Roman Mysteries: The Assassins of Rome

Caroline Lawrence is American. She lives with her husband by the river in London and is active as a speaker in schools and at book festivals. She took part in the British Museum's POMPEII LIVE event, giving talks that were streamed to schools all over the UK, and she is the winner of the 2009 CLASSICS ASSOCIATION PRIZE for 'a significant contribution to the public understanding of Classics'. In addition to the 17 novels in the ROMAN MYSTERIES sequence, Caroline Lawrence has written five spin-off titles, all of which have contributed to total UK sales in excess of 1 million copies. Visit Caroline's website at www.carolinelawrence.com and follow her on Twitter @CarolineLawrenc.

I enjoyed this book a lot - it won me over early on with a dream that made use of Penelope's loom, combining some of my favourite themes! And Flavia describing the under-construction Colosseum as 'colossal' made me smile (and yes, the author's note at the back makes clear that the name comes from the statue, not the amphitheatre itself, but Flavia doesn't know that!).