Jane Willan Books in Order

Jane Willan is a pastor and novelist whose two lines of work come together in stories about faith, community, ordinary routines, and the trouble that can simmer beneath them. She writes cozy mysteries as well as fiction about church life, bringing a working minister's eye for congregations, committees, traditions, and complicated people.

Her path did not begin in a writing workshop. Willan attended Hiram College, earned a Master of Science degree from Boston University, and later completed a Master of Divinity at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Before entering parish ministry, she worked as a science editor and spent time on a biological research project at Harvard.

Then she followed a call to ministry. Ordained in 2003, Willan has served congregations in several parts of the United States, including Iowa, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Her experience in churches gives her fiction a lived-in sense of how communities work, for better and for worse.

Before she published fiction, Willan co-wrote Jump Start This Church! with Peter Dennis. The practical book looks at how church leaders can respond to change, connect with their communities, and move a struggling congregation toward new energy. It comes from the point of view of people who know that a good plan still has to work on Sunday morning.

Her first novel, The Shadow of Death, introduced Sister Agatha and Father Selwyn. The pair live and work around Gwenafwy Abbey in rural Wales, where prayer, cheese-making, local gossip, and murder investigations make an unlikely but natural mix.

Sister Agatha is a librarian, a devoted reader of detective fiction, and an aspiring mystery writer. When a real crime interrupts life at the abbey, she cannot help asking questions. Father Selwyn is her more cautious partner, and the nuns, villagers, and visitors around them ensure that every case has plenty of possible explanations.

The series continued with The Hour of Death, an Advent-set case involving the local art society, and Abide With Me, which brings new nuns and a suspicious death to the abbey. In The Beekeeper's Last Confession, Agatha follows clues connected to her late brother and a long-buried village secret.

Willan has also written beyond the mystery shelf. Widow's Walk follows Miranda McCurdy, a former chef and young widow who has become a priest in a coastal Maine town. It trades the formal puzzle of the Abbey books for questions of grief, change, sanctuary, and whether a community can make room for a new way forward.

She continues to serve as a pastor in Connecticut. Away from the pulpit and page, she enjoys reading, coffee, time outdoors, and hiking Connecticut trails with her husband, Don, and their dog, Ollie.