Madeleine Robins's Biography

Writing gives Madeleine Robins the chance to focus on many of her ruling passions: cities, history, swordplay, the history of disease, and the future of mankind-with a side order of historical costuming and infrastructure (early urban plumbing is far more interesting than you'd think).  Her books include Point of Honour, Petty Treason, and (coming this fall) The Sleeping Partner, all in the Sarah Tolerance mystery series; The Salernitan Women, a fairy tale of sorts about medieval medical education; The Stone War, a New York Times Notable Book, in which she blows up her home town; Daredevil: The Cutting Edge; and five Regency romances: Althea, My Dear Jenny, The Heiress Companion, Lady John, and The Spanish Marriage.  She is at work on a new Sarah Tolerance book right this minute.

A New Yorker by birth, training, and education, Robins' career path has been as diverse as her writing.  She has been, in no particular order, a nanny, a teacher, an actor and stage-combatant, an administrator, a comic book editor, a baker, typist-clerk for Thos. Cook's Houses of Parliament office, a repairer-of-hurt-books, an editorial consultant, and a writer.  She holds a degree in Theatre Studies from Connecticut College, and attended the Clarion Science Fiction Workshop in 1981.  She is a founding member of the BookViewCafe, where most of her short fiction is available for free.

A lifelong and passionate fan of cities and all things urban, Madeleine Robins now lives in San Francisco with her family, dog, and one determined lemon tree.