Author Talk with Connie Berry

in conversation with Robin Yocum

Join crime writer Connie Berry as she launches the sixth installment of her Kate Hamilton mystery series, A Grave Deception. Berry will be in conversation with fellow crime writer Robin Yocum.

Join crime writer Connie Berry as she launches the sixth installment of her Kate Hamilton mystery series, A Grave Deception, plunging antiques expert Kate Hamilton into the past to solve a fourteenth-century mystery with disturbing similarities to a modern-day murder. Berry will be in conversation with fellow crime writer Robin Yocum. Bexley Public Library is pleased to be in partnership with Gramercy Books and Buckeye Crime Writers for this engaging event.

Registration for this free event is on Eventbrite HERE. You can pre-purchase A Grave Deception during registration, and it will also be available at the event.

Kate Hamilton and her husband, Detective Inspector Tom Mallory, have settled into married life in Long Barston. When archaeologists excavating the ruins of a nearby plague village discover the miraculously preserved body of a fourteenth-century woman, Kate and her colleague, Ivor Tweedy, are asked to appraise the grave goods, including a valuable pearl. When tests reveal the woman was pregnant and murdered, the owner of the estate on which the body was found, an amateur historian, asks Kate to identify her and, if possible, her killer. Surprised, Kate agrees to try.

Meanwhile, tensions within the archaeological team erupt when the body of the lead archaeologist turns up at the dig site with fake pearls in his mouth and stomach. Then a third body is found in the excavations. Meanwhile, Kate’s husband Tom is tracking the movements of a killer of his own.

With the help of 700-year-old documents and the unpublished research of a deceased historian, Kate must piece together the past before the grave count reaches four.

Connie Berry is the author of the Kate Hamilton mysteries, set in the UK and featuring an American antiques dealer with a gift for solving crimes. Like her protagonist, Connie was raised by antiques dealers who instilled in her a passion for history, fine art, and travel. During college she studied at the University of Freiburg in Germany and St. Clare's College, Oxford, where she fell under the spell of the British Isles. In 2019 Connie won the IPPY Gold Medal for Mystery and was a finalist for the Agatha Award's Best Debut. Her books have also been finalists for the 2023 Edgar Lilian Jackson Braun award and the 2024 Agatha Best Contemporary novel. She's a member of her local Sisters in Crime chapter, the Crime Writers Association (UK), the Mystery Writers of America, and is the Immediate Past President of the Guppies. Besides reading and writing mysteries, Connie loves history, foreign travel, cute animals, and all things British. She lives in Ohio and Northern Wisconsin with her husband and adorable shih tzu, Emmie.

Robin Yocum is known for his fiction set in the Ohio River Valley. He has authored two non-fiction books and seven novels. His most recent novel, The Last Hitman, will be published December 2. The Sacrifice of Lester Yates, released in April of 2021, was a finalist for the 2021 Dashiell Hammett Award for outstanding crime writing. A Brilliant Death was a Barnes & Noble No.1 bestseller and a finalist for both the 2017 Edgar Award and the Silver Falchion Award for best adult mystery. He also is the host of the true-crime podcast, Dead Before Deadline, which features stories Yocum covered when he was a police and investigative reporter for the Columbus Dispatch, where he won more than 30 local, state, and national journalism awards. He is the principal at Yocum Communications, a public relations and marketing consulting firm in Galena, Ohio, which he founded in 2001. Yocum grew up in the Ohio River village of Brilliant, Ohio. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University. 

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