The Mayor of Casterbridge The Mayor of Casterbridge The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character is an 1886 novel by the English author Thomas Hardy. One of Hardy's Wessex novels, it is set in a fictional rural England with Casterbridge standing in for Dorchester in Dorset where the author spent his youth. It was first published as a weekly serialisation from January 1886. The novel is considered to be one of the Hardy's masterpieces, although it has been criticised for incorporating too many incidents: a consequence of the author trying to include something in every weekly published instalment.
Mel Odom (author) Mel Odom (author) Mel Odom (born 1957 in California) is a writer primarily known for his science fiction and fantasy novels set in existing properties. Odom graduated from Byng High School in Byng, Oklahoma in May 1976, and later graduated with a bachelor's degree in English from East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. He teaches undergraduate courses at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication in the Professional Writing program at the University of Oklahoma. Odom sold his first book in January 1988 and wrote dozens more books over the next ten years. He wrote two novels for the