Elisabeth Kidd

Civil Blood is Elly Kirsten’s first cozy mystery, but she’s been a fan since reading the “classic” British cozies of of Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh, and Dorothy L. Sayers. She grew up in New England, so that seemed a natural choice for a setting for her own mysteries, and she has been a devotee of regional theater forever, so of course she set her story in a small New England town with a theater festival. Middleford is imaginary, but the author draws on several places she knew growing up to create an ideal atmosphere for a “cozy” mystery.

The author was born in New York City, raised in Connecticut, and lived in Pennsylvania before settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She graduated from Mills College and received an MA in Spanish from Middlebury College. She also lived in London for three years, where she first read the novels of Georgette Heyer and tried her hand at writing a historical romance set in Spain (later published as The Dancers’ Land). As Elisabeth Kidd, she has written ten other historical romances, seven of them Regency romances. Under her own name, she has also published short stories, newspaper features and travel articles.