Two hundred years before Julius Caesar, the privileged patrician men ruled Rome from the senate, the women from the bedroom. But sheltered sixteen-year-old Thalia is infatuated only with the new and dazzling world of the Roman theater. While her senator father connives to auction her off to a husband like a marble statue, he doesn't know she's just met Lido, a beautiful and rebellious young actor who happens to be a slave. When their two worlds collide, Patrician Rome may never be the same.

C.S. Lund, a native of the Midwest, wrote her first novel, The Patricians, when she was 18 years old. Since then, she has gone on to get an Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing from an East Coast liberal arts college, and to work as writer and editor. She is working on a memoir about tall ship sailing, which will be published under a different name.