My regularly scheduled short story post coming soon, but in the interim I am looking for reading suggestions. This weekend I watched The Bletchley Circle, which I missed when it originally aired on PBS last spring. I thought it was really brilliantly done--from the story down to the costumes. It has now, of course, totally piqued my curiosity. Aside from the fact I love a good thriller, I would love to read more about women who did intelligence work during WWII.
If you've not yet seen The Bletchley Circle, it's a story of four women who worked as code breakers at Bletchley Park. After the war, as so may other women had to do too, they settled back into their ordinary lives. Having signed the Official Secrets Act, that part of their lives must now remain buried. For one woman, now a wife and mother, she finds domesticity lacking with nothing to challenge her intellect. She begins seeing a pattern in a series of murders that have been taking place in London and sets out to solve the crimes with the help of three women she worked with at Bletchley.
Although a fictionalized story, the seed out of which it grew is that there were many women who were part of the war effort doing important and amazing things. Now I want to read about some of the real women. I know Julia Child worked for the OSS, and I think perhaps Elizabeth Bowen and maybe Rose Macaulay also did war work. The women needn't have been writers, but those names come to mind. I will be digging around looking for books, but if you can recommend titles I would appreciate suggestions. I prefer nonfiction, but good novels are welcome, too.