The police call Allison Lord's drowning a suicide, but her housemates at her University of Minnesota sorority insist it was murder. That's when alumnae advisor, Jane Lawless, steps in to find out the truth. Assisted by her irrepressible sidekick Cordelia, Jane searches for clues, and what she finds is as chilling as the Minnesota winter. At a lonely vacation lodge, amidst the icy snow drifts, she risks her life to ensnare a cunning killer. Nominated: 1990 Minnesota Book Award for Best Crime Fiction Nominated: 1989 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery Nominated: 1996 Golden Earphones Award (Audio World), Best Unabridged Book Winner: 1996 Golden Earphones Award (Audio World), Best Reader of an unabridged work, Carol Jordan Stewart for her reading of Hallowed Murder

In the second charming Jane Lawless mystery, the winter solstice nears and Jane, a Minneapolis restaurateur, is invited to spend the week at Fothergill Inn, a Victorian house-turned B&B. Jane's old friend Leigh has spent years renovating the house and reopening it as an inn and restaurant. The inn has become so successful that people drive the fifty miles from Minneapolis just for dinner. But when Jane and her best friend, Cordelia, arrive for a week of relaxation, they find that the weekend's guests are anything but pleased, and that relaxing is the furthest thing from their minds. Broken glass litters the parking lot, dead animals turn up in the bedrooms, a bomb scare threatens the lives of the inn's guests—there is no doubt that someone is trying to scare the visitors. Then the pranks take a deadly turn when a customer ends up dead, and Jane must help her friend get to the bottom of these malicious and murderous events—before someone else dies.

Book three in the Jane Lawless murder mystery series. In a darkened Minneapolis theatre, restauteur-sleuth Jane Lawless found aging actor Torald Werness dead, impaled on part of the set he had just performed on. She also discovers she's a prime suspect. Yet Jane believes the motive for the murder lies within the dead man's family, a glamorous Midwestern theatrical dynasty, whose talented members give their best performances in real life. So she and her uninhibited crony Cordelia start digging into the family dirt, and discover a tangled web of deceit....

Members of the prestigious and long-revered Amelia Gower Women's Club are suddenly dropping like flies. The director has been strangled to death and the founder's granddaughter has taken a fatal fall from the third-floor. Minneapolis restaurateur-sleuth Jane Lawless enlists the help of her best friend, Cordelia, to help her search for clues in the frightening deaths. But the crime scene only becomes more and more dangerous with each secret they uncover, including a possible connection between Jane's lover and the murders. In this gripping, exciting early mystery from one of the genre's best, Ellen Hart's series is as delightful as ever.

When Cordelia Thorn ventures to Summer Green, Wisconsin, for a reunion with some old college friends, she finds trouble in paradise. Twenty-plus years have definitely changed things. Soap opera star Diana has become an alcoholic. Curt and Annie's marriage is falling apart. Orson is hostile and surly. And Theo, the most passionate of them all, suddenly dies—of an apparent heart attack. Alarmed, Cordelia sends for her old friend Jane Lawless to do some quiet snooping. Together they follow their hunches—into the not-so-carefree past and back to the troubled present, where they find a single match could blow up all their lives....

"INTELLIGENT AND ENGROSSING . . . A VERY COMPLEX PUZZLE." —Publishers Weekly Everyone knows Arno Heywood. He's been a Minneapolis TV personality for years. So when he jumps to his death from a downtown high-rise, it's a shocker—especially since he dies wearing women's clothes, a suicide in drag. In chic Linden Lofts, where Arno lived, the other tenants are spooked, and smart investigator Jane Lawless soon finds out why. They, like Arno, have secrets to conceal, and the shadowy someone with a full set of keys who's scouting out their apartments may soon make that impossible. Can one of Linden Loft's upscale professionals really be an aspiring blackmailer? Before Jane and her pal Cordelia can make sure, a brutal murder ups the ante... "The plot resonates with fascinating details, a good bit of action, several keen twists, and a soupçon of romance for the protagonist." —Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine quot;The characters are diverse and well rounded, the plot is intriguing, and the style lively and literate." —The Armchair Detective

THE DEAD OF SUMMER The first of the dead is wealthy Belle Dumont, who vanished from her home in the Minnesota woods only hours before she was to reveal startling news to her three grown children. The kids and Belle's lover deny any knowledge of this mysterious bombshell, but amateur sleuth Jane Lawless, Belle's old friend, suspects these charming folk of being less than forthright. In fact, Jane suspects coldhearted murder... WINNER OF THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR BEST LESBIAN MYSTERY

Jane Lawless has worked hard to make her Minneapolis restaurant a success, and she's finally reaping the financial rewards. Yet even the demands and excitement of being a popular restauranteurs and living the good life don't bring the same satisfaction they once did. Jane needs a bigger challenge. A mystery to solve. The thrill of the chase... When Jane rents her quaint third-story apartment to a new tenant, children's book author Elliot Beauman, she unwittingly opens the door to a sinister, decades-old mystery that has been waiting patiently to unfold—in her own house. Meanwhile, Jane assist a detective in tracking down clues about her new neighbor, Patricia, whose husband died mysteriously. Patricia is eager to become friends, or more...even though she knows Jane is immersed in a long-distance relationship with the attractive but secretive Dr. Julia Martinsen. little does Jane know that a strange man upstairs, an attractive neighbor, and a volatile love affair are just the beginning of her problems.

Jane Lawless reluctantly teams up with her good friend and partner, Cordelia Thorn to investigate a murder, in which her former lover, Dr. Julia Martinson, may know something about. Reprint.

A high profile celebrity Hollywood wedding—just the diversion Jane Lawless needs. Recovering from injuries, single again, with the dreaded holidays closing in, Jane happily agrees to attend the soiree with her best friend, Cordelia Thorn. It's not just any wedding. Cordelia's Broadway diva sister, Octavia, is tying the knot for the third time. Nobody knows how Octavia met octogenarian Roland Lester, a reclusive relic of Tinseltown's Golden Age, and the secret has brought out all the paparazzi. When bodies start to fall, it's clear to jane that the nuptials have brought out something far more sinister.

Ray Lawless, prominent defense attorney and father of Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless, tries his biggest case yet defending an accused serial murderer and arsonist whom the media has dubbed "The Fireman." Ray's client is eventually convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, though he proclaims his innocence to the end, and a few days later, he kills himself in his cell. Someone in The Fireman's life, however, can't let go, and, blaming Ray for the man's death, plots a meticulous revenge. With the help of her best friend, Cordelia, Jane sets out to discover why this person is so determined to undo her family.

Restaurateur Jane Lawless is thrilled to be catering the wedding of some family friends, Nick and Lauren Clifford, but when Jane arrives at the reception, she's in for a shock of a lifetime-and one that could jeopardize her career. The food has been spiked with hallucinogenic mushrooms and the drug-hazed guests are engaged in dangerously reckless behavior. When the groom takes a near fatal dive into an empty pool, an investigation begins and Jane turns to her best friend Cordelia Thorn for help in clearing her name. But when Cordelia's sister, Octavia, suddenly deserts her infant daughter on Cordelia's doorstep, Jane is on her own. Events take a turn for the worse when the father of the groom comes up against shocking accusations, and it's up to Jane to uncover the truth. Once again, Ellen Hart has woven intriguing characters and surprising twists into a complex and absorbing story.

When Jane Lawless finds a gun in her dead partner's briefcase, she begins to wonder about Christine's involvement in the most infamous murder case in Minnesota history. On a sultry summer evening in late August of 1987, the Simoneau mansion was the site of a bloody triple homicide. In the weeks prior to that night, Christine had been working with the family as their real estate agent. As Christine lay dying in a hospital bed, the murderer was arrested. The trial was quick and final, the murderer sentenced to three consecutive life terms. Now, as Jane begins an emotional journey into her partner's past, she comes face to face with some hard truths—truths not only about the real identiy of the murderer, but about her own life and loss.

Joanna Kasimir, an old friend of Jane Lawless, left Minneapolis years ago to make it big in Hollywood and, unlike so many others, she succeeded. Unfortunately, her stardom came at a price. Early in her career, Joanna was involved with a man who quickly went from being an idle interest to a dangerous stalker. Nearly a decade has passed since she sent him to prison, but just as she is about to leave for her hometown to star in her friend Cordelia Thorn's production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," she receives one of his ominous calling cards. Joanna refuses to let him control her life—she can't. Not again. Tired after ten years of fear, ten years of hiding, she calls on Jane and former homicide detective A.J. Nolan, but they may not be able to protect her from a man who refuses to be anyone's one-night stand. And when they find out that Joanna may not be the only one on the run, their investigation quickly spins Jane into a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Minneapolis restaurateur and amateur sleuth Jane Lawless is in the middle of ringing in the New Year the best way she knows how—with her family, friends, and some excellent champagne—when the biggest financial backers in Minnesota politics break up the party with a little backroom proposition for her father: How'd he like to be the state's next governor? Flattered, Ray Lawless, a retired defense attorney, agrees to run, and the latecomer's sprint to the state capital is going great until reporters and opponents start digging up the kind of dirt that is more valuable than gold out on the campaign trail. He and his family are fair game, but worse than that, so are the men running his campaign. Their secrets, involving the mysterious death of a young woman, have been buried since the summer they all came home from Vietnam. Unfortunately for Jane and her father, those secrets won't stay that way for long.

Jane Lawless is at her wit’s end keeping her Minneapolis restaurants running while volunteering on her father’s campaign for governor. With an eleven-point lead, the race is Ray Lawless’s to lose, but all that changes when his rival posts a list of violent criminals that are back on the streets early, thanks to Ray’s work during his career as a defense lawyer. Corey Hodge is one of the convicts that took Ray’s advice to plead guilty for a crime that he swears he didn’t commit. Bitter from time served, revenge lurks in the back of his mind. Then one of Ray’s young campaign volunteers is killed, and with the murder mirroring the crime Corey was convicted of, Jane has to bring the killer to justice to save her father’s political career and to keep Corey from going to prison again. The high stakes and political intrigue that fuel Sweet Poison, the latest in Lambda and Minnesota Book Award—winning author Ellen Hart’s absorbing Jane Lawless series, make for an intense mystery of ambition and obsession.

Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless is at crossroads. The rough economy has put her plans for a third restaurant on hold, and her long distance romance is on the rocks and quite possibly unsalvageable. Unsure of what to do next, she takes her good friend A. J. Nolan up on his standing offer to take her on as a private investigator. While still in training, her first job seems simple enough. All she had to do is find Annie Archer’s stepfather. Jane tracks down a likely match—a man who has made a small fortune in real estate. While she’s happy to close her first case, she finds it hard to reconcile the difference between PI work—finding what people pay you to find—and uncovering the truth, the whole truth, especially when clues in this seemingly simple case point to more threatening family secrets than where Annie’s father has been hiding out. Ellen Hart’s The Mirror and the Mask is another engrossing mystery filled with the deceit and psychological intrigue that fans have come to expect from this Lambda and Minnesota Book Award—winning author.

The shock that Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless is in for when Chester Garrity, her ex-husband, returns to a city that he swore he'd never see again is nothing compared to Chester's own. After their divorce many years ago, he took off with his inheritance to travel the world, leaving Jane with enough seed money to open her first restaurant, which worked out well for Jane but less so for Chester. Now he's back and penniless, or as he would prefer to say, between fortunes. He's working an angle to make his next one by selling a priceless artifact recently looted from the Baghdad Museum, but it all falls through when he wakes up next to the dead body of his buyer with no memory of what happened the night before. Panicked, Chester flees the scene, eventually returning to cover his tracks only to find that someone has already taken care of that for him, but at what price?

Restaurateur and part-time P.I. Jane Lawless is taking some much-needed time off at her family's lodge when her best friend, Cordelia, arrives with news that Tess, one of their good friends, has taken a nasty fall and needs their help with rehearsals for a play that is set to open in a week. When Tess isn't on crutches, she helps run the Thunderhook Lodge, the premier resort on Lost Lake. And while she clearly needs Jane and Cordelia's assistance, she isn't exactly acting all that grateful. A man who claims to be a journalist has arrived in Lost Lake with an old photograph and some questions for Tess that go back decades. His questions have put her on edge, and when he shows up peeking through her kitchen window, everyone else is right there with her. As beloved as Tess is, there are plenty of people who don't care about any so-called journalist and are happy to protect her, but how far are they willing to take it? And when will they need answers to questions that that only Tess can provide? In The Lost Women of Lost Lake—the most engrossing mystery yet from Lambda and Minnesota Book Award–winning author Ellen Hart—Jane's only hope of protecting her friends from the secrets that are surfacing all around them is to uncover the whole truth before anyone else can.

DeAndre Moore came to Minneapolis from St. Louis with a purpose, but things aren't going as he planned. When it becomes clear he's in way over his head, DeAndre can think of only one person to call for help—his Uncle Nolan's business partner, newly licensed private investigator Jane Lawless. However, by the time Jane listens to his voice mail, she's hearing a voice from beyond the grave—DeAndre left the message only minutes before he was knifed to death outside a gentlemen's club. Soon his murder isn't the only one. With Nolan in the hospital, Jane sets out to find out who killed DeAndre, how his death is connected with the others, and what he was doing in Minneapolis in the first place. Rest for the Wicked is another outstanding addition to Ellen Hart's award-winning mystery series.

PI and restaurateur Jane Lawless must track down two missing teenagers. Although Eric and Andrew have been trying to keep up a semblance of normal life, they know their thirteen-year-old son Jack has been having a tough time of it since they separated. They’ve been concerned, but now they’re terrified—Jack has run away from home. It happened once before, just after the separation, but then it was only a matter of hours before Eric found him. This time, Jack disappeared with his cousin, and the two of them haven’t been seen for more than twenty-four hours. Desperate, Eric and Andrew call on private investigator Jane Lawless, a friend of Andrew’s from years ago. Despite the fact that her business partner, A.J. Nolan, is now in a wheelchair and struggling with depression, Jane agrees to help out. But after examining Eric and Andrew’s home, Jane’s first impression of the case isn’t good—in fact, she’s not convinced the boys ran away at all. She thinks they may have been abducted…or worse. Taken by the Wind, the latest riveting mystery from award-winning author Ellen Hart, is a race against the clock for Jane and the terrified parents of two missing boys.

Renowned theater director Cordelia Thorn is working to restore a historic theater in downtown Minneapolis that she and her actress sister, Octavia, recently bought. Cordelia has a vision for the playhouse’s future, but the more she learns about the building, the more fascinated she becomes by its past. Nicknamed “The Old Deep and Dark” because of the Prohibition-era double murder that occurred in the basement—then a speakeasy—there are a wealth of secrets hidden inside its walls. And, to her shock and horror, Cordelia discovers that there is also one present-day body literally buried in a basement wall. Cordelia immediately calls on her best friend, P.I. Jane Lawless. Although Jane is already in the thick of another investigation—she's embroiled in a well-known country-western singer’s family scandal—she agrees to help Cordelia out on the side. But show-biz is a small world, and as Jane starts tracing the trails of two separate investigations, she's surprised to find they might not be as unconnected as she thought. With The Old Deep and Dark, the latest installment in the award-winning Jane Lawless series, Ellen Hart has crafted another impeccably plotted, seamlessly written mystery.

In the next riveting, insightful Jane Lawless mystery from award-winning Ellen Hart, Jane searches for the truth behind the death of Kira Adler's mother, which has haunted Kira for many years. When Guthrie Hewitt calls on restaurateur and private investigator Jane Lawless, he doesn’t know where else he can turn. Guthrie has fallen for a girl—Kira Adler. In fact, he was planning to propose to her on Christmas Eve. But his trip home with Kira over Thanksgiving made him uneasy. All her life, Kira has been haunted by a dream—a nightmare, really. In the dream, she witnesses her father murder her mother. She knows it can’t be true, because the dream doesn’t line up with the facts of her mother’s death. But after visiting Kira’s home for the first time, and receiving a disturbing anonymous package in the mail, Guthrie starts to wonder if Kira’s dream might hold more truth than she knows. When Kira’s called home again for a family meeting, Guthrie knows he needs Jane’s help to figure out the truth, before the web of secrets Kira’s family has been keeping all these years ensnares Kira, too. And Jane’s investigation will carry her deep into the center of a close-knit family that is not only fraying at the edges, but about to burst apart.

Ellen Hart was named the 2017 MWA Grand Master, the most distinguished lifetime achievement award offered in the mystery community. In FEVER IN THE DARK by MWA Edgars Grand Master Ellen Hart, Fiona and Annie return home from their one year anniversary trip to discover that their poignant proposal video has been posted on YouTube and has garnered hundreds of thousands of hits. The video is on the verge of going viral, and there’s enormous media interest in Fiona and Annie, as their fame comes just on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage across the country. As some of the attention starts to turn vicious, Fiona pulls in an old friend, private investigator Jane Lawless, to help separate the harmless threats from the potentially harmful. As the media storm continues to grow, Fiona revels in the attention, but Annie is furious. Fiona has always known that Annie has secrets, but her newfound notoriety threatens to bring Annie's past straight to their door. And then, when a murder occurs and Annie and Fiona are both suspects, it’s up to Jane to prove their innocence…although the more she learns, the more she starts to wonder whether they actually are innocent. Ellen Hart will once again captivate readers with her trademark smart, clever, mystery plotting and rich, human characters.

Fans of Jane Lawless new and old will be fascinated by newly minted Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Ellen Hart's latest intricate puzzle in A Whisper of Bones. Britt Ickles doesn't remember much from her only visit to her mother's childhood home when she was a kid, except for playing with her cousin Timmy and the eruption of a sudden family feud. That's why, when she drops by unannounced after years of silence, she's shocked when her aunts tell her Timmy never existed, that she must be confusing him with someone else. But Britt can't shake the feeling that Timmy did exist...and that something horrible has happened to him. Something her aunts want to cover up. Britt hires Jane Lawless, hoping the private investigator can figure out what really happened to her cousin. When a fire in the family's garage leads to the discovery of buried bones and one of the aunts dies suddenly and suspiciously, Jane can't help but be pulled into the case. Do the bones belong to Timmy? Was the aunt's death an accident, suicide, or homicide? What dark secret has this family been hiding for decades? It all depends on Jane Lawless to unravel.

Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Ellen Hart’s intimate storytelling returns in Twisted at the Root, where Hart’s latest mystery shows the importance of finding the truth. Everyone thought Rashad May and Gideon Wise were happily married. That is, until Rashad was convicted of his husband’s murder. Four years later, Rashad’s brother contacts Ray Lawless – Minnesota private investigator Jane Lawless’s father and the original defense attorney on the case – with potential evidence of a wrongful conviction. When the case is reopened, Jane and her father must work together to attain justice for a grieving widower. Who actually killed Gideon and why? There are suspects and motives galore, and Jane must discover the truth. She must also track down her missing brother, Peter, who was involved in the original trial, and who might be hiding secrets of his own.

Beloved heroine Jane Lawless finds that some secrets don't stay buried forever in Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Ellen Hart's In a Midnight Wood, the 27th mystery in this cultishly popular series. Minnesota private investigator Jane Lawless is headed to the small town of Castle Rock for a little getaway. She and Cordelia plan to visit an old friend, participate in an arts festival, and look into a cold case that has recently come on Jane's radar—thanks to a podcast Jane is now involved in which looks into Minnesota cold cases. In Castle Rock, a high school senior named Sam went missing in 1999. Everyone thought he ran away, though the town rumor mill has always claimed the father killed him. In present day, within a week of his 20th high school reunion, Sam's remains are found. People who knew Sam, and those around him, will be in town for the much anticipated reunion. It's up to Jane to sort friend from foe, before it's too late.