Mary Chapin-Carpenter
Caroline B. Cooney
Paula Danziger
David Diaz
Mem Fox
Kevin Henkes
William Joyce
Kathleen Krull
Han Nolan
Gary Paulsen

Don't miss this series of novels set in long-ago Scotland

In 1961 -- a halcyon year for readers of historical fiction -- Putnam published Dorothy Dunnett's "The Game of Kings" and launched a Francis Crawford of Lymond craze that still hasn't subsided today.

I say the craze hasn't subsided because I was witness to it -- was part of it -- recently in Kansas City, Missouri, when Dorothy Dunnett read from her work to an audience of Lymond enthusiasts as part of her American tour in support of the Vintage paperback re-release of the Lymond Chronicles.

"I'm really a professional portrait painter," she confessed. "I just started reading historical novels because I loved them: Alexandre Dumas, Rafael Sabatini -- all those wonderful costume romances, full of action, sword play, intrigue."

In the late 1950s, however, she ran out of reading material. "I give my husband [Alastair M. Dunnett] credit for starting me on my career as a writer. 'If you can't find any more historical novels to read,' he told me, 'then go off and write your own.' So I did."

The result was the Lymond Chronicles, a six-novel saga of scintillating scholarship and breathtaking storytelling that brings alive the tumultuous mid-sixteenth-century world of the Master of Culter, Francis Crawford of Lymond.

Here is a condensed report of Dunnett's comments.

On research:

"I read 600 books doing research for the Lymond Chronicles. And, remember, this was before computers and copy machines. I must have copied out thousands of pages of notes -- which I still have, collected in notebooks.

"I wanted the scenes in the novels to be 'real,' so I decided I should walk the places where Lymond walked. When I was in Istanbul, researching 'Pawn in Frankincense,' I spent so much time pacing out distances in Topkapi that I got stopped by security police wanting to know what I was up to. After I convinced them that I was a harmless novelist, I actually got them to give me a tour of the harem -- which is usually off limits for tourists."

Where those titles come from:

"You all know that each title in the Chronicles has a chess theme; that's partly because of the overall design of the Chronicles themselves -- the game of chess as an analogue of the game of life. But it's also because of something personal. My mother and father met while playing chess, so I've always had a fondness for the game. If it weren't for chess, I might not be here."

On her ever-expanding world of fans:

"Early on, I received hundreds of letters every week from readers. Later, however, as groups began to organize, readers began writing to one another. Now, with computer technology, there are literally dozens of Dunnett sites on the Internet where you can exchange information about everything from archery, to astrology, to medieval French ballads, to ships and sailing, to harpsichords and heraldry. In 2000, an International Dunnett Conference will convene in Edinburgh. I am definitely planning to attend."