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January 10		Elspeth Huxley's Flame Trees of Thika
		On this day in 1997 Elspeth Huxley died. Huxley married into the famous family name, but she had her own success with a lifetime of journalism and some thirty books in many genres. One of these was the best-seller, The Flame Trees of Thika, about growing up in Kenya on "a bit of El Dorado my father had been fortunate enough to buy in the bar of the Norfolk hotel from a man wearing an Old Etonian tie."
January 9		Marco Polo in Xanadu and New York
		On this day in 1324 Marco Polo died in Venice. The Travels of Marco Polo, dictated by Polo several years after his return from decades in the land of Kublai Khan, became an influential book in Renaissance Europe -- though some publishers were so dubious of the hyperbole that they titled the book, "The Million Lies." The path to Xanadu led to New York via Eugene O'Neill: his Marco Millions opened on Broadway, this day in 1928.
January 8		Collins, Crime & Sergeant Cuff
		On this day in 1824 the mystery novelist Wilkie Collins was born. Collins's "gaslight thrillers" were as popular among Victorian readers as the books of his friend, Charles Dickens; two of them, The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868) have not only stayed in print but grown in reputation. Crime historians say much is owed to characters such as Sergeant Cuff, and to his stylish back-of-my-hand.