of The Secret World: A History of Intelligence), Trevor Barnes presents the unbelievable true story of the worldwide manhunt for one of the Cold War’s most notorious spy rings. 

Described as a “first-rate” account which uses “newly declassified information to fuel a narrative as compelling as a spy novel” (Booklist).

Margaret Coker was the New York Times bureau chief in Baghdad and, in this “dramatic and edifying must-read” (Publishers Weekly), she tells the “focused, refreshing—and well overdue” (Financial Times) story of the “shadow war between Iraqi intelligence officers and the Islamic State” (The Atlantic).

Through such intimate reporting that she can “enter invisibly a closed, sometimes frightening world and portray it with cinematic detail” (The Atlantic). 

The result is a spy story for the modern age, and “an eye-opening account revealing that Iraqi competence and heroism were essential to its victory over terrorism” (Kirkus Reviews).

Robert Lindsay, author of The Falcon and the Snowman, called this, “One of the strangest spy stories in American history.” In 1997, Jim Nicholson became the highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage for his role in smuggling classified documents to Russia’s foreign intelligence service.

However, his story didn’t end once he was behind bars. From the inside of a federal prison, Nicholson continued to send messages to his Russian contacts, through the person he trusted most: his youngest son. 

Now, investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize-finalist Bryan Denson tells this “poignant and painful tale of family love, loyalty, manipulation and betrayal” (The Oregonian).

Dropped into Vichy France during World War II, Benjamin Cowburn was one of the operatives of Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) branch, tasked with making secure contacts within the French Resistance. 

In this classic memoir, he not only tells what life was like for the operatives working behind enemy lines, but reveals some of the secrets of spycraft that the SOE used to establish contacts, travel undetected, and engage in clandestine sabotage missions, including disabling the cylinders of thirteen locomotives in the dead of night.

Adapted into the Netflix original movie of the same name, Uri Bar-Joseph’s National Jewish Book Award-winning book is an account of the incredible life—and mysterious death—of Ashraf Marwan, an Egyptian official who allegedly worked as a spy for the Israeli Mossad, providing Israel with key intelligence leading up to the Yom Kippur War in 1973. 

In 2007, Marwan died in a fall from the balcony of his house in London. Was he assassinated because of his former clandestine activities—or because he still knew too much? All these questions and more are explored in this “fast-paced narrative that rivals the best spy fiction” (San Francisco Gate).

The year is 1940. Hitler’s armies are sweeping across Europe, and Britain might be next. More troubling still, there are those within the nation’s borders who would welcome him. 

Enter Eric Roberts, an unassuming bank clerk who goes deep undercover as “Jack King” to infiltrate the ranks of Nazi sympathizers within the UK and ferret them out for MI5, in an operation so secret it is withheld even from the briefings given to Winston Churchill. 

Now, at last, the story is told in a heavily researched volume that illuminates “a fascinating and often appalling side of the war at home” (Wall Street Journal).

Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Prize, Peter Lance’s investigative journalism has been hailed as “disquieting” (Toronto Sun) and “compelling and briskly told” (Washington Post). 

Now, he sets his sights on “Ali the American,” an al Qaeda operative who managed to infiltrate the CIA, the FBI, and the Green Berets, helping to pave the way for the devastating terror attacks of 9/11. 

In a “chilling account of a killer who slipped through the hands of a daft justice system,” Triple Cross tells the unforgettable true story of “one of the most vicious spies of our time” (Toronto Sun).