Aileen Baron earned her Ph. D. in archaeology from the University of California at Riverside, and taught for twenty years at California State University, Fullerton. She has conducted many years of fieldwork, especially in the Middle East. The first novel in the Lily Sampson series, A FLY HAS A HUNDRED EYES, a historical mystery, offers a glimpse into the world of Palestine during the British Mandate, and is loosely based on the real-life murder of an archaeologist who was killed on his way to the opening of the Rockefeller Museum in 1938. In the summer of 1938, before the establishment of the state of Israel,  terrorists roamed the countryside, the British were loosing control of the Mandate, and Europe teetered on the brink of WW II. Against this background of international tensions, Lily Sampson, an American graduate student working at an archaeological excavation, is plunged into a labyrinth of  intrigue and danger when the director of the excavation is murdered and  she searches for artifacts that have been stolen from the site.

The second novel in the series, THE TORCH OF TANGIER, published by Poisened Pen Press and due out in May, takes place in Tangier in 1942. An international city until the fall of France, Tangier is now controlled by Franco's Spain, and teems with spies working for both the Axis and the Allies. Lily was digging at a Paleolithic site in the Caves of Hercules overlooking the Straits of Gibraltar in the outskirts of Tangier until the Spaniards denied access to the area after Pearl Harbor. Stranded in Tangier, she becomes embroiled in the secret preparations for the planned Allied invasion of North Africa, code named Operation Torch. Dr. Drury, director of the excavations in the Caves of Hercules, works for the OSS and recriuts Lily. When Drury is murdered, Lily must take over his duties, and discovers that the security of Operation Torch is compromised. Drury's code box is missing . Aware that her own life is in danger, the search for the code box leads to an encounter with Drury's murderer on the eve of the Allied landing in Casablanca.