When beautiful Janet Harrison asks English professor Kate Fansler to recommend a Manhattan psychoanalyst, Kate immediately sends the girl to her dear friend and former lover, Dr. Emanuel Bauer. Seven weeks later, the girl is stabbed to death on Emanuel's couch--with incriminating fingerprints on the murder weapon. To Kate, the idea of her brilliant friend killing anyone is preposterous, but proving it seems an impossible task. For Janet had no friends, no lover, no family. Why, then, should someone feel compelled to kill her? Kate's analytic techniques leave no stone unturned--not even the one under which a venomous killer once again lies coiled and ready to strike. . . .From the Paperback edition.

Professor Charles Haycock is dead from a hearty dose of his own heart medication. The mystery is not why Haycock was murdered-very few could stomach the woman-hating prof?but who did the deed. Estelle "Woody" Woodhaven, a private investigator hired to find the killer, naturally enlists the help of that indefatigable amateur sleuth, Kate Fansler. Together, they start to pull at the loose ends of the very tangled Clifton College English Department. The list of suspects is longer than the freshman survey reading list. And as the women defuse the host of literary landmines set out for them, Woody suspects they?re only scratching the surface of a very large and sinister plot. . . .From the Paperback edition.

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 may be someone she cares about, a student, a colleague, a friend?Taking its name from a Rudyard Kipling poem and littered with his verses throughout, A Trap for Fools is a novel about overcoming adversity, one of Amanda Cross' latest and best mysteries.'If by some cruel oversight you haven't discovered Amanda Cross, you have an uncommon pleasure in store for you'...

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 may be someone she cares about, a student, a colleague, a friend?Taking its name from a Rudyard Kipling poem and littered with his verses throughout, A Trap for Fools is a novel about overcoming adversity, one of Amanda Cross' latest and best mysteries.'If by some cruel oversight you haven't discovered Amanda Cross, you have an uncommon pleasure in store for you'...

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 really happened. Can her own presence at the scene just be a coincidence? And how much can she really trust Max?Amanda Cross probes into the shadowy past of Cecily Hutchings and her Bloomsbury-like literary circle in The Question of Max, a gripping whodunit from start to end.'Fascinating complexities . . . humour along the way, and an unexpected shocker of a climax ....

Student riots have ravaged the distinguished New York City university where Kate Fansler teaches. In the ensuing disarray, the survival of the university's plebeian stepchild, University College, seems doubtful. President Jeremiah Cudlipp is snobbishly determined to ax it; and as sycophantic professors fall in line behind him, the rally of Kate and few rebellious colleagues seems doomed. It is a fight to the death, and only a miracle--or perhaps a murder--can save their beloved institution. . . .From the Paperback edition.

"FASCINATING . . . The dialogue is, as always, elegant and polished."--Los Angeles TimesWhile guest-teaching a semester at Schuyler Law School, Kate Fansler gets to know an extraordinary secretary named Harriet, who patterns her life after John le Carré's character George Smiley. Harriet reveals that Schuyler has some serious skeletons swinging in its perfectly appointed closets, including the fate of Schuyler's only tenured female professor and a faculty wife who has killed her husband. As if Kate doesn't have enough to tackle, she is also up against the men who comprise the faculty of Schuyler itself--a thoroughly unapologetic bastion of white male power, mediocrity, and misogyny. Although she has only a few months on campus, Kate refuses to let Schuyler's rigid ideals and insistence on secrecy suppress her indefatigable curiosity--or her obsession with the truth. . . ."Cross manages to keep this book as lighthearted and witty as any of the Kate Fansler...

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, Dorinda and Nellie.But the further Kate probes into Gabrielle's history the darker the secrets she uncovers . . .Amanda Cross examines relationships and human nature in The Players Come Again, a thought-provoking novel about literature, feminism and ageing.'I salute this latest work as being among the best she has written, if not the best' Antonia...

For a century, wealthy New York girls have been trained for the rigors of upper class life at the Theban, an exclusive private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Kate Fansler is lured back to her alma mater to teach a seminar on Antigone. But a hostile note addressed to Kate, the uniform mistrustfulness of her six, bright students, and the Dobermans that patrol the building at night suggest trouble on the spot. As Kate leads her class through the inexorable tragic unfolding of Antigone, a parallel nightmare envelops the school and everyone connected with it. . . .From the Paperback edition.

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 this extraordinary murder, even if she finds the culprit in her own home . . .Amanda Cross musters up an ingenious solution to an impossible scenario in this penetrating literary mystery, The James Joyce Murder.'No one has a sharper eye than Amanda Cross' Washington Post Book World

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 captivates us with strong women and astounding adventure in this gripping mystery, No Word from Winifred.'Peopled with strong women . . . rich with ideas' Publishers' Weekly

Amanda Cross is master of the American literary whodunit. In her delicately menacing short fiction, assembled here in one volume, dangerous impulses seize the most unlikely individuals, and everyday existence is fast eclipsed by the bizarre. Among the compelling intrigues: The cold-blooded murder of Mrs. Byron Lloyd, shot dead during a writers' panel discussion . . . the enigma of the nameless toddler who walks out of the bushes one New England summer afternoon . . . the reappearance of a missing Constable drawing just where it can cause the most trouble . . . and other wonderful mysteries, many of which star the incomparable amateur sleuth Kate Fansler.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Kate Fansler's husband, Reed, has been kidnapped--and will be killed unless Kate obeys the carefully delineated directives of a ransom note. Tormented by her own puzzled heart, Kate seeks solace and wise counsel from both old friends and new. But who precisely is the enemy? Is he or she a vengeful colleague? A hostile student? A terrorist sect? The questions mount as Kate searches for Reed--accompanied by her trusty new companion, a Saint Bernard puppy named Bancroft. Hovering near Kate and Bancroft are rampant cruelties and calculated menace. The moment is ripe for murder. . . .From the Paperback edition.