M. L. Longworth Books in Order

If you want to start at the beginning: Death at the Chateau Bremont → Murder in the Rue Dumas → Death in the Vines.
If you like academic intrigue and campus settings: Murder in the Rue Dumas → Disaster at the Vendome Theater.
If you enjoy food and wine centered cases: Death in the Vines → The Curse of La Fontaine.
If you love isolated or holiday settings: Murder on the Île Sordou → A Noël Killing.
If you prefer art and museum mysteries: The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne → The Vanishing Museum on the Rue Mistral.

M. L. Longworth grew up in Toronto, Canada, and today she is best known for a series of quiet mysteries set in and around Aix-en-Provence.

She studied art history at York University in Toronto, spending long hours with paintings and sculpture before she ever tried to write about them. After university she and her husband packed a van, drove across the United States, and eventually settled in California, first in San Jose and then in Santa Cruz. Those years mixed office jobs, bookstore browsing, and long drives along the coast.

In the late 1990s a job listing in southern France changed everything. Her husband was hired near Aix-en-Provence, and the family moved with their young daughter to a caretaker's house on a country estate just outside the city. Longworth spoke almost no French, so she learned the language on foot, walking her daughter to school, shopping at the markets, and talking with neighbors under the plane trees.

To stay busy while she waited for work papers, she began writing essays about local food, architecture, and village life. Those pieces slowly found homes in newspapers and magazines in North America and the UK, and one early sale to a Washington paper showed her that words on the page could become a real career. Her articles often lingered over cafes, fountains, and meals in Provence, details that would later anchor her fiction.

Somewhere between deadlines she started scribbling a mystery set in Aix, longhand, and tucked the pages into a desk drawer.

That draft grew into Death at the Chateau Bremont, the first novel to feature examining magistrate Antoine Verlaque and law professor Marine Bonnet, an on again, off again couple who investigate crime as they argue about wine, music, and the law. The book was followed by Murder in the Rue Dumas and Death in the Vines, each one exploring a different corner of Provence, from university offices to vineyards on sun baked hills. Over time the series expanded into stories about deserted islands, lost paintings, and haunted houses, including Murder on the Île Sordou and The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne.

Readers come to Longworth's books as much for the setting as for the crimes. Her plots are shaped like classic puzzles, with little graphic violence and a lot of attention to motive, history, and community ties. Meals, wine lists, church towers, and side streets in Aix all appear on the page, so that following Verlaque and Bonnet feels a bit like traveling with curious, opinionated friends.

Alongside the novels she has spent years in the classroom, teaching creative writing at New York University's Paris campus and at local schools in Aix. Sharing drafts with students keeps her thinking about structure and character, and the weekly train ride between Provence and Paris adds another rhythm to her working life. She has said that teaching gives her both discipline and a fresh supply of voices and stories.

Longworth still lives in Provence, dividing her time between the quiet of the countryside and the bustle of Aix's old streets. She is married, with one daughter, and when she is not writing she can often be found in markets, cafes, or at a cigar club watching the town she has adopted. Her Provençal Mysteries have now inspired a television adaptation, Murder in Provence, bringing Antoine Verlaque and Marine Bonnet to the screen while she continues to dream up new cases for them on the page.