Fiona Ross, like most of us, leads a double existence: in her ‘normal’ life as a writer of fiction in Bishop’s Stortford, U.K., Fiona keeps company with two bossy chickens and her dog, Parsnip. She spends a lot of time fishing chickens out of her bathtub and Parsnip out of the chicken run. In between, she stares into space a lot looking for inspiration for her stories. Meanwhile, her glamorous and exciting double works as a gastro-detective whose headquarters are the famous Bodleian Library in Oxford; she spends her time there pondering which sandwich filling she would prefer for lunch when she is not hot on the trail of a famous gastronome. The Dining with Destiny series is the result of just such weighty thoughts – oh, and a short-term memory problem which means that Fiona can never recall anything important like the date of a war or how to hoover, but can always be counted upon to remember how much jam Marx liked on his tarts. Time will tell which is the more important.