Aileen Baron has a Ph.D. in archaeology and taught for twenty years in the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Fullerton. Her many years of archaeological fieldwork in the Middle East, include a year at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem as an NEH scholar, and director of the overseas campus of California State Universities at the Hebrew University. Her residence in Switzerland, the hub of the antiquities trade, and her experience in museums has given her an insight into the underside of the trade in ancient art, the focus of her latest mystery, The Gold Of Thrace.