Murder by the Book

A New Mystery Novel with Brontë at its Heart has been published.

Murder by the Book
A Novel
by Amie Schaumberg
MIRA (HarperCollins)
ISBN 10: 077838750X
August 2025

The novel centers on Dr. Emma Reilly, a literature professor whose favorite novel is Jane Eyre—a choice that reflects the author's own literary preferences. 

“I definitely share Emma’s love of literature,” says Schaumberg, who teaches English at a rural college in northeastern Washington. “Her favorite book is ‘Jane Eyre’ because that’s my favorite book. And while she’s more socially awkward than I am, maybe just slightly, we both experience the world through stories.” (Jordan Snowden in
The Seattle Times)

The novel follows Emma as she assists the police in investigating murders staged to recreate scenes from classic literature. While the killer draws from various Victorian texts, Emma's expertise in literary analysis proves essential to solving the case.

Two dead students. A coded reference to Shakespeare. And the promise of darker things to come.

Near a small college campus, a student is found strangled in an abandoned barn on the outskirts of town. She's been posed to look like a painting of Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the scene taunting the police with a message they don't understand. Detective Ian Carter is known as a straitlaced cop, but seeing the girl's body leaves him shaken and uncertain of where to turn—until a chance meeting with a charmingly awkward literature professor ends with her accidentally seeing, and solving, a clue left by the killer.

Professor Emma Reilly knows that the books she loves might hold the key to unraveling the killer's crimes now that a second murder has been discovered, with the victim posed as the Lady of Shalott this time. However, when the murderer strikes too close to home and kills a third student, one from Emma’s classes, she realizes that the safety of her insular life might be nothing more than an illusion. She must find the strength to confront a killer who is turning the stories she loves into lurid scenes of death.

Amie Schaumberg has crafted a smart, thrilling and utterly compelling mystery that will have you trying to figure out whodunit right up until the end.