Amanda Cross Books In Order

Kate Fansler Books In Publication Order

  1. In the Last Analysis (1964)
  2. The James Joyce Murder (1967)
  3. Poetic Justice (1970)
  4. The Theban Mysteries (1971)
  5. The Question of Max (1976)
  6. Death in a Tenured Position (1981)
  7. Sweet Death, Kind Death (1984)
  8. No Word From Winifred (1987)
  9. Players Come Again (1990)
  10. An Imperfect Spy (1995)
  11. A Trap for Fools (1998)
  12. The Puzzled Heart (1998)
  13. Honest Doubt (2000)
  14. The Edge of Doom (2002)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. Female Sleuths (1993)

Kate Fansler Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Amanda Cross Books Overview

In the Last Analysis

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…
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The James Joyce Murder

Since 1966 readers new to James Joyce have depended upon this essential guide to Ulysses. Harry Blamires helps readers to negotiate their way through this formidable, remarkable novel and gain an understanding of it which, without help, it might have taken several readings to achieve. The New Bloomsday Book is a crystal clear, page by page, line by line running commentary on the plot of Ulysses which illuminates symbolic themes and structures along the way. It is a highly accessible, indispensible guide for anyone reading Joyce’s masterpiece for the first time. To ensure that Blamires’ classic work will remain useful to new readers, this third edition contains the page numbering and references to three commonly read editions of Ulysses: the Oxford University Press ‘World Classics’ 1993, the Penguin ‘Twentieth Century Classics’ 1992, and the Gabler ‘Corrected Text’ 1986 editions.

Poetic Justice

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…
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The Theban Mysteries

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…
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The Question of Max

Murder is academic, and literature is murderously exciting, when a mysterious death plunges cool, dagger witted Professor Kate Fansler on a literary quest into a Bloomsbury like group of feminist writers, and the questionable heritage of a man named Max dear old Max a thoroughly elegant snob, who may or not be too impeccable for violence.

Death in a Tenured Position

When Janet Mandelbaum is made the first woman professor at Harvard’s English Department, the men are not happy. They are unhappier still when her tea is spiked and she is found drunk on the floor of the women’s room. With a little time, Janet’s dear friend and colleague Kate Fansler could track down the culprit, but time is running out…
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Sweet Death, Kind Death

‘If by some cruel oversight you haven’t discovered Amanda Cross, you have an uncommon pleasure in store for you.’THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWWhen Clare College’s resident eccentric Patrice Umphelby is found drowned in the campus lake, it’s called a suicide. But the college president grows suspicious and calls in noted professor/detective Kate Fansler to research the matter. Ingratiating herself with her academic colleagues to learn more about Patrice’s life, Kate digs up the evidence she needs to understand her death…
. From the Paperback edition.

No Word From Winifred

When Winifred, the niece of a renowned British novelist goes missing after she agreed to be interviewed for her esteemed aunt’s biography, the biographer taps Kate Fansler to find her. Kate spots clues all right, but finding the person is a lot trickier than she thought…
. From the Paperback edition.

Players Come Again

‘Those who relish intricate mind games, complex characters, scalpel sharp wit and literary allusions by the peck will clasp this to their hearts.’THE SAN DIEGO UNIONWhen Kate Fansler is offered the exciting prospect of writing a biography of Gabrielle Foxx, the obscure and enigmatic wife of a great modernist author, she accepts. But what she discovers when she meets three charming women connected with the Foxx family since childhood is a veil of secrecy that hides a fantastic pattern of events, a shocking secret that fifty years have done nothing to defuse, and a strange truth that she can never reveal…
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An Imperfect Spy

‘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 Carr ‘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 mysteries, while depicting an institution as lethal as any cold war.’ Marilyn French’A funny, snappish polemic on political correctitude that takes great relish in Kate’s sardonic views.’ The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the Paperback edition.

A Trap for Fools

When the body of Canfield Adams, a professor of Middle Eastern culture, is found on he pavement seven stories below his open office window, the police think it was suicide. But those who knew the professor, knew that there were numerous people on campus and off who would have relished pushing him. Kate is asked to investigate, and she herself is not sure she wants to succeed. For the murderer may well be a student she cares about…
or a colleague…
or even a friend…
.’If by some cruel oversight you haven’t discovered Amanda Cross, you have an uncommon pleasure in store for you.’THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

The Puzzled Heart

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…
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Honest Doubt

Amanda Cross, the internationally acknowledged master of the literary crime novel, introduces fans to a new hero*ine: Estelle ‘Woody’ Woodhaven. Woody, a private investigator hired to find the perpetrator of a bizarre murder in academe, naturally enlists the help of that indefatigable amateur sleuth, Kate Fansler. Woody is a fat P.I. she always beats the client to the punch with that revelation. She’s also very competent. But her newest case has left her feeling a bit out of her element. Professor Charles Haycock, an expert on Victorian literature, is dead from a hearty dose of his own heart medication, slipped into his drink during a party at his home. The mystery is not why Haycock was murdered very few could stomach the woman hating, power hungry prof but who did the deed. As Woody proceeds, she finds herself engulfed in a quagmire of infighting and deceit, literary allusions and overinflated egos. And it’s time to call in the reinforcements. Enter Kate Fansler, professor and crimesolver extraordinaire. Together, Woody and Kate start to pull at the loose ends of the very tangled Clifton College English Department. Woody’s list of suspects is longer than the freshman survey reading list: Antonia Lansbury, the lone tenured woman on the staff and thereby the target of Haycock’s venomous, misogynistic ire; Professor David Longworth, weary of Haycock’s controlling ways and now first in line for Department Chair; Rick Fowler, a professor forced out of Clifton because of his liberal views and out and proud principles; and Haycock’s wife, who was about to file for divorce when her husband gasped his last breath. As Kate and Woody 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. And it will take both women’s expertise and cunning to solve the murder of a man no one was sorry to see go…
. Elegant, literate, and darkly humorous, this is one of Amanda Cross’s best puzzlers in years without an Honest Doubt.

The Edge of Doom

Rich and witty, the literary whodunits by Amanda Cross are a delight for readers who like their mysteries smart and suspenseful. Now comes the highly anticipated sequel to her Kate Fansler novel, Honest Doubt, which the Providence Journal called one of her best books in years. Here, Cross takes her beloved protagonist into uncharted territory, turning Kate Fansler’s world upside down. Just when Kate Fansler thinks life couldn t possibly hold any more surprises, she receives a phone call from Laurence, the eldest of her imperious brothers. But a woman as sharp as Kate knows that the moment one stops believing in life s little bends in the road is the time when it has more twists in store. Kate has always been different from the other Fanslers a free and independent thinker in a family where propriety and decorum are prized above all. She has always assumed it was because she was the youngest and the only girl in the family. But over a drink with Laurence, Kate s whole understanding of herself is thrown into question as he calmly tells her that a strange man came to his office claiming to be Kate s father and it s quite possible that she is not a Fansler after all. There are even more dangerous curves in the road for Kate Fansler, especially after she meets the man who calls himself her father. When more life threatening secrets and lies emerge, Kate and the Fansler family are suddenly pitched perilously close to The Edge of DoomFrom the Hardcover edition.

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