The police call Allison Lord's drowning a suicide, but her housemates at her University of Minnesota sorority insist it was murder. That's when alumnae advisor, Jane Lawless, steps in to find out the truth. Assisted by her irrepressible sidekick Cordelia, Jane searches for clues, and what she finds is as chilling as the Minnesota winter. At a lonely vacation lodge, amidst the icy snow drifts, she risks her life to ensnare a cunning killer.

"Hallowed Murder engulfs the reader from the very first page... This novel is so tightly plotted that every word counts."
-Bay Windows

"Hart's crisp, elegant writing and atmosphere is reminiscent of the British detective style, but she has a nicer sense of character, confrontation, and sparsely utilized violence."
-Mystery Scene Magazine

Nominated: 1990 Minnesota Book Award for Best Crime Fiction
Nominated: 1989 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery
Nominated: 1996 Golden Earphones Award (Audio World), Best Unabridged Book
Winner: 1996 Golden Earphones Award (Audio World), Best Reader of an unabridged work, Carol Jordan Stewart for her reading of Hallowed Murder

An old friend invites Minneapolis restaurateur, Jane Lawless, to her Victorian inn to celebrate the winter solstice—and investigate a murder from years before. Yet as soon as Jane and her theatrical pal, Cordelia, arrive, they face broken glass in the parking lot, dead animals in the bedrooms, a bomb scare—malicious pranks that eventually lead to another homicide. As falling snow blots out the rest of the world, and ghosts of the past rise up with a vengeance, Jane finds herself tracking the twisted psyche of a dangerous killer.

"This compelling whodunit has the psychological maze of a Barbara Vine mystery and the feel of Agatha Christie."
-Publishers Weekly

"A mystery lover's feast."
-Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

"The dialogue is believable, filled with humor, and the exchanges are consistent and realistic. This might just be one mystery series worth collecting and owning in its entirety."
-The Washington Blade

Aging actor Torald Werness just had his last affair, his last drink, and his last curtain call. In a darkened theater, restaurateur-sleuth Jane Lawless finds his dead body impaled on a part of the set—and herself a suspect. Yet Jane believes the motive for the murder lies within the dead man's family, a glamorous Midwestern theatrical dynasty, whose talented members give their best performances off stage. Jane and her uninhibited crony, Cordelia, start digging into the family dirt, and discover a tangled web of deceit.

"Ellen Hart is on a roll."
-St. Paul Pioneer Press

"Stage Fright is urbane, political, and a real page turner. Celebrate another plum in a really fun series."
-City Pages

"Hart's characters are intriguing, funny, tortured... Feverish tension is created and sustained for more pages than usual in popular mysteries. A stellar piece of writing."
-Gaze Magazine

Nominated: 1992 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery

After seventy-five years of high-minded respectability, the Amelia Gower Women's Club is in trouble. One distinguished director has been strangled. And another, the founder's granddaughter, has taken a fatal plunge down a third-floor staircase. As soon as restaurateur-sleuth Jane Lawless begins a bit of discreet snooping into these high profile murders, wheels within wheels start to turn, meshing the private lives of Gower friends and family with the club's inner workings and the wealthy Gower Foundations's covert agenda. Even Jane's new lover, Dorrie, is somehow involved. But best friend Cordelia hangs tough, and a good thing too, for the way things are going, the Gower Club murders may well branch out to include Jane herself.

"As usual, Hart does a terrific job... She relies more on the psychology of the character than on raw violence, more on Jane puzzling through the clues that surround her than on brute force. These are thinking women's mysteries. Ellen Hart is one of the best mystery writers working today, and if you like mysteries, you must read hers."
-Bay Windows

"An unforgettable thriller."
-The Midwest Book Review

"The Jane Lawless series is a gem."
-MLB News

Nominated: 1993 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction

When Jane Lawless' wise-cracking sidekick, Cordelia Thorn, is summoned to Summer Green, Wisconsin, for a reunion of the Shevlin Underground—a group made up of Cordelia's five closest theatre friends from college—it quickly becomes evident that reminiscing is not all that is on the weekend's agenda. One of the friends, soap opera star Diana Stanwood, is an alcoholic whose condition is so dangerous that her friends have gathered for an intervention to save her life. Emotions are running high. As the story twists and turns around the elusive lives of these five college friends, one of them drops dead. Alarmed, Cordelia sends for her old friend, Jane, to do some quiet investigating. 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.

"An absorbing plot... superior."
-Publishers Weekly

"Hart creates an outstanding setup in this novel. From the group's sexual tensions, philosophic differences, and past angers, we grasp the many motives for murder. But from the friends' evident love, we believe none could have done it. To this dilemma, Hart finds an ingenious solution."
-Wilson Library Bulletin/The Best of New Writers

Winner: 1994 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery
Winner: 1995 Minnesota Book Award for Best Crime Fiction

When a well-known television personality meets with an untimely demise dressed in compromising attire, a sinister series events begin to unfold in the shadow of Minneapolis' famed Foshay Tower, entangling the Twin Cities in a web of deceit. In chic Linden Lofts, where the man lived, the other tenants are spooked, and Jane Lawless soon finds out why. They, like the deceased owner, have secrets to conceal, and the ghostly someone with a full set of keys who's scouting out their apartments may soon make that impossible. Can one of the Linden Loft's upscale professionals really be an aspiring blackmailer? Before Jane and her theatrical pal, Cordelia, can make sure, a brutal murder ups the ante.

"Hart's fans will rejoice in the sixth Jane Lawless mystery. Fully of wit and wicked deeds, fast pacing and memorable characters, it is the best caper yet...Followers of Lawless will delight in...the promise that this brightest of lesbian detective series burns ever brighter."
-Booklist (Starred Review)

"The mysteries pile up so relentlessly that you'll just have to wait to see who gets caught without a seat in the game of murderous chairs...(The) most drolly understated rescue of the heroine from certain death you've ever seen."
-Kirkus Reviews

"...intelligent and engrossing."
-Publishers Weekly

"The whole series is a must-read for mystery fans who relish contemporary cozies with a brain."
-Minneapolis Star Tribune

Nominated: 1996 American Library Association Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Book Award
Winner: 1996 Minnesota Book Award, Best Mystery/Detective Fiction

When Minneapolis amateur sleuth Jane Lawless and her saucy sidekick, Cordelia Thorn, set out for the sleepy shores of Pokegama Lake in northern Minnesota to escape the urban swelter, hope for a little R & R quickly heads south. Before they've even had a chance to unpack, they find that old friend, Belle Dumont, has vanished, 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. After being mislead again and again, Jane begins to suspect the entire family of hiding something dark—and deadly.

"Another assured title from Ms. Hart, who is proving herself to be consistently excellent."
-Crime Time, London

"Robber's Wine, replete with the Cordelia-generated humor that suffuses the Jane Lawless series, will intoxicate with its satisfying resolution. Robber's Wine is surely a mystery to be savored."
-Lambda Book Report

Winner: 1996 Lambda Literary Award, Best Lesbian Mystery

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 restaurateur 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 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. Meanwhile, Jane assists a detective in tracking down clues about her new neighbor, Patricia, whose husband died under suspicious circumstances. Patricia is eager to become friends with Jane—friends or even a lover—though she knows Jane is immersed in a long-distance relationship with the attractive but secretive Dr. Julia Martinsen. Little does Jane know that the strange lodger upstairs, an attractive neighbor, and a volatile love affair are just the beginning of her problems.

"Hart distinguishes the (mystery) form with a keen combination of skillful prose and above standard plot."
-The Advocate

"Wicked Games is a great addition to the Jane Lawless series, and a great introduction to Jane Lawless for those who haven't read Hart's previous novels. Gay and Lesbian fiction fans are rewarded with superb writing and a fabulous heroine. Fans of mystery and suspense are likewise rewarded. I highly recommend this novel for fans of both genres."
-Kelly Caldwell, About.com

"How delightful it is to see not only the star of a series, but a secondary player, too, develop subtly yet incisively as genuinely three-dimensional characters—yet another indication of Hart's skill as this jewel of a lesbian series continues to flourish."
-Booklist (Starred Review)

"Wicked Games is more psychological suspense than the adventure of an amateur sleuth, and it is definitely darker than formerly common to the series. Hart has written a book that feels very close to her heroine's truth."
-The Drood Review of Mystery

Nominated: 1998 Lambda Literary Award, Best Lesbian Mystery

Minneapolis restaurant owner Jane Lawless has a knack for cooking—and an uncanny talent for detection. But assisting a private investigator has left her with a serious head injury... and vulnerable enough to say yes when a former lover offers to help her recuperate. She never suspects that returning to Dr. Julia Martinsen's TLC will take her out of the frying pan and into the fire. Nervous and jittery, the doctor is hiding something, and Jane—in love, but wary—needs to know what it is. Since desperate times call for desperate measures, Jane takes matters into her own hands and does some checking into Julia's life, both past and present. What she learns makes her blood run cold. Now, a man lies dead in an elevator shaft, the doctor is clearly in danger, and Jane can either turn to the bottle for a way out, or find a killer, before death becomes the final way to leave a lover.

"Hart's writing and plotting are at the highest level. Another bull's-eye for Hart—I'd say this is the best Jane Lawless yet!"
-Girlfriends

"Hart has given us another sophisticated, compassionate, suspenseful, thought-provoking mystery...(Her) darkest by far in the series."
-Judith V. Branzburg, The Lesbian Review of Books

Winner: 1999 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery

Jane Lawless is a woman at a crossroads—her lover has left, she's recovering 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 number four 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 forty years ago could be the key to unlocking the mystery of Octavia's curious marriage, but laying bare such long-buried secrets also promises grave consequences for everyone involved.

"Hart has done her homework and turned in another smart, lively page-turner that will delight her many fans and probably win her some new ones, especially those who enjoy tales of Tinseltown in its heyday."
-Jane Adams, Amazon.com

Nominated: 2002 Minnesota Book Award for Popular Fiction
Winner: 2002 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery

A taste of The Merchant of Venus

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. Both Jane and her brother Peter, who is already under terrible stress because of a troubled marriage, feel the heat of the avenger's plan.

But Jane is intimately familiar with danger, and she's never been one to shrink from a fight. With the help of her best friend Cordelia, Jane sets out to discover why this person is so determined to undo her family. When she begins to dig into The Fireman's life, the puzzle unravels, leading Jane to a final confrontation with someone bent on making the Lawlesses pay, perhaps with their lives.

"Great plotting and fine characterization."
-Library Journal

Winner: 2003 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery

Jane Lawless is thrilled to be catering the wedding of some family friends, Nick and Lauren Clifford, but when Jane arrives at the wedding, she's in for a shock of a lifetime—and one that could jeopardize her career. The food has been spiked with hallucinogenic mushrooms and the drug-hazed guests are engaged in reckless behavior.

When the groom takes a near fatal dive into an empty pool, an investigation begins and Jane turns to her best friend Cordelia Thorn for help in clearing her name. But when Cordelia's sister, Octavia, suddenly deserts her infant daughter on Cordelia's doorstep, Jane is on her own. Events take a turn for the worse when the father of the groom comes up against shocking accusations, and it's up to Jane to uncover the truth.

"Incorporating societal ills torn from the headlines, Hart bares the weaknesses in her well-realized characters as well as their strengths. Despite a plot refreshingly short on guns and gore, the tension is palpable in this spunky page-turner."
-Publishers Weekly

Winner: 2005 Goldie Award in the Mystery/ Action/ Adventure/ Thriller category
Nominated: 2005 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery

When Jane Lawless finds a gun in her dead partner's briefcase, she begins to wonder about Christine's involvement in the most infamous murder case in Minnesota history. On a sultry summer evening in late August of 1987, the Simoneau mansion was the site of a bloody triple homicide. In the weeks prior to that night, Christine had been working with the family as their real estate agent.

As Christine lay dying in a hospital bed, the murderer was arrested. The trial was quick and final, the murderer sentenced to three consecutive life terms. Now, as Jane begins an emotional journey into her partner's past, she comes face to face with some hard truths—truths not only about the real identiy of the murderer, but about her own life and loss.

"[A] shrewd and consistently entertaining whodunit... Hart delivers vivid, off-the-beaten-track characters and enough clues and layers of intrigue to keep the pages turning."
-Publishers Weekly

Winner: The Golden Crown Literary Award (Best Mystery/ Thriller/ Adventure/ Action)
Winner: The Minnesota Book Award for Best Popular Fiction
Nominated: Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery

Joanna Kasimir, an old friend of Jane Lawless, left Minneapolis years ago to make it big in Hollywood and, unlike so many others, she succeeded. Unfortunately, her stardom came at a price. Early in her career, Joanna was involved with a man who quickly went from being an idle interest to a dangerous stalker. Nearly a decade has passed since she sent him to prison, but just as she is about to leave for her hometown to star in her friend Cordelia Thorn's production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," she receives one of his ominous calling cards.

Joanna refuses to let him control her life—she can't. Not again. Tired after ten years of fear, ten years of hiding, she calls on Jane and former homicide detective A. J. Nolan, but they may not be able to protect her from a man who refuses to be anyone's one-night stand.

And when they find out that Joanna may not be the only one on the run, their investigation quickly spins Jane into a deadly game of cat and mouse.

"Entertaining, unpredictable..."
-Publishers Weekly

Nominated: Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery

Minneapolis restaurateur and amateur sleuth Jane Lawless is in the middle of ringing in the New Year the best way she knows how—with her family, friends, and some excellent champagne—when the biggest financial backers in Minnesota politics break up the party with a little backroom proposition for her father: How'd he like to be the state's next governor? Flattered, Ray Lawless, a retired defense attorney, agrees to run, and the latecomer's sprint to the state capital is going great until reporters and opponents start digging up the kind of dirt that is more valuable than gold out on the campaign trail. He and his family are fair game, but worse than that, so are the men running his campaign. Their secrets, involving the mysterious death of a young woman, have been buried since the summer they all came home from Vietnam. Unfortunately for Jane and her father, those secrets won't stay that way for long.

"Hart's engrossing 15th mystery to feature lesbian restaurateur Jane Lawless will make excellent election-year reading... [a] fun whodunit."
-Publishers Weekly

Nominated: 2007 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery