John Daniel & Company/Perseverance Press: The Paramour's Daughter

THICKER THAN WATER?

“Edgar-winner Hornsby's enthralling seventh Maggie MacGowen mystery takes the documentary filmmaker to France…. Readers will almost be able to taste the food and drink the author so vividly describes.”—Publishers Weekly (7/19/10)

Just a few hours before she is murdered, a foreign stranger claims she is a close relative of investigative filmmaker Maggie MacGowen.

It is a truism that “it’s a wise child who knows its father.” The same can apply to a mother, since we must believe and take for granted as true what our family tells us about our own early years. But what if you “remember” places you’ve never been, speak a language you’ve never been taught? What if your nearest and dearest are all involved in a conspiracy to cover up your true origins? In The Paramour’s Daughter, Maggie MacGowen is thrown into this parallel universe, trying to remember “the ghosts of comfort, fear, or love” from her earliest years. She must question everything she’s ever known about herself and her life—and deal with a large cast of previously unknown blood relatives, some of whom may not have affectionate feelings for the little girl who vanished so long ago. Especially when large sums of euros are involved….

Author Wendy Hornsby likens the study and teaching of history, her “day job,” to the writing of mysteries. She says, “History, mystery, same process; snooping around among the remains of dead people, finding questions, looking for answers.”

Wendy Hornsby is the author of eight critically praised mysteries, six of them about Maggie MacGowen. She has been awarded a short-story Edgar as well as a French literary prize, besides nominations for other French and American mystery writing awards. She lives in Southern California, where she teaches European history as a professor at Long Beach City College.

Visit Wendy Hornsby's website