The 80s are coming to a close and Kate Fansler is using this time to tie up loose ends. Having completed a work of literary criticism - and vowing it will be her last - Kate enjoys lunch with editor Simon Pearlstine, indulging in her usual vodka martini. There is no rest for the wicked as he commissions her to write a biography of reclusive Gabrielle Foxx, the quiet wife of a famous modernist author. Kate discovers there is more to Gabrielle than meets the eye, and in order to trace the Foxx family's complicated history she must track down three important women from Gabrielle's past: Anne,...

Literature Professor Kate Fansler is asked once again to turn her talents to private investigation when Winifred Ashby - honorary niece of Oxford scholar and novelist Charlotte Stanton - inexplicably disappears from her quiet farmhand life. Using Winifred's journal and Charlotte's novels as her only available sources, Kate must follow a convoluted trail through Oxford to Santa Cruz before finally untangling the secrets of Winifred's past. But Kate's investigation reveals far more than she anticipated as sinister issues of illegitimacy and inheritance arise . . . Amanda Cross...

When Janet Harrison asks her English Professor Kate Fansler to recommend a psychoanalyst, no one could have imagined that Janet's body would be discovered on his couch two months later. Kate can't believe that her old friend Emanuel Bauer could be a murderer, even though Janet was killed in his office using a knife from his kitchen. With help from a team of close companions she sets out to discover the truth, something the police seem happy to ignore. Could the killer be the advertising executive who had his appointment before Janet? Or the lecturer who attends the appointment...

Campus security found the body of Canfield Adams early on Sunday morning, seven stories below the open window of his office. To the police there is one easy assumption, but anyone who knew Canfield knows he would never have jumped. University officials ask literature Professor and amateur sleuth Kate Fanslar to investigate the death of their precious professor, and she find a myriad of people, both on and off campus, who could have pushed him. However, Kate suspects the university has an ulterior motive . . . . . . and she herself is not sure she wants to succeed, for the murderer...

Once again, Kate Fansler tries to take a break from her full time career as a literature professor and amateur sleuth. She finds refuge in a rural retreat - the last place she thought her friend Max would come to visit. When he asks to be driven to the home of a recently deceased family friend Kate can't resist the opportunity to learn more about of one of her literary heroes, Cecily Hutchins. But what starts as a light-hearted trip to the coast of Maine, ends with Kate discovering a body on the rocky shore. A body of one of her students. Kate takes it upon herself to find out what...

Literature professor and amateur sleuth Kate Fansler is taking a well-earned sabbatical with her new husband, Reed. However, her martini filled evenings are soon interrupted by a desperate appeal from her former and beloved Theban School to cover classes on Antigone. Not wanting to deprive students from Antigone's brilliance she rushes to New York, finding the Greek heroine's subversive will mirrored in her students who are caught up in the rebellion of protests, sex, and drugs. All is fun and chaos until a dead body is discovered in the old school building, can Kate get to the bottom...

On the famous Joycean day of June 16th, Kate Fansler attends the annual Bloomsday celebration, kicking off the start to an idyllic and literary summer. But in the company of an exuberant young nephew and two graduate students, there is not much time for peace and quiet. The idyll is further shattered when an unpleasant next-door neighbour is found murdered. Although the murder appears to have no connection to the day's celebrations, no one can shake the suspicion that James Joyce is somehow linked, not even unliterary police inspector Stratton. Kate is determined to find the solution to...

It's New York City, 1970, and student riots have ravaged the university where Professor Kate Fansler teaches Victorian literature to mature students. The survival of the University College is in doubt, especially as their President Jeremiah Cudlipp is determined to shut it down. In the midst of balancing dissertation proposals with the politics of academia, Kate is faced with insurmountable odds. But armed with a handful of rebellious colleagues, the poetry of W. H. Auden, and her new fiance, she is not one to give up. Kate is willing to fight to the death for her college, but only a...