

The Ephraim Twins
Miriam tells Phoebe in “The Fire”, a story in The Deadliest Deceptions, that to verify Jacob’s alibi, she dropped in to see the Ephraim...


Arithmetic, Roman Style
Since the first century BCE, calculations were performed with calculi, the Latin word for pebbles. For a hundred years before Miriam’s...


Red Marble
On the upstairs landing of her Alexandria townhouse, twenty-eight-year-old Lucia Antonina tripped on the hem of her floaty peplos, a...


How to Serve Elephant Beans
In “The Recollection”, a story in The Deadliest Deceptions, Phoebe needs to deliver papyrus scrolls to the clerks in the morgue, and...


Can Your Pet Snake Hear You Scream?
Snakes inspect things by flicking their tongue. It’s the way they bring scents from the air into their mouths where a specialized organ...


The "Barkless Dog"
Paleontologists claim that the first domesticated dogs looked a lot like Basenjis. This breed of hunting dogs was already well...


Win a free copy of The Deadliest Thief
By becoming a subscriber to my semi-annual newsletter by November 17th, you are eligible to win a FREE e-copy of my novel, THE DEADLIEST...


The Warehouses of Caesarea
“The Guest”, a short story in THE DEADLIEST DECEPTIONS, is about one man’s simmering jealousy against his more successful sibling. The...


Is Using Profanity Good For You?
We can define profanity as vulgar, socially unacceptable language that you don’t use in polite conversation. But its universality...


In the Name of Jupiter
Jupiter is the god of the sky and thunder, the king of the gods. The Romans regarded him as the equivalent of the Greek god Zeus, the...