Crystal King – Mondays

Author of

FEAST OF SORROW: A NOVEL OF ANCIENT ROME

(Touchstone Books/Simon & Schuster, April 25, 2017)
Crystal - Mondays
Photo by Wayne E. Chinnock

Crystal King grew up in the Pacific Northwest but now calls Boston home. As a marketing and social media professional, she has taught classes in writing, creativity, and social media at Harvard Extension School, Boston University, Mass College of Art, UMass Boston and GrubStreet writing center. Crystal’s passion for ancient history and the world of food and wine has fueled both her writing and her love of the country of Italy. She has been learning the Italian language for the better part of the last decade. She loves to recreate historical dishes with her husband who loves to cook. Their kitties, Nero and Merlin, supply them with enough white fur to make winter coats each year. Kidding on that last fact, but technically, it could be true.

Read Crystal’s Debutante Ball posts.

Find Crystal at:   Her Website  *  Twitter  *  Facebook  *  Goodreads  *  Instagram  *  Tumblr  * Google+ * Pinterest

About

FEAST OF SORROW: A NOVEL OF ANCIENT ROME

Set amongst the scandal, wealth, and upstairs-downstairs politics of a Roman family, Crystal King’s seminal debut features the man who inspired the world’s oldest cookbook and the ambition that led to his destruction.

On a blistering day in the twenty-sixth year of Augustus Caesar’s reign, a young chef, Thrasius, is acquired for the exorbitant price of twenty thousand denarii. His purchaser is the infamous gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, wealthy beyond measure, obsessed with a taste for fine meals from exotic places, and a singular ambition: to serve as culinary advisor to Caesar, an honor that will cement his legacy as Rome’s leading epicure.

Apicius rightfully believes that Thrasius is the key to his culinary success, and with Thrasius’s help he soon becomes known for his lavish parties and fantastic meals. Thrasius finds a family in Apicius’s household, his daughter Apicata, his wife Aelia, and her handmaiden, Passia whom Thrasius quickly falls in love with. But as Apicius draws closer to his ultimate goal, his reckless disregard for any who might get in his way takes a dangerous turn that threatens his young family and places his entire household at the mercy of the most powerful forces in Rome.