The old Cubbie Ernie Banks used to love baseball so much that one game a day wasn't enough. "Let's play two," he'd say. Since Mary, sadly, has aligned herself to the same hapless Chicago Cubs baseball team, that Ernie played for, it is only fitting that I quote him today when Mary is offering a blog doubleheader.

In her monthly contribution to the Poisoned Pen Press blog, Mary travels far back into the past to talk about going to the cinema when she was a kid.

"Will you take us in missus?"

Then, over at Type M for Murder, she continues on just a bit further into ancient history to write about the amazing automatons envisioned by Heron of Alexandria and the uses we made of them in the John the Lord Chamberlain mystery Three for a Letter, including inventing our own mechanical whale.

Guest Author -- Mary Reed