The Difficult Saint by Sharan Newman

The Difficult Saint by Sharan Newman

Catherine's estranged younger sister, Agnes, has been promised in marriage to a German lord. Bitter about their religious differences, Agnes wants no part of Catherine or their father--except for the sizable dowry that he can provide. When Catherine and her father send Agnes off with her dowry and two knights in escort, they assume that they have seen the last of her.

But soon one of the escorts returns with terrible news: Agnes' new husband appears to have been murdered, and Agnes, the prime suspect, is being held, accused of murder by poisoning, or even worse, witchcraft.

In spite of their differences, Catherine believes in Agnes' innocence, and knows that she must do everything she can to save her sister's life. But when Catherine and her brood travel to Germany to begin sleuthing in a dangerously anti-Semitic climate, it becomes clear that Catherine and her husband's long-dreamt-of life of peace remains in the distant future--if they live to see it.

Sharan Newman is a medieval historian and author. She took her Master's degree in Medieval Literature at Michigan State University and then did her doctoral work at the University of California at Santa Barbara in Medieval Studies, specializing in twelfth-century France. She is a member of the Medieval Academy and the Medieval Association of the Pacific.

Rather than teach, Newman chose to use her education to write novels set in the Middle Ages, including three Arthurian fantasies and ten mysteries set in twelfth-century France, featuring Catherine LeVendeur, a one-time student of Heloise at the Paraclete; her husband, Edgar, an Anglo-Scot; and Solomon, a Jewish merchant of Paris. The books focus on the life of the bourgeoisie and minor nobility and also the uneasy relations between Christians and Jews at that time. They also incorporate events of the twelfth-century such as the Second Crusade and the rise of the Cathars.

The Catherine Levendeur mysteries have been nominated for many awards. Sharan won the Macavity Award for best first mystery for Death Comes As Epiphany and the Herodotus Award for best historical mystery of 1998 for Cursed in the Blood. The most recent book in the series The Witch in the Well won the Bruce Alexander award for best Historical mystery of 2004.

Just for a change, her next mystery, The Shanghai Tunnel, is set in Portland in 1868.

Newman has also written non-fiction books, including The Real History Behind the Da Vince Code (Berkley 2005) and the upcoming Real History Behind the Templars.

Newman lives on a mountainside in Oregon.