wanted to tell stories ever since she could hold a pencil, and to sing before she could walk. After a brief career as a professional chorister, coffee-house singer, and actress, she combined her love of literature with her love of music during a 37-year career as a children’s librarian in New Jersey, where she could promote literacy and entertain youngsters.

In her spare time, Roberta wrote stories for fanzines incorporating historical characters into fictional situations. This led to paid publication, beginning with a story in the Shared Universe Anthology Merovingen Nights, edited by C.J. Cherryh, in 1987. Since then, Roberta has written four mystery novels in which the Reverend Mr. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) teams up with young Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle to solve crimes, and three set in post-Civil War New York City, where a team of waterfront lawyers take on cases that no one else will touch.

Now her love of history has turned in another direction with the Saga of Halvar, set in an Alternate Universe on what is almost, but not quite, Manhattan Island.

Roberta is a widow. She has two daughters: Miriam Ann Rogow, a travel agent living in San Francisco, who has written the Marti Hirsch mysteries, and Louise Katherine Howard, a computer programmer, who lives near Washington DC.