Olga Wojtas Books In Order

Publication Order of Miss Blaine's Prefect Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Author Olga Wojtas was born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she went to James Gillespie’s High School, which was the model for Marcia Blaine School for Girls, which appears in “Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar”. Here, she attended with Muriel Spark. She is half-Polish and half-Scottish.

Her love of English has been propelled by two factors. One of her parents taught English, giving Olga a lifelong love of words. Wojtas was encouraged to write by Iona M. Cameron, an inspirational English teacher.

She has spent much of her life in Edinburgh, but has lived and worked in cities such as: Washington D.C., Grenoble, Aberdeen, and Newcastle.

In the year 2015, she won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Wojtas has also had over thirty short stories published in different anthologies and magazines. “Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar” was named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Fiction books of the year 2018.

She started working as a reporter and writes features on the Evening Express in Aberdeen. After this, she became the first Scottish correspondent of the Times High Education Supplement before becoming Scottish editor. Starting in the year 2009, she works freelance.

Journalism has helped her a lot as a creative writer. Olga does not just begin writing, she has to think herself into the work. This removes any of the mystique of the job for her, it is not motivated by a muse but the deadlines she has to meet. The constraints help give Olga something to fight against while she writes her short stories.

While working as a journalist, she signed up for a creative writing course in the year 2005 at Open University, and followed it up with an advanced class at the same school. During this course, she had the reality of deadlines, homework, and camaraderie of the online class that made her take writing seriously for the first time in her life.

Once she got a diploma, and a bug for writing, she was determined to pursue fiction as something more than just a pastime. Before, she had just considered fiction writing as just a hobby or something not that serious. It was a decision that paid off for her, as her debut novel was released to excellent reviews.

During her course, she had to write a scene for a novel, and she wound up writing a scene that wound up in “Miss Blaine’s”. For ten years she had a whole bunch of ideas bubbling in her mind. It wasn’t until she spent a week in a recycled freight container and a scary duck until she wrote the book’s first twenty thousand words.

Besides writing under her own name, she also writes under the pen name Helga Marchmont. Under this name, most of her output has been released, including the “Bunburry” series of mystery novels, which is stars Alfie McAlister and are cozy mysteries.

Under her own name, her debut novel was released in the year 2018, when “Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar ” was published. The novel was published by Saraband.

Her publisher told her, right before this book was published, that she had written a crime novel. The entire time she was writing it, she believed it was a romp, just with a significant amount of people getting killed.

“Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar” is the first novel, which was released in the year 2018. Shona Aurora McMonagle (who is in her fifties and a Scottish librarian) is proud to be a former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, but deeply loathes The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Shona believes Brodie gives her alma mater a bad name.

She is an accomplished martial artist, linguist, impeccably educated, and musician, Shona is thrilled to be picked by Marcia herself to travel back in time for a mission a week long. Shona will go back to nineteenth century Russia to pair up Lidia Ivanovna (an heiress who is shy, orphaned, and beautiful) with Sasha (a beautiful young guy whose origins are unknown).

Despite all of her accomplishments as well as her good intentions, Shona just might have gotten the short end of the stick on this mission. While the body count continues to rise, is she going to figure out in time who the actual villain of this is?

Wojtas has created a hero you root and care for, she even feels human, as she rarely interprets the clues correctly. Although she knows a lot about history. This has incredible humor peppered in throughout to make readers laugh the entire way through. The book is a fast paced and thrilling read, full of murder, time-travel, mayhem, manners, and matchmaking. The book is worth recommending for the vivid and larger than life characters, and the cozy crime that makes it tough to put the book down for very long amounts of time. The book is just as inventive, levelheaded, lighthearted, hilarious, and all around enchanting as the heroine, who deserves one more jaunt through space and time.

“Murder At the Mousetrap” is the first novel in the “Bunburry” series, which was released in the year 2018. Alfie McAlister’s leaving London to the quiet and peace in the country was to be able to get over his personal tragedy. What was ruled an accidental death, which might be a far cry from accidental, may reveal the heart of England is far from the idyllic backwater he first judged it to be.

Once he gets to Bunburry, he is co-opted to play amateur detective by Liz and Marge, a pair of elderly women that were best friends with Alfie’s dear Aunt Augusta. Their investigation takes a further dramatic turn.

Readers found this to be one delightful English cozy mystery novel. It has likable and charming characters, with a mystery plot that adds fun to the entire story. The book is light, funny, and easy to read that keeps things moving along at a nice clip the entire time. Wojtas has created a world that is nice to get lost in for awhile, and some would not mind venturing back in future installments.