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Joanne Dobson is a writer and an English professor retired from Fordham University. She is the author of the award-winning Professor Karen Pelletier mystery series, published by Doubleday and Poisoned Pen Press, and also of The Kashmiri Shawl, an independently published historical novel. Her academic work focuses on Emily Dickinson and 19th-century American women writers. She is an editor of the Rutgers University Press reprint series of early American women writers and a founding editor of Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers.
Joanne grew up in the Bronx and in Peekskill, New York. She spent her childhood summers on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, Canada.
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Read what some reviewers have said about Joanne's writing:
"Few are better than Dobson at recording the minutiae of academic committee-speak, power plays in body language and jargon and what ignites a classroom."
-- BOOKLIST (Starred Review)
"A literate and absorbing novel with an ingratiating main character and intriguing setting . . . a smashing debut. Don't miss this one."
-- I LOVE A MYSTERY
"One of the year's best mysteries."
-- SALON
". . . Dobson delightfully skewers the pretensions and politics of academic life while respecting the importance of education for the life of the mind."
-- BOOKLIST
"Deftly balancing literary and mystery elements, Dobson's debut sparkles with wit and insight into college politics."
-- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY