Victoria born and raised, Mary Spilsbury Ross’s writing credits include the bestselling cookbook, Frugal Feasts (Doubleday Canada) and five years as a Black Press food columnist with “A Matter of Taste.” Her first novel No Intermission (Pina publishing $23 hc) is an historical mystery. Margaret (Maggie) Dinsdale longs to dance with the Royal Ballet in post-WWII London, England. It’s a long shot for this dancer from North Oyster on Vancouver Island, but she has a dream. Maggie falls under the spell of an elegant ballet master of an edgy jazz troupe. The not-so-glamourous life of a professional jazz dancer in the 1960’s brings danger and deception as she grapples with wartime devastation, Nazi-looted masterpiece smuggling, anti-Semitism, and a little belly dancing. Maggie’s journey is not the audition she signed up for—but No Intermission transports the reader on her passionate dancing and other compelling missteps. It’s all a dance, after all.

Ross divides her time between Victoria and North Oyster -- writing, painting, and creating new dishes for her next cookbook.

BOOKS

No Intermission (Pina Publishing, 2021) $23 hc 9781943493548. (Novel)

Frugal Feasts (Doubleday Canada, 1996) $35 978-0385255295. (Cook Book)

[BCBW 2021]