Libi Astaire is an award-winning author who often writes about Jewish history. In addition to her popular Jewish Regency Mystery Series, she is the author of "The Banished Heart," a novel about Shakespeare's writing of "The Merchant of Venice"; "Terra Incognita," a novel about Spanish villagers who discover they are descended from crypto-Jews (Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity during the Middle Ages); several ebooks of retellings of Chassidic tales; and "Day Trips to Jewish History," a collection of essays about lesser known people and places in Jewish history. Her own journey has taken her from Kansas, where she grew up, to Jerusalem, where she now lives.