Rosemary Aubert Books in Order

If you want the full Ellis Portal journey: Free Reign → The Feast of Stephen → The Ferryman Will Be There → Red Mass
If you want her award-winning crime novel first: The Feast of Stephen → The Ferryman Will Be There
If you prefer a later, more legal Ellis Portal case: Red Mass → Don't Forget You Love Me
If you want a short standalone thriller: Terminal Grill
If you want historical suspense: The Light in Trieste

Rosemary Aubert was born in Niagara Falls, New York, on May 4, 1946, and spent her childhood there. She graduated summa cum laude from St. Bonaventure University in 1968, began her publishing career in New York City, and moved to Toronto in 1970.

Toronto stuck.

In Canada, she earned a master's degree in English literature at York University and built a working life around books, editing, and teaching. She worked for McGraw-Hill Ryerson, then for Harlequin, where she made the jump from editor to novelist. In those early years she published romance novels, including books under the pen name Lucy Snow, and learned how to make a story move cleanly and fast.

Crime came later.

A real turning point came when she volunteered at a halfway house. That experience pulled her away from straight romance and toward criminology, criminal courts, and the people who move through them. She earned a Certificate in Criminology from the University of Toronto and spent years working in and around the justice system, including time as a bailiff and in community and security roles. Those jobs gave her something many mystery writers have to fake, a practical feel for institutions, pressure, fear, and the strange mix of guilt and innocence people carry.

Readers know her best for Ellis Portal, the fallen judge at the center of Free Reign, The Feast of Stephen, The Ferryman Will Be There, Red Mass, and the other books in that series. Portal is not a slick detective. He is bruised, proud, intelligent, and often close to the edge. Aubert used him to explore a Toronto that includes ravines, rooming houses, shelters, courtrooms, and wealthy circles that do not always look as respectable as they seem. Readers who connect with these books often like the blend of mystery, moral pressure, and sympathy for people living rough.

She also kept changing shape as a writer. Firebrand belongs to her earlier romantic fiction and is very much a Toronto novel. Terminal Grill moves into psychological suspense. The Light in Trieste opens out into historical intrigue across multiple time periods. Her short fiction mattered too. The title story of The Midnight Boat to Palermo and Other Stories won an Arthur Ellis Award, and The Feast of Stephen later won the Arthur Ellis Award for best novel. Over the course of her career, she published more than twenty books, along with poems, reviews, interviews, and articles.

Teaching was a huge part of her life. She taught popular courses at the University of Toronto Continuing Studies and at Loyalist College in Belleville, and she led workshops across Canada and the United States. By all accounts, she was generous with newer writers and serious about helping people get better at the work.

She never stayed in one lane.

Poetry, romance, mystery, teaching, even a long running interest in math and science, all of it fed the writing in one way or another. Aubert lived in Toronto for decades with her husband, artist Douglas Purdon, and kept writing well into later life. She died there on March 13, 2024. Her books still feel close to street level, attentive to lonely people, skeptical of easy answers, and very interested in what conscience costs.