Author of Historical Fiction and Mysteries
The popular perception of those who arrived on the shores of North America on the Mayflower is that they were all godly puritans and that the colony of Plymouth was an idyllic community where everyone worked equally hard and religious harmony prevailed. This image may be idealized, if we are to believe the version of... Continue Reading →
An absorbing and fast-paced western, Whiskey When We're Dry begins in the spring 1885 when seventeen-year-old Jessilyn Harney leaves her homestead and sets out across the mountains in search of her outlaw brother Noah. Alone after her father's death, Jessilyn decides that the only way to keep starvation and rapacious neighbors at bay is to... Continue Reading →
The Power to Deny introduces the reader to one of the forgotten figures of the late colonial and revolutionary America. Elizabeth Graeme was a Philadelphia socialite and a poet in her own right who was friends with, and admired by, many in her day, including some of the men who went on to sign the Declaration... Continue Reading →
Guest post by Wendy Long Stanley Eleven years ago, I moved from Canada to the United States with my husband and our two daughters. That first year, as I was exploring the Philadelphia area, I visited Graeme Park, a local historic site that once belonged to Pennsylvania colonial governor William Keith. Today, Graeme Park features... Continue Reading →
I have been on a historical mystery binge lately, though with this latest novel I shifted gears in terms of time and place. Murder in the Oval Library by C.M. Gleason is set in Washington, DC during the first days of the Civil War. The day after the news reaches the US capital of the fall of... Continue Reading →
The Whale: A Love Story is a fictionalized take on a question that has puzzled literary scholars for more than 150 years. Was the short, intense friendship between two American writers Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne simply a meeting of minds, or something more and - given the times - forbidden? The two first met... Continue Reading →
To paraphrase a classic, a writer's work is never done. That's why this post, which should have appeared a month ago - closer the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the flu pandemic - is posted only now. But I was in the middle of doing final manuscript revisions for my second book (to be... Continue Reading →
Guest blog by Pat Wahler There is an abundance of information, some accurate and some pure fantasy, on the infamous outlaw Jesse James. He had a wife, and I couldn’t help but wonder about her. Why would she marry a man on the wrong side of the law? Why would she stand by him despite... Continue Reading →
This weekend I made an unplanned but very exciting visit to one of the most historic places in America, and it happens to be right in my town. Somewhat unassuming on the outside, The United First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts, houses a crypt with the tombs of two former U.S. presidents. John Adams (1735-1826)... Continue Reading →
Guest Post by DM Denton Read Escaping Ziegfeld by DM Denton and Help Rescue Animals My beautiful and talented maternal grandmother died long before I was born. She was a classically trained pianist, receiving “her entire musical education” at the Illinois College of Music, which was established in 1900. There, she “made an extensive study... Continue Reading →
P.K. Adams 