Showing results by author "Ellen Hart" in All Categories

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. 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 the present day, within a week of his 20th high school reunion, Sam’s remains are found.

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.

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.

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.

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 gentleman's club. Soon his murder isn't the only one.

An anthology of mystery stories set in Minnesota and written by Minnesota authors. All of the mysteries have at least one element in common: each tale takes place at a fictional, but perhaps hauntingly familiar, Minnesota resort.

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....

Renowned theater director Cordelia Thorn is working to restore a historic theater in downtown Minneapolis. 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.

Aging theater actor Torald Werness' 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.

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, but her candidate for hubby #4 certainly is. Roland Lester is a reclusive 83-year-old retired Hollywood director. No one can understand how the two met. 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.

Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless is at crossroads. 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. Her first job seems simple enough. All she had to do is find Annie Archer’s stepfather. 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.

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. But someone in The Fireman's life can't let go, and, blaming Ray for the man's death, plots a meticulous revenge.

Everyone thinks Luther and Dominic are happily married, that is, until Luther is convicted of his husband's murder. Four years after Luther is sent to prison, his brother contacts Ray Lawless, the defense attorney on the case, with evidence of a wrongful conviction. As he faces reopening the case, Ray pulls in his daughter, Jane, to help attain justice for a grieving widower and find the real killer.

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....

After 75 years of high-minded respectability, the Amelia Gower Women's Club is in trouble. One distinguished director has been strangled. Another has taken a fatal plunge down the club's elegant staircase.

As soon as restaurateur-sleuth Jane Lawless begins investigating these murders, wheels within wheels start to turn, meshing private lives with the club's inner workings. Even Jane's new lover, Dorrie, is somehow involved in the diabolical proceedings....

It doesn’t take Jane long to figure out that someone has spiked the food at the party, most likely with hallucinogenic mushrooms. As the police arrive, the groom takes an unfortunate dive off a diving board and Jane realizes that if she can’t figure out exactly what has happened the blame will fall squarely on her own shoulders.

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 50 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. Then the pranks turn deadly....

Although Eric and Andrew have been trying to keep up a semblance of normal life, they know their 13-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. Desperate, Eric and Andrew call on private investigator Jane Lawless, a friend of Andrew's from years ago.

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.

With no one to help her ring in the new year, Jane Lawless reluctantly agrees to accompany her good friend Cordelia Thorn to the wedding of Cordelias' estranged sister, Broadway star Octavia Thorn. Octavia getting married is no surprise - but her candidate for hubby number four certainly is. Roland Lester is a reclusive 83-year-old retired Hollywood director. No one can understand how the two met. 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 more sinister.