Below is my occasional newsletter, reinvented to coincide with the debut of Burnt Siena ...
My newest novel, Burnt Siena, comes
out this week (on June 17) from Five Star/Cengage Learning. It begins a
new series (The Flora Garibaldi Art History Mysteries). Flora is a young
paintings conservator, recently trained in Florence, Italy, who moves to Siena
to take a new job with a firm of Italian painters and conservators. Anticipating
a dream job using her advanced skills, she is disappointed when her employers
sideline her doing menial tasks like mixing gesso and applying gold foil to
picture frames. Then, a colleague is murdered and her new job takes her into
dangerous territory: forging paintings and smuggling antiquities.
The book comes out simultaneously
in Kindle
and hardcover.
More murder news: I am re-reading
Ellis Peters/Edith
Pargeter for her terrific descriptions and wonderful plots. She’s best
known for her Brother Cadfael mysteries, but did you know she had several pseudonyms
and wrote over 50 books total?
Other news: I had a blast
teaching a course on “Archaeology and the Bible” at our local Osher Lifelong
Learning center this past semester. A hundred students, ages 50-90, kept me
challenged with fascinating questions and showed far more engagement than most
undergraduates. The most outrageous site we discussed was the double palace and
lake (complete with island) built by Herod the Great at Herodion.
More archaeology news:
Wine-making,
anyone? Discovery of ancient pressing floor in Israel by a teen-ager walking her
dog!
When I teach archaeology, I point
out the obvious: I don’t look at all like Indiana Jones. But this fictional
character has changed the world view of archaeology. Check out this new
exhibit put on by National Geographic.
And last but not least, mummy
news: Researchers continue to make new discoveries about health of Egyptians in
ancient times through CT scans and other techniques. But animal
mummies also provide surprises: many of them were fakes.
