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Judith Starkston

Judith Starkston has spent too much time exploring the remains of the ancient worlds of the Greeks and Hittites. Their myths and clashes inspire her fiction and open gates to magical realms. She has degrees in Classics from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Cornell. She loves myths and telling stories, and her novels imbue fantasy with the richness of ancient worlds. The first book in her Trojan Threads Series, Hand of Fire was a semi-finalist for the M.M. Bennett’s Award for Historical Fiction. Priestess of Ishana, the first in her historical fantasy Tesha series, won the San Diego State University Conference Choice Award. Judith is represented by Richard Curtis.

Review of A Death in the Small Hours by Charles Finch

Charles Lenox is back in another of this extended series of gentle, Victorian era mysteries. Love in many forms turns up in unlikely places as the evil crimes are committed and solved. Finch uses this counterpoint thematically and it gives the book a benign lightness despite some grim moments.

A Literary Evening with Three Wise and Witty Women Writers

In the Phoenix Metro Area: A Literary Evening on April 27th with Three Wise and Witty Women Writers: Donis Casey, Elizabeth Gunn, and Susan Cummins Miller Join us for an informal guided conversation, books to buy, good food and wine. RSVP to get directions/details: judithstarkston@gmail.com About the three mystery writers: Donis Casey Donis writes the Alafair Tucker series of historical mysteries set primarily in Oklahoma for the Poisoned Pen Press. Her sixth title in the series, The Wrong Hill to Die On, moves Alafair temporarily to Tempe in 1916. Alafair is a mother of ten running a farm with her… Read More »A Literary Evening with Three Wise and Witty Women Writers

Review of Helen of Troy by Margaret George

George starts with Helen as a small girl and takes her all the way through the Trojan War, back to Sparta and beyond. The most compelling things about Helen of Troy, besides the abundance of detail of daily life and war in ancient times, are George’s character portrayals.

Review of The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

Imagine watching your loving, nearly perfect mother stand on the front stairs of your farmhouse, put the baby down behind her and stab a man to death and then act as if this brutal act had little to do with her? Fifty years later Laurel Nicolson sets out to find the real answer in a novel spanning London in the blitz and an idyllic childhood in the English countryside post WWII.

Review of The Wedding Shroud by Elisabeth Storrs

An historical romance set in early Rome and the Etruscans, this novel contrasts the frugal Romans with the sensual Etruscans while unfolding the complexities and crises of a marriage between a Roman girl and a nobleman of Veii.

Review of A Friendly Game of Murder by J.J. Murphy

Feeling down but a lighthearted romp among screwball writers in the 1920’s would cure you? Try the third book in J.J. Murphy’s Dorothy Parker series, A Friendly Game of Murder. Dorothy Parker, poet and satirist, and her fellow Algonquin Round Table companions, a group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits, were famous for their biting wisecracks and wordplay. Murphy continues this tradition in his entertaining mysteries.

Review of The Eighth Veil by Frederick Ramsay

A girl is drowned and her throat cut in the baths of Herod’s palace in 28 CE. Using traditional Talmudic reasoning, Rabbi Gamaliel tracks down the killer without slowing down the fast paced action.

Giveaway and Review of A Thing Done by Tinney Sue Heath

Winner Announcement: Sarah of the blog Reading the Past has won the signed copy of Heath’s A Thing Done.
Do you love the internecine, flamboyant world of Dante’s Florence? Knightly honor manipulated by a deadly woman sound like a great starting place for a plot? Then you’ll enjoy Tinney Sue Heath’s A Thing Done.