A journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous national publications, including the New York Times and Smithsonian magazine, Daniel Stashower is also the author of five mystery novels and Teller of Tales, the Edgar Award-winning biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Stashower lives with his wife and son in Bethesda, Maryland.

On July 28, 1841, the body of Mary Rogers, a twenty-year-old cigar girl, was found floating in the Hudson-and New York's unregulated police force proved incapable of solving the crime. One year later, a struggling writer named Edgar Allan Poe decided to take on the case-and sent his fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin, to solve the baffling murder of Mary Rogers in "The Mystery of Marie Rogt."