Mary Angela Books in Order

Mary Angela, also known as Mary A. Honerman, writes cozy mysteries with South Dakota settings, curious amateur sleuths, and plenty of trouble tucked into familiar places. She is also a teacher, a mother, and a lifelong book lover. Under the name Mary Winters, she writes the Lady of Letters historical mystery series.

Teaching and writing have long run side by side in her life. She has taught college English and humanities for more than a decade, and she also guest teaches and helps writers develop their own work. That experience gives her mysteries an easy feel for classrooms, campus routines, research, and the small dramas that can grow inside close communities.

She holds an MA in English from the University of South Dakota and is pursuing an MFA at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her academic background shows up most clearly in the Professor Prather books, where the clues are often tangled up with college life, books, teaching, and faculty relationships.

The series begins with An Act of Murder, which introduces English professor Emmeline Prather in the small South Dakota college town of Copper Bluff. When a student dies, Em refuses to accept the simple explanation and begins asking questions, with fellow professor Lenny Jenkins at her side.

Em's adventures continue in Passport to Murder, A Very Merry Murder, and Coming Up Murder. The cases move through a canceled trip to Paris, a holiday concert, and a Shakespeare festival, but Copper Bluff remains the home base. The books make room for campus politics, friendship, romance, literature, and the awkward fact that a professor with good research skills can be very hard to discourage.

Then there is Zo Jones.

In the Happy Camper Mysteries, Zo is a former journalist who owns a gift shop in Spirit Canyon, a tourist town in the Black Hills. Open for Murder, Midnight Spells Murder, and Mining for Murder pair small-town business life with local history, outdoor settings, seasonal events, and murder investigations that hit close to home.

Angela's shorter fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Black Cat Weekly. Across both her novels and short stories, she returns to people who pay attention, care about their communities, and keep looking when a neat answer feels wrong.

Away from the page, she lives in the Midwest with her husband, two daughters, and pets. She has described herself as happiest when she is teaching, reading, traveling, writing, or spending time with her family. It is a busy mix, but it suits an author whose mysteries are built around everyday life taking an unexpected turn.