When M. Ruth Myers and I discovered we were both promoting books in our respective historical mystery series at the same time, we thought how much fun it would be to compare the responses our female sleuths from different historical periods would make to the same questions. (This is reposted… Read More »What do a Victorian Lady and a 1940s Gal Gumshoe have in Common?
Throughout most of history, employment opportunities for women were limited. But by the nineteenth century, advances in education and technology were creating new professions for “ladies”—some of which have since disappeared, some of which are today common, and at least one that remains a highly specialized field. “Telegraph Ladies”… Read More »An Unusual Job for a Woman: A Look at Three Job Opportunities in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries
My last novel, Out of Stone, which takes place in 1920, is set in a in a town, Ramapo River, that I created partly from my memories of Saddle River, New Jersey, the town I grew up in from the time I was nine until I finished college. Those memories,… Read More »Worlds Upside Down by Ann Elwood
What’s in Mrs. Hale’s Receipt for the Millions 1857? To smoke Hams and Fish on a small scale. — Drive the ends out of an old hogshead or barrel; place this over a heap of sawdust of green hard wood, in which a bar of r ed -hot iron is… Read More »Food’s On: The Mess Hall & the CCC’s by J. L. Oakley
Hell With the Lid Blown Off takes place in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, during the sultry summer of 1916. Storms are brewing all over; the country is teetering on the brink of World War I. Alafair Tucker fears for her children’s future as they grow up and her ability to protect… Read More »Reality is as Bizarre as Fiction, by Donis Casey