The Ice Queen

In this second volume of his saga, Odd Tangle-Hair travels to Russia to take up his post as skald to Harald, the young renegade prince of Norway. Intrigue and danger await him when Odd finds himself ‘caught between two wolves’—the arrogant, bullying Harald and his sworn enemy, Ingigerd, Grand Princess of Novgorod, who schemes against Harald by seducing Odd. While political intrigue swirls around him, a Pecheneg horde explodes across the steppe, and Odd must use his wits to rescue the besieged people of Kiev.

Bruce Macbain of Brookline, MA

Bruce Macbain was born in Chicago, Illinois. As a child, he squandered whole days reading science fiction and history. Greek and Roman history held a special fascination for him and this led eventually to acquiring a master's degree in Classical Studies and a doctorate in Ancient History. As an assistant professor of Classics, he taught courses in Late Antiquity and Roman religion—which is a particular interest of his—and published a few impenetrable scholarly monographs, which almost no one read. He eventually left academe and turned to teaching English as a second language, a field he was trained in while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Borneo in the 60s.

Macbain has written a series of historical mysteries set in ancient Rome, (Roman Games, 2010,  and The Bull Slayer, 2013) featuring the senatorial letter-writer Pliny the Younger as his protagonist, assisted by other literary figures such as the poet Martial and the biographer Suetonius. He also does a bit of book reviewing for the Historical Novels Review and Foreword magazine. Odin's Child is the first in his Viking series, The Odd Tangle-Hair Saga.