Nancy Fairbanks

Nancy Fairbanks Herndon was born and brought up in the St. Louis area, took bachelors degrees in English and Journalism from the University of Missouri, Columbia, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, an event almost as exciting and astonishing as the news, delivered by phone early one morning when she had been fast asleep, that her first book had been accepted for publication. She followed those two degrees with a Masters from Rice University, plus some doctoral work in English at New York University.

She held low-paying and not terribly interesting jobs as a typist, sales clerk, proofreader, and advertising copywriter, and then almost as low-paying but much more interesting jobs as a lecturer in English at Rice, NYU, University of Mississippi, Florida Atlantic University and University of Texas at El Paso. In 1989 her first historical romance, Wanton Angel, was published by Dorchester Publishing Co. in NYC under the pseudonym Elizabeth Chadwick. Six more historical romances and seven short stories in various anthologies followed before she published her first mystery, Acid Bath, with Berkley Prime Crime under her married name, Nancy Herndon.

After six additional comic police procedurals in the Elena Jarvis series, she began the Carolyn Blue culinary mystery series, written under her maiden name, Nancy Fairbanks. Crime Brulee, Truffled Feathers, Death a l’Orange, Chocolate Quake, and The Perils of Paella are in print with Unholy Guacamole to follow in November, 2004. Nancy has a new contract for three more Carolyn Blue novels with Berkley and is at work on a mystery that takes place in Sorrento, Italy. Each of these mysteries is situated in a different city (in some of which English is a second language, if spoken at all, including her hometown, El Paso, Texas, site of Unholy Guacamole). The series includes cultural history and recipes from the relevant areas, not to mention bizarre characters and adventures. Who, after all, expects to find a real corpse as part of an art exhibit?

Nancy lives in El Paso, Texas.

Forty-something homemaker Carolyn Blue is through with cooking and cleaning. She’s finally decided to throw in the dishtowel—and take on a dream job as a food writer. Now her plate is filled with exotic locales, delectable foods, and even a dash of crime. An index of to-die-for recipes included.