Excerpt from Agent Sonya by Ben Macintyre, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Olga Muth, known as Ollo, was more than just a member of the family. She was its bedrock, providing dull, daily stability, strict rules, and limitless affection. The daughter of a sailor in the kaiser's fleet, Ollo had been orphaned at the age of six and brought up in a Prussian military orphanage, a place of indescribable brutality that left her with a damaged soul, a large heart, and a firm sense of discipline. A bustling, energetic, sharp-­tongued woman, Ollo was thirty in 1911 when she began work as a nursemaid in the Kuczynski household.

Ollo understood children far better than Berta, and had perfected techniques for reminding her of this: the nanny waged a quiet war against Frau Kuczynski, punctuated by furious rows during which she usually stormed out, always to return. Ursula was Ollo's favorite. The girl feared the dark, and while the dinner parties were in full swing downstairs, Muth's gentle lullabies soothed her to sleep. Years later, Ursula came to realize that Ollo's love was partly motivated by a "partisanship with me against mother, in that silent, jealous struggle."

Excerpted from Agent Sonya by Ben Macintyre. Copyright © 2020 by Ben Macintyre. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.