June Trop

June Trop and her twin sister Gail wrote their first story, "The Steam Shavel [sic],” when they were six years old growing up in rural New Jersey. They sold it to their brother Everett for two cents.

"I don’t remember how I spent my share,” June says. "You could buy a fistful of candy for a penny in those days, but ever since then, I wanted to be a writer.”

As an award-winning middle school science teacher, June used storytelling to capture her students’ interest and imagination in scientific concepts. Years later as a professor of teacher education, she focused her research on the practical knowledge teachers construct and communicate through storytelling. Her first book, From Lesson Plans to Power Struggles, is based on the stories new teachers told about their first classroom experiences.

Now associate professor emerita at the State University of New York at New Paltz, she devotes her time to writing historical mysteries with a connection to early science. Her heroine, Miriam bat Isaac, is based on the personage of Maria Hebrea, the legendary founder of Western alchemy, who developed the concepts and apparatus alchemists and chemists would use for 1500 years.

June lives with her husband Paul Zuckerman in New Paltz, where she is breathlessly recording the story of her plucky heroine’s next life-or-death exploit. The Deadliest Lie is her first novel. The Deadliest Hate won Honorable Mention for fiction at the 2016 New York Book Festival.

Her Books from BelleBooks/Bell Bridge Books:

The Deadliest Lie
The Deadliest Hate