Betty Jane Morison (1924 - 2001)

Genre: General Fiction, Mystery

BJ Morison was born in Kittery and lived in Bar Harbor. She's the author of five mystery novels in the Little Maine Murder Series -- which feature a precocious child named Elizabeth Lamb Worthington who vacations with her Boston grandmother on Mount Desert every summer -- as well as a Christmas novel and an audio book. Books include:

• The Little Maine Murder series:
  • Champagne and a Garden (1982)
  • Port and a Star Boarder (1983)
  • Beer and Skittles (1985): Takes place during 4th of July celebration.
  • The Voyage of the Chianti (1987): Locked-room mystery set aboard the luxury yacht Chianti, sailing from Boston to Maine.
  • The Martini Effect (1992): Elizabeth encounters murder at St. Augustine's, a co-ed boarding school on Maine's Mt. Desert Island.
• Reality and Dream: A Christmas Story (1985): Travelling from her Maine home to an uncertain reception at a family Christmas party in Boston, a woman has time to review her life, her few succeses, her many mistakes, & the years she has missed not being part of her estranged daughter's life. Discouraged, almost defeated, she desperately tries one last time to unite the hard realities of middle age with the bright dreams of youth in this moving story of love and rapprochement.
• The Founding of the Bar Harbor Mouse Bakery (audiobook, publication date unknown), about a special breed of mice in Bar Harbor, Maine, who owe their superintelligence and longevity to the experiments of a Mad Scientist from The Lab.

Morison was the daughter-in-law of Samuel Eliot Morison, who pops up in her novels as 'the General,' Lemuel Otis Alsion.


Last Update: 06/04/2007

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