Jane Langton: 20 books

In Florence, scholar/sleuth Homer Kelly must foil a plot to kill the Pope in a “voluptuously detailed” mystery in which Langton’s “exuberant wit runs riot” (The New York Times Book Review).   When the Pope issues a sweeping edict calling for a yearlong war on drugs, no one is more...

Edgar Award Finalist: Murder strikes the Massachusetts hometown of a literary icon, and a scholarly sleuth investigates, in a “remarkable” mystery series (Booklist). Although she spent her life withdrawn from the people of Amherst, Massachusetts, every man, woman, and English professor...

In an intellectual hamlet, century-old love letters give rise to murder The citizens of Concord, Massachusetts, never tire of their heritage. For decades, the intellectuals of this little hamlet have continued endless debates about Concord’s favorite sons: Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and...

The award-winning author’s “rare gift of genius” is on display as her scholar/sleuth investigates a suspicious death from asthma and yellow jackets (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). John Hand visits the Heron house looking for a summer job. What he finds is a family in mourning. A few minutes...

Investigating a lighthearted prankster, Homer Kelly finds murder instead There are frogs in the pond at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. A balloon has been tied to one of the sculptures in the small museum’s hallowed halls. And, worst of all, someone has moved paintings while no one was...

The scholar/sleuth investigates a series of deaths in a church congregation in an “agreeably malevolent” mystery that “comes to a spirited conclusion” (Publishers Weekly). The Baptists of Nashoba are healthy. So are the Quakers, Lutherans, and Methodists. Every religious sect in this...

With her usual “sparkling prose and inimitable wit,” the award-wining author follows her scholar/sleuth and his wife as they investigate a death in Venice (Publishers Weekly).   Four-month summer holidays, spring break, and regular sabbaticals mean that Harvard professors Mary and Homer...

Gettysburg deserter or Civil War hero? Scholar/sleuth Homer Kelly and his wife, Mary, solve the mystery of her great-great-grandfather in this “clever” novel (Booklist). Homer and Mary Kelly have wandered through Harvard University’s Memorial Hall dozens of times, but never have they...

When a bomb kills the most popular man at Harvard, the entire faculty is suspect An explosion rocks the foundations of Harvard University’s stately Memorial Hall. Built a century ago to honor alumni who died defending the Union in the Civil War, the hall is a focal point of the campus. Now...

One mystical tree. One dangerous neighbor. Strange and magical things continually occur at the Hall family's home at 40 Walden Street. Now there's a terrible sound throughout the town of Concord—the buzzing of a chain saw. Only one thing is worse for Eddy and Georgie Hall than that noise:...

Homer defends a crazed poet accused of using an eclipse as cover for murder For all her life, poet Kitty Clark has waited to see a total eclipse of the sun. News of an impending eclipse thrills her until she learns it will be visible only from Nantucket, where one year ago her ex-lover Joe...

While lecturing in England, Homer confronts the criminal dons of Oxford William Dubchick is too keen a student of the writings of Charles Darwin to not see that the world of biology has evolved past him. Decades ago, he was the foremost mind in Oxford University’s department of natural sciences,...

After a new pipe organ is installed at a Boston church, an organist vanishes An infant crawls in the dark, up the cold stone steps of Boston’s Church of the Commonwealth. It is a miracle that Alan Starr notices the child, so focused is he on the church’s new organ, whose pipes he is about...

With “clever storytelling” shifting between past and present, the final Homer Kelly mystery has the scholar/sleuth solving the puzzle of a missing church (Booklist).   Somehow, against all odds, Homer Kelly has become famous. After decades toiling in academic obscurity, the Harvard professor...