Hannah Ives first appeared in Sing It to Her Bones and one of the best ways to learn about a person is by asking questions, so let’s get to know Hannah.

What is your name?
Hannah Ives. In draft, I was just plain Hannah until Marcia’s first editor pointed out a critical deficiency: I had no last name. A last-minute appeal to one of Marcia’s friends resulted in the name Ives, inspired by an illustrated calendar tacked up on the wall next to the friend’s telephone. I could just as easily have been named Hannah Currier.

How old are you?
Marcia insists that if she had known Sing It To Her Bones was to be the first in a series, she would have started me out much younger. At the end of that novel, we learn that my only daughter, Emily, is about to make me a grandmother. That was in 1999. Twenty years later . . . you do the math!

What is your profession?
I did my undergraduate work at Oberlin College in Ohio. Later, I earned a masters degree in Library Science. I spent a significant portion of my professional life commuting from Annapolis to Washington, D.C., getting my ticket punched along the way until I made it to the top—a high-paying job at Whitworth and Sullivan as head of archives and records. All was going well until a quality management team somewhere on the tenth floor began throwing darts at the accounting firm’s organizational chart and twenty-five percent of middle level management, including yours truly, found ourselves tossed out on K Street, dazed and blinking, clutching our dress-for-success briefcases. After that, I became semi-retired, staving off boredom by occasionally working as a temp.

Do you have a significant other? What is his name and profession?
I do. His name is Paul Everett Ives, tall, lean and handsome with bottomless cup of coffee eyes. He’s a tenured math professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. If you need someone to explain the Riemann Hypothesis or Hilbert’s Sixteenth Problem, Paul’s your guy.

Any children?
I have one daughter, Emily Shemansky, who with her husband, Dante, owns and operates Paradiso, a luxury Annapolis day spa. Daniel prefers to be called just plain Dante, like Elvis, Madonna or Cher. The spa had been a dream of my son-in-law ever since he dropped out of Haverford College a year before graduation and eloped with our daughter. Somewhere I have a photo of the happy couple posing in front of a wedding chapel in Las Vegas. Not an auspicious start to a life-long relationship that now includes three adorable children.

Do you have any sibling(s)?
I have two sisters, Ruth two years older and Georgina, four years younger.

Ruth owns Mother Earth, a funky shop on Main Street in downtown Annapolis where she sells a variety of New Age gizmos. Ruth has feng-shuied the heck out of our Annapolis home. She’s married to Hutch, a no-nonsense attorney who helps keep her centered. Ruth’s first marriage to the philandering Eric ended in divorce. No kids, thank goodness.

Georgina’s husband is Scott Cardinale, a CPA who works out of an office in their Roland Park home in Baltimore. They have four children, twins Shaun and Dylan, just out of college, and Julie, a recent high-school graduate. Readers will remember Julie from earlier novels. She first appeared as a precocious four-year-old in Unbreathed Memories. Later, when Julie was fourteen, she was drugged and assaulted on a cruise ship, so her parents tend to be a bit over-protective. (Dark Passage.) Colin, now ten, was a happy “surprise”.

Do your parents live near you?
Sadly, my mother Lois passed away in 2000 of congestive heart failure, attributed to years of smoking. My father, Captain George Alexander, U.S. Navy, retired, is alive and well, living in an upscale Annapolis retirement community with his long-time girlfriend, Cornelia Gibbs. When I talked to Neelie the other day, she mentioned Daddy’s off in Florida tweaking some component on a SpaceX guidance system. After a long Navy career, he now does top secret contract work for the government. Why Daddy and Neelie haven’t tied the knot, I can’t say, although I suspect it had something to do with the retirement benefits from Neelie’s late husband which, I gathered, had set her up for life as long as she didn’t remarry. It doesn’t trouble me that Daddy is ‘living in sin’ with Neelie, but it’s an issue for Georgina’s husband, Scott who drags his family off every Sunday to an evangelical mega-church in the Baltimore suburbs.

Who is your best friend?
I have many friends, but if I had to pick one “best” it would be Nadine Smith Gray who wrote dozens of mystery novels under the pen name L.K. Bromley. Naddie’s retired now and focusing on her art. We met while I was working as a temp, cataloging her literary archives donated to the St John’s College Library. Naddie lives at Calvert Colony, an upscale Annapolis retirement community. I’d do anything for Naddie, which explains why we got kidnapped together (In Death’s Shadow) and how I ended up volunteering in Calvert Colony’s memory care unit where not all the residents were as dotty as one might expect. (Tomorrow’s Vengeance).

Cats, dogs or other pets?
I used to own a beautiful orange tabby named Marmalade; she was my soul mate. After Marmalade died, I vowed never to own another cat until my friend Eva showed up with Bella de Baltimore, a fluffy, gray, golden-eyed Chartreux–a true show cat–that had been an unwanted gift from a stalker. Eva had dogs, so there was definitely a litter box in my future. (Dead Man Dancing). The only dog in my life is Coco, my daughter’s labradoodle.

What town do you live in?
Annapolis, the capital of Maryland and home to the U.S. Naval Academy and to St John’s College, the “great books” school and third oldest college in the country. Annapolis vies with Newport Rhode Island for the “the sailing capital of the east coast” designation. Because I live so close to the Chesapeake Bay, I have a great love of sailing and the sea. It pained me when I sank a perfectly good sailboat in Sing It To Her Bones.

House or building complex? Own or Rent?
My husband and I own a restored 18th century town house on Prince George Street in Annapolis, two blocks from the Naval Academy and just half a block down the street from the historic William Paca House where I was once roped into being a cast member for “Patriot House: 1774,” a historical reality show being filmed for public television. No electricity, no running water and the “necessary” was way out back. No cell phones, either. It was a challenge. (The Last Refuge).

What is your favorite spot in your house?
I’d have to say my basement office where I tend to get lost in online research. I’ve spent a lot of time there recently getting sucked head first down the rabbit hole of genealogical research. My sister, Georgina, took a recreational DNA test and the results were totally mind-boggling: my sisters and I are 25% Native American. How the heck did that happen? (Tangled Roots).

Favorite meal? Favorite dessert?
Paul and I enjoy bopping around the corner to Galway Bay, a friendly neighborhood pub and restaurant where the corned beef and cabbage would make my Irish ancestors (12%) proud.

Crème brule, with a secondary shout out to the Flan al estilo tradicional de mamá Marisa con espuma de crema catalana you can order at Jaleo in Bethesda, Maryland.

Favorite hobby?
I knit for relaxation, but my closet is full of yummy yarn for projects I’ll never get around to, not even if I live a hundred years. There’s this discount yarn store in Seattle . . . stop me before I order again.

Favorite author?
Where do I start? If we’re talking about classic crime fiction, I’d have to choose Josephine Tey. Daughter of Time is genius. I’ve owned dozens of copies, but I keep loaning them out! Another unfairly overlooked author is Celia Fremlin who IMHO pretty much invented domestic suspense. Her riveting 1958 novel The Hours Before Dawn won the Edgar Award in 1960. I’ll read anything by Alan Bradley (love 12-year-old Flavia deLuce!), Deborah Crombie, Kate Charles, Phil Rickman, Andrew Taylor, Donna Leon, Ann Cleeves, John Hart, Lou Berney, Dan Stashower, Kent Krueger, Sara Paretsky . . . the list goes on and on. I recently finished D.M. Pulley’s first novel, The Dead Key, was excellent, and I am not the least bit prejudiced by the fact that it was set in Cleveland, Ohio, where I was born.

Favorite vacation spot?
The out islands of the Bahamas. Paul and I spent his six-month sabbatical at a friend’s cottage on Bonefish Cay in the Abacos. Even a deadly wildfire and a hurricane didn’t dampen our enthusiasm for the gin clear waters and active back-to-basics rhythms of laid back Bahamian island life. (Without a Grave).

Favorite sports team?
As I always say, the scientific instrument hasn’t been invented that can accurately measure how little I care about football. My passion is ice dancing. Pappadakis and Cizeron? Virtue and Moir? Wow, just wow! My all-time favorite team would be Torvill and Dean.

Movies or Broadway?
Nothing can substitute for a live Broadway show. Paul and I were fortunate enough to score tickets for The Producers on Broadway while Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane were still in the title roles. We laughed until our sides hurt.

Are you a morning or a night person?
Early to bed and early to rise makes a gal . . . well, you know!

Amateur sleuth or professional?
Definitely amateur. While most of my sleuthing takes place in and around Annapolis and Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay region, I do get restless. Marcia allows me out of Annapolis from time to time which not only adds variety to my life, but helps avoid what she likes to call the “Cabot Cove Syndrome:” over the course of twelve seasons on television and who knows how many years in syndication with Murder She Wrote, just how many murders can Jessica Fletcher believably stumble over in one small town? Annapolis has enough trouble as it is without increasing the local murder rate!

Whom do you work with when sleuthing?
It depends. Although my friend, Naddie Gray is now over eighty, she’s sharp and spry; we’ve solved two mysteries together, one involving an insurance scam that targeted older people. Both were set in upscale retirement communities. (In Death’s Shadow, Tomorrow’s Vengeance). At the other end of the age spectrum is baby Chloe. Once, while babysitting my granddaughter, Chloe crawled through a patio door and into a home. When I raced inside to retrieve the curious toddler, I discovered a critical clue. (Occasion of Revenge).

In Without a Grave, I had fun going after a crooked real estate developer with my next door neighbor on Bonefish Cay, Molly Weston, a sassy, super-annuated Nancy Drew. I want to be Molly when I grow up. An appeal for help from my Oberlin college roommate sent me to Oregon for what turned out to be my strangest (and most amusing) adventure, solving the murder of a television journalist at a Bigfoot convention. (Footprints to Murder). Not long after that, I flew to Denver at the request of a Claire, a Maryland state senator, staying with a group of “canna tourists” in a Bud & Breakfast while studying the recreational marijuana industry. Research can be hell, folks!

Most recently, I’ve been sleuthing with my niece, Julie, who just turned eighteen. When her mother’s DNA test reveals she’s part Native American and my DNA test had similar results. Whoa! The link seems to come from Lois, our late mother. But how? I dove right into constructing our family tree and turned up two second cousins, Mai and Nicholas. Julie and I were keen to embrace our new relatives and learn about our surprising ancestry, but Georgina is cool to the idea and Scott is outright opposed. Julie and I untangle the mystery together, but not before tragedy strikes our family. (Tangled Roots.)

In a few sentences, what is a typical day in your life like?
I get up early, brew a cup of French roast coffee on my Keurig – add one sugar and a glug of half and half—and sit down to read the Washington Post and the New York Times on my iPad. After I scroll through the headlines, I calm down by making a second cup of coffee and then I work the crossword puzzle. Occasionally I run carpools for my three grandchildren or walk the family labradoodle, Coco, in Quiet Waters Park. Paul is still teaching full-time at the Academy, but if he’s running late, and I don’t feel like cooking, we like to eat out at one of several of Annapolis’s fine restaurants. Other than that, I seem to hang around, waiting for someone who needs my help.

You can read about Hannah in Tangled Roots, the 17th book in the “Hannah Ives” traditional mystery series, released May 1, 2019.

Hannah Ives’s sister, Georgina, has some astonishing news. A DNA test has revealed she is part Native American, and Hannah’s test has similar results. The link seems to come from their late mother. But how?

As Hannah dives into constructing her family tree, she uncovers a heart-breaking love story and a mysterious death, while DNA matching turns up two second cousins, Mai and Nicholas. Hannah and her niece, Julie, are eager to embrace their new relatives and learn about their surprising ancestry, but Georgina’s husband, Scott, isn’t so keen. Are there more shocking revelations to come? And can Hannah untangle her family roots to uncover the truth behind a devastating tragedy?

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About the author
Marcia Talley is the Agatha and Anthony award-winning author of Tangled Roots and sixteen previous novels featuring survivor and sleuth, Hannah Ives. She is author/editor of two star-studded collaborative serial novels, Naked Came The Phoenix and I’d Kill For That set in a fashionable health spa and an exclusive gated community, respectively. Her prize-winning short stories appear in more than a dozen collections.

Marcia is a past national President of Sisters in Crime, Inc. She is on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, and a member of the Crime Writers Association U.K. She divides her time between Annapolis, Maryland and a quaint, Loyalist-style cottage on Elbow Cay in the Bahamas.

Visit Marcia’s website at marciatalley.com.

All comments are welcomed.