Ellen Hart

Jane Lawless, a lesbian restaurant owner, and her sidekick Cordelia Thorn investigate the drowning death of Allison Lord, a member of the University of Minnesota sorority for which Jane serves as alumni advisor, in a new trade paperback edition of the first Jane Lawless mystery. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

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.

Vital Lies

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.

A Jane Lawless Mystery

A Whisper of Bones

Struggling to juggle her career as a restaurateur while working on her father's campaign for governor, Jane Lawless turns sleuth when one of the volunteers on the campaign is found murdered.

Sweet Poison

Minneapolis restaurant owner and lesbian amateur sleuth Jane Lawless becomes embroiled in a murder investigation, when her newest tenant, self-proclaimed psychic Elliot Beauman, turns up as a "witness" in the case.

Wicked Games

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.

The Cruel Ever After

Ellen Hart was named the 2017 MWA Grand Master, the most distinguished lifetime achievement award offered in the mystery community. 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 and MWA Grand Master.

The Mirror and the Mask

Jane Lawless is a woman at a crossroads - her lover has left, she has finally recovered from a vicious attack sustained last year, and the holidays are closing in. With no one to help her ring in the new year, Jane reluctantly agrees to accompany her good friend Cordelia Thorn on a peculiar holiday trip: Cordelia's estranged sister, Broadway star Octavia Thorn, has asked them to attend her wedding. Octavia getting married is no surprise - she's done it three times before - but her candidate for hubby #4 certainly is. Roland Lester is a reclusive eighty-three-year-old retired Hollywood director, a relic from the golden age of Tinseltown with a controversial past. No one can understand how the two met, much less fell in love. When the bodies start to drop, Jane realizes it might not be love at all that brought the young diva and the aged director together, but something much deeper, and perhaps more sinister. Delving deep into film history, Jane finds unsettling connections between Roland and a murder that was never solved. Finding out what happened 40 years ago could be the key to unlock the mystery of Octavia's curious marriage, but laying bare such long-buried secrets also promises grave consequences for everyone involved.

Merchant of Venus

Lesbian detective and restaurateur Jane Lawless and her irrepressible companion, Cordelia Thorn, plunge deep into an aging actor Torald Werness's family history after he is discovered impaled on the set of a Minneapolis theater. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Stage Fright

Beloved heroine Jane Lawless finds that some secrets don't stay buried forever in Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Hart's 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.

In a Midnight Wood

Fever in the Dark

The Grave Soul

The Old Deep and Dark

Taken by the Wind

Rest for the wicked 

Robber’s wine 

Faint Praise 

A Small Sacrifice 

Ellen Hart was named the 2017 MWA Grand Master, the most distinguished lifetime achievement award offered in the mystery community. 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, MWA Grand Master 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.

The Lost Women of Lost Lake

While sorting through the belongings of her late lover, Christine Kane, Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless discovers a gun that could hold the clue to Christine's death as well as the murders of three members of the Simoneau family.

Ellen Hart

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