Ellen Crosby
Biography
For many years I worked as a freelance journalist in the US and while living overseas in London, Moscow, and Geneva, Switzerland before turning to writing fiction full time. My last job as a stringer was as a regional feature writer for The Washington Post, covering the many of the places where my wine country mysteries are set.
In the late 1980s, I worked for ABC Radio News as their Moscow correspondent, and over the years have written feature stories for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Journal newspapers, the Washington, D.C. area’s largest suburban newspaper (now called the Washington Enquirer).
Prior to working as a journalist, I was an economist at the United States Senate. I have a master’s degree in international relations from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. in political science from The Catholic University of America. I spent my junior year of undergraduate school in Madrid, Spain and did a semester of graduate studies in Bologna, Italy.
I am fairly fluent in French and Spanish and speak a smattering of Russian (I can count to ten and say “I don’t understand” like a native speaker). I remember less Italian than I believe I do, and it has gotten me into trouble.
I was born in Boston, Massachusetts but grew up mostly in Connecticut, after detours to Alabama and Pennsylvania. I now live with my family in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.
While living in London in the ’90s, I wrote my first novel, Moscow Nights, (Piatkus Books, 2001) which was published in the UK and was based on my experiences in the former Soviet Union during the waning days of the Gorbachev era.
Back home in the US, I wrote six books in the Virginia wine country mystery series published in hardcover by Scribner and paperback by Pocket Books: The Merlot Murders, The Chardonnay Charade, The Bordeaux Betrayal, The Riesling Retribution, The Viognier Vendetta (published in paperback as The Vintage Vendetta), and The Sauvignon Secret. Set near Middleburg, Virginia in the heart of horse and hunt country, the series chronicles the life of Lucie Montgomery, a young woman who has inherited her family’s vineyard along with a somewhat cantankerous winemaker named Quinn Santori whom her father hired shortly before her death. The research for these books can hardly be considered work and I had the good fortune to learn about the process of growing grapes and making wine from two amazing winemakers: the late Juanita Swedenburg of Swedenburg Estate Vineyard in Middleburg and Rick Tagg of Barrel Oak Winery in Delaplane.
Multiple Exposure, the first book in my new series, features photojournalist Sophie Medina who returns to Washington after living and working in London for many years. The idea of writing about a photographer—rather than a journalist—came to me after working with some talented photographers at the Post and the Journal because their pictures added so much to my stories.
I am a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and serve on the board of the Virginia Book Festival.
The Wine Country Mysteries
The Virginia wine country mysteries are set about fifty miles from Washington, D.C. as the crow flies, in the heart of affluent horse and hunt country—a region of rolling hills, winding country lanes lined by Civil War-era stone walls, and pretty villages that can legitimately claim George Washington slept there. But among the peace and tranquility, vineyard owner Lucie Montgomery uncovers long-buried secrets that lead to murder—and suspects who are family and friends she’s known and loved all her life.
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