Mary Angela Books In Order

Publication Order of A Happy Camper Mystery Books

Publication Order of Professor Prather Mystery Books

Mary Angela is a teacher, writer, mother and lover of books that is best known for writing the “Professor Prather Mystery” series of novels.
During her college years, she was asked by her professor what genre she was interested in and the first thing that came to mind was historical romance. Still, she is yet to pursue romance writing instead deciding to write South Dakota based traditional mysteries.

Academically, she loves to read Transcendentalism, Pioneer History, Women Writers and the Lost Generation. For more than a decade, she has worked as a college English professor and still teaches on request.

When she is not teaching or writing, she usually loves spending time with her family that includes her husband and their two daughters. They usually travel together, eat pizza together and read together. When it comes to movies, she loves the Mystery Gang and Scooby Doo.

She loves to keep in touch with her students, readers and anyone else that might be interested in her work and has an active social media presence.

Angela has always loved writing and reading even when she was very young. Some of her favorite mysteries during this period were “Choose Your Own Adventures.” She used to flip through every possible ending until she hit upon the right one.

During this period, much of what she wrote was short stories and poems. Watching her mother write poems, she naturally tended to gravitate towards creative writing.

She would later on start writing longer works that included romance manuscript, a literary novel when she was doing her master’s dissertation and ultimate “An Act of Murder,” the debut novel of her bestselling “Professor Prather” series of novels.

As for her influences, she has asserted that she admires many authors. Still, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald with its themes of the American Dream have always been fascinating. How Gatsby manipulates hope has always held some fascination and she often wonders if it is his undoing or saving grace.
She still reads the novels several times a year just to see if she can find any more nuances in the writing.

Mary Angela got her first taste of success when her short story was accepted by the “Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.” It still remains the best moment of her life as it motivated her to keep writing and become the author that she is today.

Even though writing is something that she was always doing, she never focused on publishing. However, once she wrote “An Act of Murder,” her debut novel, something nudged her to pursue publication. At the time, she was clueless about publishing and dove right into it.

Angela sent her novel to several small publishers who did not require authors to have agents and got her manuscript four months down the line. She submitted her first novel in the “Happy Camper” series a few months later and got signed on to BookEnds Literary Agency Amanda Jain.

She got “An Act of Murder,” her debut in 2016 which introduced readers to a professor named Emmeline Prather who teaches English at Copper Bluff, a small college campus. Angela decided to write an academic mystery since she had been a professor of English for several years.

Still, much of the inspiration for the novel was drawn from her time as an English major and her time in graduate school.

An Act of Murder by Mary Angela is a novel set in the South Dakotan small college town of Copper Bluff. The lead is Professor Emmeline Prather, a woman loving the start of a new college semester. But then one of her students drops dead while preparing for the fall musical and the slow life on the campus is disrupted.

Initial police investigations indicate that it was an accidental death even though the good professor suspects foul play. Unmasking the killer is proving a lot harder than finding grammatical mistakes.

As such, Emmerline gets the help of Lenny Jenkins, a colleague in the English department. Working together, they comb the vicinity of the scene or clues as they risk their jobs and reputations. When Em’s house is broken into, Lenny tells her to be more careful and if possible change her address.

But Em is not deterred and more determined to fight to unearth the killer.

Mary Angela’s novel “Passport to Murder” opens to Profesor Prather about to see her dreams come true. She had always wanted to vacation in France ever since she was a young girl and she will finally achieve her dream thanks to Andre Duman, her French colleague.

During the spring, she and Andre are supposed to be the leaders of a group of faculty and students to the French capital to explore the City of Light. But before she can even utter her greetings in French, a colleague dies leaving them stranded in Minneapolis. She has to return to Copper Bluff with a mystery to solve and an unstamped passport.

Emmeline puts all her investigative and research prowess to use when they suspect that Andre could be the prime suspect. Now that he has spoiled their summer break there is no way she is going to let him get away with it. But with so many suspects, it is not going to be an easy job unmasking the killer.
Luckily, Emmeline has help from Lenny Jenkins, her sidekick and dear friend. Together they need to sort through the many clues some of which are contradictory to find an answer.

“A Very Merry Murder” by Mary Angela is a novel set in Copper Bluff where most people are happy at the arrival of semester break. Professors are grading, students are studying and Emmeline Prather cannot wait for the college sponsored holiday concert.

Together with Lenny Jenkins, her colleague and friend, they are going to go alongside Jazz Underground, a visiting quartet and she has never been in a more upbeat mood.

But just as she is about to leave the bed and breakfast where she lives alongside her friends, the band is hit by a tragedy. One of the members of the Jazz band is found dead and Emmeline is the prime suspect.

She had at some point had a huge altercation with the man and now that he is dead, her job as well as her reputation are at risk.
When Em starts seeing similarities between the victim and an Agatha Christie novel she had been reading, her colleague thinks she has been reading too many mysteries.