Book Presentation - Jonathan Harrington
Jonathan Harrington will read from his new book Blood in the Ruins, followed by a conversation with the audience. Join us at 11:00 AM on November 18, 2025 in MEL’s classroom.
The two-thousand year old death mask of a Maya king holds clues to the murders of an archaeology professor and a graduate student.
Travel photographer Tampa de Leon is assigned to photograph the Spring Equinox at the ruins of Chichen Itzá in Yucatán, México. What he hasn’t bargained for is finding the dead body of a prestigious university professor floating in the Sacred Well of Sacrifice at Chichen and the body of a graduate student at the ruins of Coba. A web of professional jealousy, academic fraud, violent tomb looters, an over-eager journalist keen to capture a scoop, and millions of dollars of ancient Maya art makes for a treacherous atmosphere among the ancient Maya ruins of the Yucatán Peninsula.
ABOUT JONATHAN HARRINGTON
Jonathan Harrington moved to Mérida in 1983 after receiving a MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lived for 22 years on the Hacienda San Antonio Xpakay near Ticul. Jonathan has published five books of poems: Handcuffed to the Jukebox, Aqui / Here, Yesterday, A Long Time Ago, Rastro de papeles, and Lift Up the Stone: The Gospel According to Jonathan. His book, The Traffic of Our Lives, won the Ledge Press Poetry Award and his poetry has since appeared in Poetry East, Texas Review, Main Street Rag, Pebble Lake Review, The Shop (Ireland), Green River Review, Black Bear Review, Kentucky Poetry Review, South Florida Poetry Review, The Spectator and many other publications throughout the world and have also been featured on public radio.
In 1989 he edited New Visions: Fiction by Florida Writers while also writing monthly columns for Metro Magazine which won the coveted Gold “Charlie” Award for best column of the year from the Florida Magazine Association in 1990. In 1992, twenty-six of these essays were collected in Tropical Son: Essays on the Nature of Florida, and published to wide critical acclaim.
After working as an editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and teaching Creative Writing for ten years at the University of Central Florida, Jonathan moved to New York City in 1993. In the next ten years he published a series of highly popular mystery novels: The Death of Cousin Rose, The Second Sorrowful Mystery, A Great Day for Dying, St. Valentine’s Diamond and Death on the Southwest Chief. The books appeared in hardback, paperback and book-club editions.
Jonathan also developed translations of poems by various Mayan poets, from Maya and Spanish into English including Seven Dreams and Praise for My Land. These translations have appeared in World Literature Today, International Review of Poetry, Visions International, The Dirty Goat and elsewhere.
Lift Up the Stone, Tropical Son: Essays on the Nature of Florida, The Death of Cousin Rose, The Second Sorrowful Mystery, and A Great Day for Dying are all part of the library’s permanent lending collection.
