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NORTHBURY PAPERS, THE by Joanne Dobson Bantam, August 1999 352 pages $6.50 ISBN: 0553576615 Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Karen Pelletier, Professor of English at Enfield College in central Massachusetts, has been studying the fiction of Mrs. Serena Northfield, a 19th century novelist who has been ignored by the classical dwm studies at most universities. She plans to write a definitive biography of this woman who supported her husband and children at a time when women were supposed to stay home and be both decorative and functional (and uneducated).

Jill Greenberg, a flamboyant wunderkind fellow professor gives Karen a beautiful old volume of JANE EYRE, complete with Mrs. Northbury's bookplate. Pelletier is enchanted by the gift and is even more intrigued when a photo of an infant, with the legend Carrie, August 1861 on the back, falls out of the book. The child appears to be of mixed race, but Karen doesn't believe it could have been Serena's child since all of Northbury's children had been born in the 1840s.

Karen finds that the woman who sold the book to the secondhand bookseller was Dr. Edith Hart, great granddaughter of Serena Northbury, who lives near Enfield. When Dr. Hart is later found dead under mysterious circumstances, Karen helps to find the cause.

This is the second in the series. Karen is inexplicably attracted to the WASPy president of the college. She is having problems with the antediluvian beliefs of her department head. A bright young black female student is being harassed by one of the useless rich white boy types that inhabit Enfield College. Her ex-boyfriend, a New York City police Captain is getting married. And her new friend, Dr. Hart, is murdered. This is another very fast moving book with interesting characters. I rarely go back and read a series in order after having read the latest one first. This is an exception.