Episode 7: Interview with Marian L. Thorpe

In this episode I interview historical fantasy author Marian L. Thorpe. We chat about agricultural history, the animals (including horses) in her books, and her writing. We also talk chickens a bit. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

In the bonus conversation (supporters receive access to this), I asked her what is on her TBR pile and she mentioned a couple of titles. Here they are:

Cover for A Wider World, The Tudor Court book II

A Wider World (The Tudor Court) coming April 25.

Memories are all he has…

Now they could save his life.

Returning to England after almost five years in exile, Robin Lewis is arrested and charged with heresy by the dying Queen Mary. As he is escorted to the Tower of London, Robin spins a tale for his captor, revisiting his life under three Tudor monarchs and wondering how he will be judged—not just by the queen, but by the God he stopped serving long ago.

When every moment counts, will his stories last long enough for him to be saved by Mary’s heir, the young Queen Elizabeth?

Crimes of Disrespect

FALL TERM HAS STARTED at Woodmore Academy, a private school in Oakville, Ontario. Pamela Renard, a brilliant Mohawk teen at Woodmore, is struggling with a bigoted bully — her fellow student Rose Molloy. But not for long. First Pamela and then Rose show up dead in strange circumstances. Sol Fitzgerald, a troubled young janitor, finds Pamela’s body in the school’s quadrangle. She fell, or was pushed from, Woodmore’s four-storey library.

A week later, on Pamela’s reserve — nearby Coyote River First Nation — some boys discover Rose’s body lying in a field. Two hunting arrows protrude from her back. Because a land-claim protest is raging at the border between the reserve and Ewing, a neighbouring town, the police wonder: are the two deaths connected? And could a racial tit-for-tat be behind them?
Meanwhile in Oakville, Sol becomes a suspect in Pamela’s murder. He begins his own investigation — to avoid prosecution but more so to find Pamela’s killer: he had tried to help the young scholarship student deal with Rose’s racist slurs and pranks. So it’s a big problem that Sol, a binge-drinking alcoholic, remembers nothing from the night Pamela died. The Halton Region police know he spent time in prison for aggravated assault. They’re also aware he knew Pamela. With no alibi, Sol is desperate to find the truth behind the killings.

But Sol also wonders about the truth of Pamela and Rose’s rocky relationship. He hopes they might have reached a mutual respect — even grudgingly — before they died. He finds Pamela’s diary, and it may provide the answer.

About Marian L. Thorpe

This is me, eight months into the pandemic. I haven’t had hair this long for many years! After two careers, the first as a research scientist and the second as an educator, I published my first book, Empire’s Daughter, in the same year I retired: 2015.

My books are historical fiction of an imagined world, one that is close to Britain, Northern Europe, and Rome, but isn’t. A world where a society evolved differently after the Eastern Empire left, where one young fisherwoman answers her leader’s call to defend her country, beginning a journey into uncharted territory, in an Empire of the edge of history.

Website: https://marianlthorpe.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/marianlthorpe
Facebook: https://facebook.com/marianlthorpe

An Emperor’s request. A lover’s refusal. And a young woman who must choose between them.

When a messenger arrives in Lena’s quiet village, asking the unthinkable – that with an invasion imminent, women learn to fight – she accepts the challenge. Her partner, Maya, does not. Torn between love and duty, Lena chooses the outsider Tice to help her create a cohort of assassins, bringing them together in a way neither expects. With the fate of a child in the balance, how far will Lena go to redeem herself in the eyes of her lover and herself?

Silver Medal, Historical Fantasy Box Set (2019), Coffee Pot Book Club Awards

Purchase on Amazon