Mary Stanton

Last updated
Mary Stanton
Born1947 (age 7576)
Winter Park, Florida
Pen nameClaudia Bishop
OccupationAuthor
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Notable works Unicorns of Balinor series

Mary Stanton (born 1947 in Winter Park, Florida) is an American author most famous for her eight-volume children's fantasy series Unicorns of Balinor . Writing under the pseudonym Claudia Bishop, she is also the author of 14 mystery novels in the Hemlock Falls series published by Berkley Prime Crime, three novels in the Casebooks of Dr. Mckenzie mystery series, and the senior editor of three mystery story anthologies: Death Dines At Eight-Thirty, Death Dines In, and A Merry Band of Murderers.

Contents

Biography

Stanton is the eldest daughter of William Bishop Whitaker and Carole Whitaker who were both college professors for parts of their career. Her father at the time of her birth was the Dean of men at Rollins College. When William Whitaker was recruited back into the Navy in the early 1950s he and his family were posted to Japan. Leaving active Naval service for the Reserves and a position in the State Department, Whitaker was posted to Hawaii where he occupied a position as Director of Educational Services for Southeast Asia.

She grew up in Hawaii and graduated from Kailua High School and left the island for undergraduate school in the late 1960s. She attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota and she received a B.A. philosophy and literature from the University of Minnesota. She also attended a year of law school and a year of graduate school majoring in rehabilitation therapies. She worked for a number of jobs in Minnesota including a year as a nightclub singer, a medical examiner for Social Security, a claims adjuster and a Director of Volunteer Services at Hostings State Hospital.

In 1967, she married Robert Tom Nelson but the marriage ended in 1973 as a divorce with no children. In the mid 1970s, Mary Stanton left Minnesota for Rochester, New York to work for Aetna Life & Casualty Insurance Companies. In 1974, she married Robert J. Stanton Esquire of Walworth, New York but the marriage ended in another divorce in 1999. From the marriage there were three stepchildren; John Robert Stanton, Harry Cole Stanton, and Julie Stanton Schwartz.

Career

She began her career as a copywriter in the early 1980s working for several companies, such as Xerox Corporation, until she opened her own marketing communications company in 1985, specializing in research and writing of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award applications. She had clients including Xerox, Westinghouse, American Express, and Eastman Kodak. She accepted a junior partner Daniel J. Hucko in 1985, sold the business in 1992 to Young and Rubicam, and left the business in 1994 to write full-time.

Stanton's first book was animal fantasy The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West (1984); it was published in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. The sequel was Piper at the Gate (1989). She sold her first mystery novel to Berkley Books in 1994 and since then has written at least 16 mystery novels as Claudia Bishop and 11 children's books including the series Unicorns of Balinor .

She wrote non-fiction articles on horse care and veterinary medicine which appeared on national and regional magazines. She wrote three scripts for the TV cartoon Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders , including the aired episode "Song of the Rainbow."

List of books

As Mary Stanton

Heavenly Horse series

  1. The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West (1988)
  2. Piper at the Gate (1989, published as Piper at the Gates of Dawn in UK)

A Magical Mystery series

  1. My Aunt, the Monster (1997)
  2. Next Door Witch (1997)
  3. White Magic (1997)

Unicorns of Balinor series

  1. The Road to Balinor (1999)
  2. Sunchaser's Quest (1999)
  3. Valley of Fear (1999)
  4. By Fire, by Moonlight (1999)
  5. Search for the Star (1999)
  6. Secrets of the Scepter (2000)
  7. Night of the Shifter's Moon (2000)
  8. Shadows over Balinor (2000)
  • Unicorns of Balinor (omnibus) (2006)

Beaufort and Company

  1. Defending Angels (2008)
  2. Angel's Advocate(2009)
  3. Avenging Angels(2009)
  4. Angel's Verdict(2011)
  5. Angel Condemned(2011)

Anthologies in collaboration

  • Fantasy Tales for Girls (2006) (with Jane B. Mason and Sarah Hines Stephens)

As Claudia Bishop

Hemlock Falls Mysteries series

  1. A Taste For Murder (1994)
  2. A Dash of Death (1995)
  3. A Pinch of Poison (1995)
  4. Murder Well-Done (1996)
  5. Death Dines Out (1997)
  6. A Touch of the Grape (1998)
  7. A Steak in Murder (1999)
  8. Marinade for Murder (2000)
  9. Just Desserts (2002)
  10. Fried By Jury (2003)
  11. A Puree of Poison (2003)
  12. Buried By Breakfast (2004)
  13. A Dinner to Die For (2006)
  14. Ground to a Halt (2007)
  15. A Carol for A Corpse (2007)
  16. Toast Mortem (2010)
  17. Dread on Arrival (2012)
  18. A Fete Worse Than Death (2013)

The Casebooks of Dr. Austin McKenzie series

  1. The Case of the Roasted Onion (2006)
  2. The Case of the Tough-Talking Turkey (2007)
  3. The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat (2008)

Anthologies in collaboration

  • Aliens: Tales to Warp Your Mind (1994)
  • Death Dines at 8:30 (2001) (with Nick DiChario)
  • Death Dines In (2004) (with Dean James)
  • A Merry Band of Murderers (2006) (with Don Bruns)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pat Cadigan</span> British-American science fiction author (born 1953)

Patricia Oren Kearney Cadigan is a British-American science fiction author, whose work is most often identified with the cyberpunk movement. Her novels and short stories often explore the relationship between the human mind and technology. Her debut novel, Mindplayers, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award in 1988.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheri S. Tepper</span> American science fiction, horror and mystery novelist

Sheri Stewart Tepper was an American writer of science fiction, horror and mystery novels. She is primarily known for her feminist science fiction, which explored themes of sociology, gender and equality, as well as theology and ecology. Often referred to as an eco-feminist of science fiction literature, Tepper personally preferred the label eco-humanist. Though the majority of her works operate in a world of fantastical imagery and metaphor, at the heart of her writing is real-world injustice and pain. She employed several pen names during her lifetime, including A. J. Orde, E. E. Horlak, and B. J. Oliphant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Perry</span> English author (1938–2023)

Anne Perry was a British writer best known as the author of the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt and William Monk series of historical detective fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avram Davidson</span> American writer (1923-1993)

Avram Davidson was an American writer of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and crime fiction, as well as the author of many stories that do not fit into a genre niche. He won a Hugo Award and three World Fantasy Awards in the science fiction and fantasy genre, a World Fantasy Life Achievement award, and an Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine short story award and an Edgar Award in the mystery genre. Davidson edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1962 to 1964. His last novel The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil was completed by Grania Davis and was a Nebula Award finalist in 1998. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says "he is perhaps sf's most explicitly literary author".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Wilhelm</span> American science fiction writer (1928–2018)

Kate Wilhelm was an American author. She wrote novels and stories in the science fiction, mystery, and suspense genres, including the Hugo Award–winning Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. Wilhelm established the Clarion Workshop along with her husband Damon Knight and writer Robin Scott Wilson.

Michael Lawson Bishop is an American writer. Over four decades and in more than thirty books, he has created what has been called a "body of work that stands among the most admired and influential in modern science fiction and fantasy literature."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">S. S. Van Dine</span> American journalist and author (1888–1939)

S. S. Van Dine is the pseudonym used by American art critic Willard Huntington Wright when he wrote detective novels. Wright was active in avant-garde cultural circles in pre-World War I New York, and under the pseudonym he created the fictional detective Philo Vance, a sleuth and aesthete who first appeared in books in the 1920s, then in films and on the radio.

Barbara Hambly is an American novelist and screenwriter within the genres of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction. She is the author of the bestselling Benjamin January mystery series featuring a free man of color, a musician and physician, in New Orleans in the antebellum years. She also wrote a novel about Mary Todd Lincoln.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Witch World</span>

Witch World is a speculative fiction project of American writer Andre Norton, inaugurated by her 1963 novel Witch World and continuing more than four decades. Beginning in the mid-1980s, when she was about 75 years old, Norton recruited other writers to the project, and some books were published only after her death in 2005. The Witch World is a planet in a parallel universe where magic long ago superseded science; early in the fictional history, it is performed exclusively by women. The series began as a hybrid of science fiction and sword and sorcery, but for the most part it combines the latter with high fantasy.

Linda O. Johnston is an American author of mystery and romance novels.

Unicorns of Balinor is a series by Mary Stanton for young readers. It was originally published from 1999 to 2000. It follows the adventures of Princess Arianna of Balinor and her unicorn, Sunchaser as they restore the Royal Scepter and rally the kingdom to defeat an evil entity known as Entia the Shifter.

Sarah A. Hoyt is an American science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and historical fiction writer. She moved to the United States in the early 1980s, married Dan Hoyt in 1985, and became an American citizen in 1988.

MaryJanice Davidson is an American author who writes mostly paranormal romance, but also young adult literature and non-fiction. She is the creator of the popular Undead series. She is both a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. She won a 2004 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award and was nominated for the same award in 2005. Davidson lives in Minnesota with her husband and two children. She grew up on military bases and moved often, as she was the child of a United States Air Force soldier. Pamela Clare of USA Today wrote, "It's Davidson's humor, combined with her innate storytelling ability and skill with dialogue, that has lifted her from small presses to the big best-seller lists."

Nancy Springer is an American author of fantasy, young adult literature, mystery, and science fiction. Her novel Larque on the Wing won the Tiptree Award in 1994. She also received the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her novels Toughing It in 1995 and Looking for Jamie Bridger in 1996. Additionally, she received the Carolyn W. Field Award from the Pennsylvania Library Association in 1999 for her novel I am Mordred. She has written more than fifty books over a career that has spanned nearly four decades.

These works were written or edited by the American fiction writer Andre Norton. Before 1960 she used the pen name Andrew North several times and, jointly with Grace Allen Hogarth, Allen Weston once.

Rhondi A. Vilott Salsitz, born in Phoenix, Arizona, is a writer of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kerry Greenwood</span> Australian author and lawyer (born 1954)

Kerry Isabelle Greenwood is an Australian author and lawyer. She has written many plays and books, most notably a string of historical detective novels centred on the character of Phryne Fisher, which was adapted as the popular television series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. She writes mysteries, science-fiction, historical fiction, children's stories, and plays. Greenwood earned the Australian women's crime fiction Davitt Award in 2002 for her young adult novel The Three-Pronged Dagger.

Mary Jane Maffini is a Canadian mystery writer. She has created three mystery series and written 12 novels.

<i>The Wandering Unicorn</i> 1965 fantasy novel written by Manuel Mujica Lainez

El unicornio is a 1965 fantasy novel by the Argentine author Manuel Mujica Lainez based on the legend of Melusine. Set in medieval France and Palestine of the Crusades, Mujica Lainez’s novel is a mixture of fantasy and romance which is narrated from the perspective of the shapeshifting Melusine.

References