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Claudia Bishop
Pseudonym: Mary Stanton.
Claudia Bishop has been writing professionally most of her
adult life. She divides her time between a goat farm in
upstate New York near the Finger Lakes region and a small
home in West Palm Beach.
Bishop is the oldest daughter of William Stanton Whitaker
and Caroline Whitaker, both of whom were college professors
for parts of their careers. She has two sisters; Cynthia
Stanton Whitaker, Esquire of Seattle, Washington and Deborah
Susan Whitaker Hairston of Ithaca, New York. She was born in
Winter Park, Florida while her father was Dean of Men at
Rollins College. When William Whitaker was recruited back
into the Navy in the early fifties, 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.
Bishop grew up in Hawaii and graduated from Kailua High
School. She left the Islands for undergraduate school in the
late sixties. She attended St. Olaf College in Northfield,
Minnesota and received a B.A. in philosophy and literature
from the University of Minnesota. She attended a year of law
school, then a year of graduate school majoring in
Rehabilitation Therapies. She worked at a series of jobs in
Minnesota, including a year as a nightclub singer as part of
Sheik's Singing Sextette, a medical examiner for Social
Security, a claims adjuster for Crum&Forster Insurance
Company and Director of Volunteer Services for Hastings
State Hospital. She married Robert Tom Nelson in 1967. The
marriage ended in divorce.
In the mid-seventies, Bishop left Minnesota for Rochester,
New York. She worked for Aetna Life & Casualty Insurance
Companies, one of the first outside female claims adjusters
in the United States. She began a career as a copywriter in
the early eighties, working for several advertising agencies
and Xerox Corporation until she opened her own marketing
communications company in 1985. The company specialized in
the research and writing of Malcolm Baldrige National
Quality Award applications. Clients included Xerox
Corporation, Westinghouse, American Express, and Eastman
Kodak Company. Bishop took on a junior partner, Daniel
J.Hucko, in 1985, and sold the business to Young and Rubicam
in 1992. She left the business in 1994 to write full time.
She married Robert J. Stanton Esquire of Walworth, New York
in 1974. There are three stepchildren from that marriage;
John Robert Stanton, Harry Cole Stanton, and Julie Stanton.
Bishop's career as a fiction writer began with the
publication of her first novel, The Heavenly Horse from
the Outermost West, in 1984. A beast fable similar in
tone and theme to Watership Down, it was published in
the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. The sequel
to that novel, Piper at the Gates, appeared in 1989.
She sold her first mystery to The Berkley Publishing Group
in 1994. In all, Bishop has written nineteen mystery novels,
two adult fantasy novels, eleven novels for middle-grade
readers (including the successful series, The Unicorns of
Balinor), and three scripts for a television cartoon
series, Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders, as
well as edited three short story anthologies. Her nonfiction
articles on horse care and veterinary medicine have appeared
in national and regional magazines.
Bishop's interests outside writing have remained consistent
over the years. She is a horsewoman, a goat aficionado, an
enthusiastic (if inept) gardener, and a fan of gourmet food,
but not an expert. She has developed a writing program for
teens and middle grade readers that has had considerable
success in schools.
Bishop has been a dedicated reader all her life, with
particular emphasis on biography, history, veterinary
science, medicine, psychology and current affairs. She is a
member of the Mystery Writers of America. She may be
contacted through her literary agent, Lucienne Diver of the
Spectrum Literary Agency, 320 Central Park West Suite 1-D,
New York, NY 10025.
Books:
 A Plateful of Murder, October 2009
 The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat, June 2008
A Carol for a Corpse, November 2007
The Case of the Tough-Talking Turkey, August 2007
Ground to a Halt, February 2007
The Case of the Roasted Onion, September 2006
A Dinner to Die For, April 2006
 Death Dines In, May 2005
Buried By Breakfast, December 2004
Death Dines In, May 2004
A Puree of Poison, December 2003
Fried by Jury, May 2003
Just Desserts, April 2002
Marinade for Murder, August 2000
A Touch of Grape, July 1998
Death Dines Out, December 1997
A Taste for Murder, April 1996
A Pinch of Poison, December 1995
A Dash of Death, March 1995
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