Ellen Hart

"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" --

SERIAL MURDERThe yuletide revival of a vintage Twin Cities radio serial isn't just for fun--dealing as it does with the scandalous unsolved 1950s murder of beautiful Kay Collins. But an even deeper mystery intrigues radio personality Bram Baldric and his sleuthing wife, Sophie Greenway: Why has the station's owner insisted on airing this particular case when her son--Kay Collins's two-timing lover--happened to have been the prime suspect in it? Merriment and mistletoe are out this Christmas; menace and murder are in.From the Paperback edition.

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. The murder of a young woman at her alma mater turns Minnesota restaurateur Jane Lawless and her companion, Cordelia, into amateur sleuths. The couple track a sorority house stalker who's turning the hallowed halls of higher learning into a hunting ground.

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.

Taking a seemingly easy job in her first case as a fledgling private investigator, Jane Lawless attempts to track down the missing father of client Annie Andrews, a successful effort with unanticipated consequences.

Jane Lawless accompanies her sidekick Cordelia to a reunion of Cordelia's closest theater friends from college, but one is a dangerously ill alcoholic and another suddenly drops dead, and Jane and Cordelia are plunged into a twenty-year-old mystery

When her father, Ray Lawless, is tapped to run for governor of Minnesota, his campaign has unexpected consequences for Jane Lawless as the media and Ray's opponents threaten to dig up decades-old secrets tied to everyone around him.

"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 soirée 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."--Page 4 of cover.