PRINCESS ELIZABETH'S SPY

A mathematician born in Britain and raised in America adds spying to her resume.

Maggie Hope has left her job as a secretary to Winston Churchill to enter MI5’s school for spies. Although her grades are stellar, she doesn’t do well enough on the physical tests to be sent to France. Instead, MI5 finds a job for her as maths tutor to the Princess Elizabeth so that she can keep an eye on Elizabeth, fondly known as Lilibet, who, as heir to the throne, may be a Nazi target. Maggie arrives at Windsor Castle with a lot on her mind. Her boyfriend has been shot down over Germany, and the father she had long thought dead is working at Bletchley Park—and may be a German spy. Maggie soon becomes a favorite of Lilibet and her younger sister, Margaret, if not their beloved Corgis, and bonds with the large and varied castle staff, both upstairs and downstairs, despite their understandable fears following the recent murder of a friend of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. As she pokes around, Maggie begins to suspect one of the snobbish ladies of Nazi leanings. Taken under the wing of Lord Gregory Strathcliffe, a badly disfigured RAF pilot, Maggie soon discovers several disquieting things after someone else is killed on the castle grounds. It’s good that Maggie is willing to risk her life to protect Lilibet, but will things indeed come to such a pass?

Maggie’s second adventure (Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, 2012) is a romantic thriller detailing the life of the royals during the perilous times of World War II.