UNITED STATES AUTHOR · FICTION · WOMEN DETECTIVES
Ellen Hart
Also known as: Hart, Ellen
Ellen Hart is the author of over thirty crime novels in two different series. She is a six-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery, a three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Best Popular Fiction, a three-time winner of the Golden Crown Literary Award in several categories, a recipient of the Alice B Medal, and was made an official GLBT Literary Saint at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans in 2005. In 2010, Ellen received the GCLS Trailblazer Award for lifetime achievement in the field of lesbian literature. In 2016, she was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America ([read her acceptance speech]( The award "represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality." For many years, Ellen has taught "An Introduction to Writing the Modern Mystery" through the The Loft Literary Center, the largest independent writing community in the nation. Ellen's latest Sophie Greenway mystery is No Reservations Required (Ballantine). In a Midnight Wood, the twenty-seventh Jane Lawless mystery, will be published by St. Martin's/Minotaur in September 2020. Bywater Books has been releasing Ellen's latest titles in paperback, starting in October 2013 with The Mirror and the Mask and The Cruel Ever After. Also, Audible.com has been releasing all of the Jane Lawless mysteries as audiobooks. Ellen and her partner of over 40 years, Kathleen Kruger, live in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
"She bought the damned radio station!" announced Bram, dumping himself into a chair on the other side of his wife's desk.
Most acclaimed
Stage Fright
"Aging theater actor Torald Werness's last curtain call is as a corpse. Murdered after his last performance in his last theatrical production, Minneapolis restaurateur-sleuth Jane Lawless finds his body onstage, impaled on a part of the set. Before long, a series of coincidences places Jane in the role of prime suspect. Determined to clear her name, Jane turns to her best friend, Cordelia, for help. Together, their intuition leads them to the dead man's family, a glamorous--and appropriately melodramatic--Midwestern theatrical dynasty. Jane and Cordelia must separate the theatrics from reality before Jane takes the blame for someone else's crime, and their search for the true killer uncovers a tangled and dangerous web of deceit." -- back cover.
A whisper of bones
"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" --