Paul L. Gaus

The six Ohio Amish Mysteries will all soon be republished by Plume (a Division of Penguin Group USA) as the Amish-Country Mysteries, on a schedule of approximately one a month, beginning September 28, 2010, the release date for the new edition of Blood of the Prodigal.  Hard cover first editions of the Amish-Country Mysteries will then still be published first by Ohio Univeristy Press, with the Penguin/Plume editions to follow.
 
Paul L. Gaus was born in Athens, Ohio, in 1949, and he has lived in Ohio for most of his life.  He has lived in Wooster, Ohio for the past 33 years with his wife Madonna.  Paul’s extensive knowledge of the culture and lifestyle of the Ohio Amish comes from over thirty years of travel throughout Holmes and surrounding counties in Ohio, where the world’s largest Amish and Mennonite population sprawls out over the countryside near Millersburg, Wooster, and Sugarcreek.
 
Paul took an interest in writing fiction in 1993, and with the advice and encouragement of author Tony Hillerman, he began writing mystery novels set among the Amish in Holmes County, Ohio. The first of Gaus’s mysteries, Blood of the Prodigal, An Ohio Amish Mystery, was published by Ohio University Press in June of 1999, and a total of six novels have appeared in this series: Broken English, 2000, Clouds without Rain, 2001, Cast a Blue Shadow, 2003, A Prayer for the Night, 2006, and Separate from the World, 2008.  A seventh novel in the series is in preparation.
 
All of Paul’s stories are soon to be republished by Plume (a division of Penguin Group U.S.A.) as The Amish-Country Mysteries.  The publication date for Blood of the Prodigal, An Amish-Country Mystery is September 28, 2010, and the other five novels currently in the series will be published approximately one a month for the next several months.  Future mysteries in the series will still first be published in hard cover editions by Ohio University Press, with Plume bringing out the soft cover editions as The Amish-Country Mysteries some time later.
 
For the Plume publication of the first two Amish-Country Mysteries in the fall of 2010, Paul will undertake a multi-city author tour of important bookstores and conventions on the west coast, beginning with Seattle and Portland, and including San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, Austin, and Houston.
 
Paul and his wife Madonna still travel frequently in Holmes County.  He lectures widely about Amish culture at libraries, bookstores, literary societies, and the like, and his books have been featured prominently at Book Expo America and similar professional shows around the country. Paul’s novels have been reviewed in prominent journals and newspapers, for instance, Kirkus Reviews, Foreword Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, Ohioana Quarterly, and the New York Times Book Review.
 
Paul retired recently as the Benjamin S. Brown Professor of Chemistry at The College of Wooster, where he was Chairperson of the Chemistry Department. He was educated at Miami University (B.S.) and Duke University (Ph.D.), and he has held positions as Visiting Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois, Texas A&M University, University of Wisconsin (Madison), and The Ohio State University. In his academic career, he taught chemistry at the freshman, junior, and senior levels, and he is co-author of the best-selling senior text, Basic Inorganic Chemistry, published in its third edition in 1995, by John Wiley and Sons.