Maryka Biaggio, a former psychology professor, has many scholarly publishing credits to her name, but Parlor Games is her debut novel. Maryka loves the challenge of starting with actual historical figures and dramatizing their lives-imagining what motivated them to behave as the did, studying how the cultural and historical context may have influenced them, and recreating some sense of their emotional world through dialogue and action. She travels extensively, for both work and pleasure, is crazy about opera, and enjoys gardening, art films, and, of course, great fiction. She lives in Portland, Oregon, that edgy green gem of the Pacific Northwest.