Anne Emery is a Canadian crime novelist whose work combines legal procedural elements, historical settings, and Irish Catholic cultural contexts. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and raised in Moncton, New Brunswick, she studied at St. Francis Xavier University and Dalhousie Law School before working as a lawyer and researcher. She lives in Halifax.
Emery’s principal body of work is the Collins-Burke Mystery Series, centred on Halifax lawyer Monty Collins and Father Brennan Burke. The series moves between Nova Scotia and locations including Ireland, England, Italy, and New York. Its early books include Sign of the Cross and the supplied catalogue title Obit; her official bibliography lists fourteen Collins-Burke novels, alongside the standalone historical mystery The Keening: A Mystery of Gaelic Ireland.
Her crime writing has received major Canadian genre recognition: Sign of the Cross won the 2007 Crime Writers of Canada award for Best First Crime Novel, while Though the Heavens Fall won the 2019 award for Best Crime Novel. Children in the Morning received both the 2011 Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and an Independent Publisher Book Awards silver medal. Emery’s official website lists Declan as her fifteenth novel, published in 2026.
This profile is awaiting source review; collected books are already linked below.
