Tennis great Alice Marble. (San Francisco Chronicle file)

Alice Marble graced the cover of Life magazine after being name the country's Female Athlete of the Year.

Cover of "Ace, Marvel, Spy" by Jenni L. Walsh.

My winter reading is bouncing between World War II-era fact and fiction.

I’m finishing an e-book, “A Woman of No Importance,” while pausing to review the new release “Ace, Marvel, Spy” about tennis legend Alice Marble, for this column.

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“A Woman of No Importance” features painstakingly extensive research, as Sonia Purnell pens the never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who was instrumental in the resistance during World War II. Written in 2019, it won numerous “Book of the Year” awards and is a remarkable work of non-fiction.

“Ace, Marvel, Spy” is fanfiction by Jenni L. Walsh, based solely on the autobiography of Marble.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Marble and her extraordinary life as captured in biographies.

Marble won 18 major championships between 1936 and 1940: five in singles, six in women's doubles, and seven in mixed doubles. She was ranked world No. 1 in 1939. She was a celebrity on and off the court, hanging with Hollywood stars and assisting with the war effort.

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She most likely wasn’t a spy, as she claimed. She certainly was no Virginia Hall.

She........

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