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A Letter of Mary (1997)

ISBN 978-0-312-42738-2

     The ordeal moved on to the next stage, which consisted of the stewed tea and watery coffee prepared by the Mother's Union to accompany their pink- and green-iced biscuits. Everyone knew the colonel, everyone came over to talk with him, and everyone glanced sideways at me before being introduced. I was certain that at any minute some acquaintance would recognise me and all would be lost, but I was spared that. I suppose the circle Holmes and I moved in, if it can be described by that term, had little overlap with that particular church population.
     I was positively quivering by the time the colonel bade his farewells to the few remaining parishioners in the church hall, though whether my reaction was one of suppressed hysterical laughter or the urge to commit mass ecclesiasticide, I am still unsure.

Read Excerpt from A Letter of Mary here.

What they say

The third in the series, set in 1923, involves the suspicious death of Dorothy Ruskin, an amateur archaeologist recently returned from Palestine, who gave Mary…a letter dated about A.D. 70 written by “Marian the Apostle” to her sister in Magdala. Mary Madgalene? An Apostle? (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

Laurie R. King’s A Letter of Mary delights me as much as its two predecessors in what I must hope will be a long, unfolding series… I thoroughly enjoyed this book; I also admired it. (Boston Globe)

Between the Zionists on their soapboxes and the academic subversives in their libraries, the air is thick with spies. For all the disparity of their investigative techniques, the ultra-perceptive Holmes and the super-scholarly Russell make an engaging pair of sleuths. Their quick minds and quirky personalities insure a lively adventure in the very best of intellectual company. (New York Times)

Links

For a timeline and various links, go to Mary Russell's World
And for an idea of what the scroll might have distantly resembled
For a bibliography and Laurie's suggestions to teacher and book groups, click here.

Women as leaders in early Judaism

Mary of Magdala --the Roman Catholic version, in Time magazine, and in the BBC.

The gnostic Gospel of Mary from Nag Hammadi

What does a Capability Brown landscape look like? 

And what did Holmes' taxicab look like?