Pub day is December 6th!

Amazon.US
Apple
Nook
Kobo
And on December 13th in the UK/Commonwealth.
Amazon.UK

I’ll be signing the hardcover at the Poisoned Pen on December 8th at 2pm.
Click here to pre-order your copy.

Excerpt from Death of an Eye

It was a day as beautiful as were most days in Alexandria, a city benefiting from an idyllic location between the stifling heat of the interior deserts and the cool, onshore winds of the Middle Sea. Sunlight skipped across the ripples of the water, the Pharos stood tall and proud against the blue of the water, and the air smelled of salt. Gulls soared and dived and called raucously to one another, second in volume only to the low, continuous roar of the streets of Alexandria by day. A fisherman was selling his early morning catch off the stern of his boat and was surrounded by a gaggle of slaves and housewives bargaining furiously at the tops of their voices for only the best shrimp and squid and fish for that evening’s dinner.  Stalls lining both sides of the street featured onions, leeks, and garlic, lentils, beans and spices, dates, figs, plums, pomegranates, melons and more. The latest in food and fashion from Rome, Athens, and Byzantium was hawked from the decks of larger ships, and the wealth of brightly colored fruits and fabrics were enough to blind the eye.

The spaces between the vendors were as always well seeded with individuals hoping to gather a few coins in their bowls by magic tricks, juggling, acrobatics and anything else that might produce another coin in their bowls. There were many musicians with varying degrees of talent, like the young Greek man who tootled mournfully on a flute, in accompaniment with another young Greek who sang a song of losing his mother, his job, and his dog all on the same day. They were very attractive young men, which accounted for the circle of adoring young women surrounding them. Here a man aged either by nature or by craft cast a spell on a half-circle of rapt boys with the tale of Achilles before the walls of Troy. Some of it Tetisheri recognized from Homer, the rest, especially the addition of Achilles’ hand-to-hand battle with Ares over the favors of Aphrodite, was new to her and probably to everyone else on the street as well.  An older woman with soulful dark eyes read fortunes in palms under the baleful surveillance of a Jewish priest with long earlocks.

See you there!

Eye of Isis Uncategorized cleopatra dana stabenow Death of an Eye first Eye of Isis novel