Ben Pastor

Ben Pastor is an Italian-American writer, born in Rome but soon moved to the United States. She has taught social sciences at the universities of Ohio, Illinois, and Vermont. In addition to Lumen, Lying Moon, Kaputt Mundi, The Knight's Song, The Dead Man in the Square, The Venus of Salò, and  The Pond Sky– the series about the soldier-detective Martin Bora (published by Hobby & Work starting in 2001 and then by Sellerio) – she is the author of The Prague Mysteries (2002), The Scirocco Room, detective novels homaging the Central European culture of Kafka and Roth (Hobby & Work), as well as The Water Thief (Frassinelli 2007), The Voice of Fire (Frassinelli 2008), The Stone Virgins , and The Track of the Wind (Hobby & Work 2012), a series of four thrillers set in the 4th century AD. In 2006, she won the Saturno d'Oro International Award for best writer of historical novels. Her works are published in the United States and numerous European countries. One of her stories is included in the anthology A Christmas in Yellow (Sellerio 2011). In 2014, The Road to Ithaca (Sellerio), and in 2020, The Water Thief (Mondadori). In 2023, Sellerio published The Window on the Roofs and Other Stories with Martin Bora.