Alice K Boatwright

Alice K. Boatwright's first Ellie Kent mystery, Under an English Heaven, is set in the English Cotswolds. Its heroine is a divorced professor of English literature from San Francisco who favors wearing "black and more black" who is now, through the vicissitudes of love, the new wife of a charming English vicar. Her adjustment problems quickly move past knowing the difference between cookies and biscuits, when she stumbles over a body in the churchyard -- and becomes the murder's chief suspect. An ex-pat, she finds, can be rude; and a vicar's wife hears secrets. With these tools -- plus her experience as a researcher -- she sets out on another unexpected career path: detective.

Alice is also author of the award-winning book Collateral Damage (Standing Stone Books, 2012). Winner of the 2013 Bronze Medal for Literary Fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, Collateral Damage is three interlinked novellas that explore the long-term impact of the Vietnam War on those who fought -- and those who didn't. It was a Small Press Distribution bestseller in 2012 and 2013 and has been a popular selection with book clubs and for classroom use, particularly in association with study of the Vietnam War.