Sylvia Prince writes vibrant, fast-paced historical fiction. Her lush, action-packed novels bring the Renaissance to life. The Lion and the Fox throws Niccolo Machiavelli into the dangerous world of Florentine patricians, where he must risk his life to regain the favor of the powerful Medici family. The Zorzi Affair, a coming-of-age story set in seventeenth-century Italy, follows Zaneta Lucia Zorzi as she rejects an arranged marriage to pursue her true passion: science.

Sylvia holds a PhD in history—and loves the bizarre but true stories she has encountered over the years working as a historian. Did you know, for example, that in 1492 the pope received a blood transfusion by literally drinking the blood of three young boys? (It didn’t work—the pope and the boys all died.) Sylvia is a professor at a public university in the Midwest, where she lives with her husband and two spirited daughters. She and her sister, bestselling author of historical romance Emma Prince, love comparing notes and picking each other’s brains about all things historical.