A native of Baltimore -- a city described by novelist Laura Lippman as a place where "the true local malady is nostalgia" -- Margo Christie describes herself as "a refugee from a broken home in which nostalgia played a major role". Like Becky Shelling, the star of her debut novel THESE DAYS, Margo landed on Baltimore's "World-Famous Block" in the late '70s, as the teenage girlfriend of a charismatic older man. There she made the acquaintance of old-school booking agents, managers who'd been around in Gypsy Rose Lee's day, and many a retired burlesque queen turned Block barmaid. "It was an interesting time to be on the Block," she says of the adult-entertainment strip that was once a… world-renown burlesque destination. "The clubs were rundown. Prostitution and drug-abuse were rampant. But many of the old burlesque people were still around; and the older dancers still stripped in the classic, slow-tease style." Soaking up these storied old-timers tales of the glory days of burlesque, Margo danced her way to a BA in English, graduating with honors from University of Maryland in 1992. THESE DAYS is her first novel. It won a second prize in Amazon's 2012 Breakthrough Novel Award and was stamped "as original as it is addictive" by Publisher's Weekly independent reviewers. An avid history buff, she resides in Denver with her fiance and a cache of mid-century modern collectibles. Her second novel -- a tangled tale of family secrets centered on a retired swing band singer, whose disappearance off the family radar screen in the 1950s intrigues her awestruck niece into uncovering the seedy truth about her supposedly glamorous life -- is in progress.