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 their contemporaries. Concord's latter-day transcendental scholars are a strange bunch, but none is more peculiar than Homer Kelly, an expert on Emerson and on homicide....

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 it is a crime scene. A corpulent body is found inside, decapitated by the blast. The dead man is Hamilton Dow, conductor of the school orchestra and one of the...

First arson, then murder strike Emily Dickinson's hometown Although she spent her life withdrawn from the people of Amherst, Massachusetts, every man, woman, and English professor in this small university town claims ownership of poet Emily Dickinson. They give tours in her house, lay flowers on her grave, and now, as the hundredth anniversary of her death approaches, they organize festivals in her name. Dickinson scholar Owen Kraznik has just been...

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 looking. At most museums these pranks would be an annoyance, but at the Gardner-whose founder stipulated that the museum be disbanded if the original collection...

Homer suspects a rash of deaths near Walden Pond may not be accidental Alice Snow is the first to die. In the morning, she and her friends at the Pond View Trailer Park watchsoap operas, worrying about the lives of TV's rich and powerful. A few hours later, a hiking Homer Kelly finds Alice lying outside her trailer, head smashed and heart stopped. Though her fellow Pond View residents do not realize it, their lives are in danger too.   The state-owned...

Homer investigates the violent deaths of a beautiful stage manager's admirers Each year, the beautiful Sarah Bailey marks the winter solstice by organizing a pageant of drama and song for the citizens of Harvard University. Last year, the star of the show was Henry Shady, an Appalachian folk singer whose homespun charm won the eye of every young woman in Cambridge. On the eve of this year's Revels, the singer is struck down in the street by an SUV...

While trying to start a new life, Homer's niece uncovers a murder Life has not always been fair to Annie Swann. A bad marriage sullied her youth, but since her divorce she has made enough money illustrating children's books to add a wing to her house. The new addition's focal point will be a thirty-five-foot blank wall, where Annie plans an elaborate mural of the fairy tale characters who pay her bills. But as she paints, mysterious markings appear...

As Charlottesville, Va., prepares for a presidential visit celebrating the anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's election as U.S. president, a serial killer in the area is stalking female victims. At Monticello newly hired researcher Fern Fisher is trying to burnish Jefferson's tarnished reputation, while in the surrounding woods discontented med student Tom Dean has illegally set up camp. Tom joins Fern in her researches, arguing that sponsoring Lewis...

Homer and Mary Kelly become involved in the mystery of why Mary's great-great grandfather Seth Morgan, a Harvard graduate who served in the Civil War, had become persona non grata on the family tree.