Edgar Award Finalist: Murder strikes the Massachusetts hometown of a literary icon, and a scholarly sleuth investigates, in a "remarkable" mystery series ( Booklist).Although she spent her life withdrawn from the people of Amherst, Massachusetts, every man, woman, and English professor in this small university town claims ownership of poet Emily Dickinson. They give tours in her house, lay flowers on her grave, and now, as the hundredth anniversary of her ...

Homer defends a crazed poet accused of using an eclipse as cover for murderFor all her life, poet Kitty Clark has waited to see a total eclipse of the sun. News of an impending eclipse thrills her until she learns it will be visible only from Nantucket, where one year ago her ex-lover Joe Green moved with his new wife. Unable to resist the astronomical lure, she flies in from Boston, and makes her way to an isolated lighthouse, hoping to avoid seeing Joe. The eclip...

In an intellectual hamlet, century-old love letters give rise to murderThe citizens of Concord, Massachusetts, never tire of their heritage. For decades, the intellectuals of this little hamlet have continued endless debates about Concord’s favorite sons: Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and their contemporaries. Concord’s latter-day transcendental scholars are a strange bunch, but none is more peculiar than Homer Kelly, an expert on Emerson and on homicide. An old-fas...

A hunt for a missing art lover engages Homer in a perplexing mysteryLeonard Sheldrake knows little about Frieda except that he loves her. A Harvard professor and admirer of the bizarre engravings of M. C. Escher, Leonard is visiting a Cambridge exhibition of the artist’s work when he meets Frieda and falls instantly in love. As they trade remarks about the artwork, he learns a few brief things about her. Though young, she is a widow, an orphan, and has a terrible s...

In Florence, scholar/sleuth Homer Kelly must foil a plot to kill the Pope in a "voluptuously detailed" mystery in which Langton's "exuberant wit runs riot" ( The New York Times Book Review).When the Pope issues a sweeping edict calling for a yearlong war on drugs, no one is more surprised than the Vatican to find the campaign a success. In every Catholic corner of the world, young people throw down their needles to pick up crosses. In Florence, thousands o...

With her usual "sparkling prose and inimitable wit," the award-wining author follows her scholar/sleuth and his wife as they investigate a death in Venice ( Publishers Weekly).Four-month summer holidays, spring break, and regular sabbaticals mean that Harvard professors Mary and Homer Kelly never have trouble finding time to vacation. Unfortunately, Homer's sideline as an amateur sleuth means that they rarely get to relax during their time off. And so, whe...

Homer investigates the violent deaths of a beautiful stage manager’s admirersEach year, the beautiful Sarah Bailey marks the winter solstice by organizing a pageant of drama and song for the citizens of Harvard University. Last year, the star of the show was Henry Shady, an Appalachian folk singer whose homespun charm won the eye of every young woman in Cambridge. On the eve of this year’s Revels, the singer is struck down in the street by an SUV driven by Sarah’s ...

After a new pipe organ is installed at a Boston church, an organist vanishesAn infant crawls in the dark, up the cold stone steps of Boston’s Church of the Commonwealth. It is a miracle that Alan Starr notices the child, so focused is he on the church’s new organ, whose pipes he is about to hear for the first time. He takes the baby in his arms and goes inside to inspect the magnificent new instrument, designed to the specifications of the church’s master organist,...

When a bomb kills the most popular man at Harvard, the entire faculty is suspectAn explosion rocks the foundations of Harvard University’s stately Memorial Hall. Built a century ago to honor alumni who died defending the Union in the Civil War, the hall is a focal point of the campus. Now it is a crime scene. A corpulent body is found inside, decapitated by the blast. The dead man is Hamilton Dow, conductor of the school orchestra and one of the most beloved men on...

Investigating a lighthearted prankster, Homer Kelly finds murder insteadThere are frogs in the pond at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. A balloon has been tied to one of the sculptures in the small museum’s hallowed halls. And, worst of all, someone has moved paintings while no one was looking. At most museums these pranks would be an annoyance, but at the Gardner—whose founder stipulated that the museum be disbanded if the original collection is ever disturbed...

The award-winning author's "rare gift of genius" is on display as her scholar/sleuth investigates a suspicious death from asthma and yellow jackets ( St. Louis Post-Dispatch).John Hand visits the Heron house looking for a summer job. What he finds is a family in mourning. A few minutes after he is hired by Mrs. Heron and her daughter, Virginia, a neighbor, Buddy, finds Mr. Heron lying dead in the orchard, choked to death by asthma and bee stings. As Buddy ...

The scholar/sleuth investigates a series of deaths in a church congregation in an "agreeably malevolent" mystery that "comes to a spirited conclusion" ( Publishers Weekly).The Baptists of Nashoba are healthy. So are the Quakers, Lutherans, and Methodists. Every religious sect in this small New England town is in ruddy good health, save for the congregation at the Old West Church, whose members are dying like flies. As a rash of heart failure claims victim ...