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.
Jacqueline Winspear fans won’t need any prodding to read her latest Maisie Dobbs mystery, A Lesson in Secrets. The rest of you should be ashamed of yourselves. Maisie’s character makes for uncommonly good reading as she takes a new direction professionally, working undercover for the Secret Service in the midst of the conflicting political currents of 1932.
Bruce Macbain’s Roman Games launches an excellent new Roman mystery series. If you are a fan of Steven Saylor, Lindsey Davis, or Roman history in general, you’ll want to pick it up. His detective, Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), a decent, straight-laced senator, teams up with Martial, a poet of racy and scurrilous verses, to untangle a delightfully twisted murder case.
Bless the Bride, the latest in Rhys Bowen’s Molly Murphy series, sends Molly to New York’s Chinatown in 1903 to sift through layers of crime and a major moral dilemma before she’ll get a chance at the layers of her own wedding cake–or will she?
Archaeology Magazine has a fascinating online “interactive dig” based on the Zominthos dig on the Greek island of Crete where there have been some pretty amazing Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age finds. Enjoy experiencing the ancient world of Crete almost first hand.
The Curse-Maker, by Kelli Stanley, set in Bath during the Roman period, blends a twisting, exciting mystery with a vivid Roman setting. Stanley combines her background as a classicist with a passion for noir mystery. The Roman politics and corruption that provide the context of the mystery are compellingly developed and, like many things Roman, echo modern life while retaining their uniquely Latin flavor. click the title to read the full review…
J.J. Murphy’s Murder Your Darlings is a thoroughly delightful read. Part screwball comedy, part literary spoof, this mystery stars Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, Robert Benchley and others solving a murder when a prominent drama critic is found stabbed with a fountain pen under the famous Round Table at the Algonquin Hotel. Don’t be put off if you’ve never heard of the Algonquin Round Table—Murphy supplies whatever background you need, and you don’t have to have read Parker to catch her rapid fire humor. Fans of Jacqueline Winspear will enjoy this light take on the same period.
Ben Bova stays true to his science fiction roots in this action-packed novel set in the Bronze Age world of the Hittite empire and Troy’s last days. Lukka, a soldier in the emperor’s army, returns home from a lengthy campaign to discover the Hittite capital in flames, his family stolen away by slavers. He follows the trail to Troy only to find that city under siege and the complications growing as he tries to save his family in the midst of yet another city’s demise. Bova reworks the myths surrounding Troy to incorporate Lukka in these legends. He has created… Read More »Review of The Hittite by Ben Bova
Classics professor emeritus, Erich S. Gruen, offers hope that we can overcome our ingrained impulse toward demonizing the “other” through his analysis of Greek, Roman, and Jewish thought in his new book, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity. His argument is briefly laid out in a commentary from the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Who were the Trojans? Probably a people called Luwian who were part of the extended Hittite world.
1. For those of you who have stood in front of a museum case of gorgeous Greek vases and wondered what it all meant, here is a guide from the Wall Street Journal to get you started. For a more detailed version, you’ll have to fly me to your location and I’ll gladly explain all the juicy mythological details. (Just kidding, although once in the British Museum with my son perched on my shoulders, I did turn to discover I was being followed by a large group as I told him the wild tales depicted on the vases in front… Read More »In the Ancient News: “Reading” Greek pots; Israeli mosaic tours US
