Clytemnestra: The Mother's Blade - Paperback

by Alice Underwood (Author), Victoria Grossack (Author)

Raised a princess in Sparta, Clytemnestra understands that leaders make many sacrifices. But she is shocked when she is forced to marry the murderer of her husband and firstborn child.

Though she wields great power as High Queen of Mycenae, and adores her younger children, being Agamemnon's wife is difficult - and becomes harder after her sister Helen's departure for Troy ignites the greatest war the world has ever seen.

Clytemnestra remains determined to protect her children and her city. But then a long absent prince - her husband's hated rival - begins to claim her heart...

"Clytemnestra: The Mother's Blade is the most action-packed and thrilling Tapestry of Bronze novel yet. One can imagine Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway drooling over this retelling at the prospect of playing such a character onscreen... this book has it all: the intellectual act of re-envisioning the distant Hellenic past as plausible historical fact, the uncanny retelling of some very familiar stories in a strikingly new way and the pleasures of a thrilling beach read - all at once. There are even a few distant echoes of the present in this vividly imagined antiquity. As wise old Nestor notes, "It is easy to make promises before one takes power, but difficult to keep them afterwards." And war, Tyndareus cautions, "is a ruler's weightiest decision, and should not be taken lightly" - be it with Thebes, Mycenae, Troy, Venezuela or North Korea. Agamemnon is dead; long live Agamemnon...."
- Bob Mielke, professor of English, Truman State University

Author Biography

Dartmouth graduate Victoria Grossack leads an international life, with homes in Switzerland and Arizona and a professional career in the financial industry that has spanned the Atlantic. She is fluent in German and French (and English of course) and has an MBA. Her last full-time position was as a Senior Vice President in New York City for a reinsurance company, but she is currently writing full-time and living with her husband who is a professor at the University of Arizona. Her writing has been published in Contingencies, Woman's World, I Love Cats, and The Journal of Actuarial Practice. She was a regular columnist for Writing-World and contributes frequently to Doux Reviews and to ReFiction. She also tutors mathematics, as problems in algebra and geometry make a nice break from creative writing. Besides writing Greek mythology based novels, she is the solo author of mysteries set in Jane Austen's novels: The Meryton Murders and The Highbury Murders. Alice Underwood studied classics at The University of Texas and Princeton University while earning her degrees in mathematics. Her passion for antiquity has taken her from the shadowed catacombs of Princeton's libraries to the ruins of Pompeii and the sunny shores of Crete and Santorini. Alice leads the global insurance consulting and technology practice at one of the world's top financial service companies; she lives and works in New York City.