Alyssa Maxwell, author of the critically acclaimed Gilded Newport Mystery series, began a love affair with the city of Newport at a very early age. Always a lover of history, marrying into a large, generations-old Newport family opened up an exciting new world of historical discovery. From the graveyards whose earliest markers read from the seventeenth century, to original colonial houses still lived in today, to the Newport Artillery Company whose curator for many years was her husband's grandfather, Newport became a place of fascination and romantic charm. Today, Maxwell and her family live in Florida, but part of her heart remains firmly in that small New England city of great significance, a microcosm of American history spanning from before the Revolution through the Civil War, the Industrial Age, the Gilded Age, and beyond.