Please subscribe to my almost-daily blog The Hung Juror (reflections on justice and an injustice in America from a juror's point of view).
For more details on my manuscript in search of a publisher, THE POSTHUMOUS WIFE, please click on the tab to the left or visit the website.
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Now available from Light Pages, LLC, ebooks for the Kindle and iPhone:
The Juror Hangs is a classic mystery with twists. It’s "courtroom drama from the juror’s point of view" meets "tongue-in-cheek noir whodunit" with a beautiful but prissy librarian sleuth (Miss T. Iris Ginge) and a loose-cannon, meter-maid sidekick named Calamity.
The novel was inspired by my own traumatic experience as a juror in a kidnapping and sexual-assault trial in Cook County Criminal Courthouse, where Al Capone was arraigned in 1931 (and where my protagonist’s father was convicted of corruption). After my jury duty, I knew I had to write about the criminal justice system. I’d been thinking about a librarian-sleuth for some time. Then I realized that a juror also has great sleuthing potential.
"THE JUROR HANGS is the most inventive take on the courtroom drama I've come across in my career in publishing. Catherine Mambretti dishes out something for every mystery-lover's taste, a bit of humor, a bit of emotion, a lot of mystery."
Jeanette Cole, Publisher, Light Pages, LLC
www.LightPagesLLC.com
My novella, CHALK GHOST, is an Editors Pick & Semi-Finalist in the 2009 Contest at www.TextNovel.Com. Please vote for the story by clicking on the "thumbs up" icon.
The Evil That Men Do, by Catherine Mambretti, is a collection of 8 short stories, including 4 stories listed below, published Dec. 2008 by Light Pages, LLC. The ebook is available at Amazon Kindle, LULU.com, and Smashwords.com, and elsewhere.
- "Measure Twice, Cut Once"--Handheld Crime, February, 2001
- "Painter of the Seven-eyed Beast"--Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2002
- "The Mute Monja, or the Walls Could Talk"--Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, April 2004
- "Dead of Winter"--Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, December 2007
Available at Fictionwise
And at eReader
Back issues of all three magazines are available from Dell Publications
For more about my scholarship and nonfiction works, please "Google" me (Catherine Mambretti).
I'm a melting-pot American, with Sephardic Jewish ancestors and Native American ancestors and many, many Celtic ones. My last name is my husband's, but like him I have a fair number of Italian ancestors, too. My historical fiction draws on all these roots. "Painter of the Seven-eyed Beast" and "The Mute Monja" (short stories published in AHMM) are set in 12th century Catalonia (two centuries before the Inquisition banished my ancestors from the Iberian peninsula). Sleuths Ramon and Ermessenda are fresco artists, whose works I wish I could have studied in college, when I minored in Art History. "The Dead of Winter" (short story published in AHMM) draws on my Native American roots and love of 17th century England and its colonies. And in "The Juror Hangs" (my debut novel) I plunge into the weird 1950s when I grew up--and into elegant, tough Chicago.
The Chicago suburb where I write is the site of the Marx Brothers' Farm and perhaps was the first rail-commuter community in the U.S. It was founded after the Great Chicago Fire by a brick manufacturer who was afraid of the fire-prone city. My house is over a hundred years old and haunted by interesting spirits (not the least of which are my husband and my pet Greek tortoise). I've lived in "this old house" almost since receiving my Ph.D. (in 17th century English literature and bibliography [a.k.a. non-forensic document analysis]) from the University of Chicago.Hobbies? Well, anyone who writes fiction has to admit that their vocation and avocation are rather too closely allied. However, I have many interests. In fact, my interests are so wide-ranging that I have difficulty focusing. Among my recent passions are: Japanese language and writing systems, ancient writing systems from Sumer to Egypt and the Etruscans, sumio-E, tea ceremonies, vipassana (mindfulness) meditation, bookmarks, pens, cyphers and encoding, paper and papermaking, tasty wine, tasty food, aromas that don't make me sneeze, therapeutic massage, the relationship between the paranormal and the subconscious. . . .
Center for Book and Paper Art
Affiliations
I'm a bit of a loner, I suppose. But I am happy to say that I belong to the following superb organizations:
The Author's Guild
Sisters in Crime
Mystery Writers of America
Romance Writers of America
I recommend the following email groups:
DorothyL
For writers, I recommend :
Historical Mystery Writers
WritersOnline
Writers U
