Skip to main content

Mette Ivie Harrison

Biography

Mette Ivie Harrison

Mette Ivie Harrison is the national bestselling, award-winning author of THE BISHOP'S WIFE, published in 2014 with Soho Press. She holds a PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Princeton, is an All-American triathlete, and has five children. Before writing adult mysteries, she wrote numerous YA fantasies, including the award-winning and acclaimed MIRA, MIRROR and THE PRINCESS AND THE HOUND.

For nearly 50 years, she was an active, believing Mormon, a scriptorian and honored Brigham Young University scholar. But in 2019, she stepped away from formal affiliation from the church, in 2020 separated from her Mormon husband of 30 years, and is currently trying to figure out what happens next. She continues to think of herself as “Mormon” in a broader, cultural sense of the term.

Mette Ivie Harrison

Books by Mette Ivie Harrison

by Mette Ivie Harrison - Fiction, Mystery

Linda Wallheim, increasingly disillusioned with her religion, has begun marriage counseling with her husband, Kurt, a bishop in the Mormon Church. She also occupies herself with happier things, like visiting her five grown sons and their families. When Linda’s eldest son, Joseph, tells her his infant daughter’s babysitter, Sabrina Jensen, has vanished, Linda can’t help but ask questions. Her casual inquiries form the portrait of a teenager under extreme pressure from her parents to be the perfect Mormon daughter, and it emerges that Sabrina is the victim of a terrible crime at the hands of her own classmates. Linda’s search for Sabrina will lead her to the darker streets of Utah and cause her to question if the Mormon community’s most privileged and powerful will be called to task for past sins.

by Mette Ivie Harrison - Fiction, Mystery

Draper, Utah: Now that all five of her sons have left home, Mormon bishop’s wife Linda Wallheim has quite a bit of time on her hands. She has befriended Gwen Ferris, a woman in her ward who is quickly losing faith in the church. Gwen has a calling in Draper’s local “Spanish ward,” which is made up of both legal and undocumented immigrants who Gwen feels don’t always get the support they need from their bishop. When Gabriela Gonzalez, an undocumented mother of three, is found strangled at a gas station, Gwen decides the police aren’t doing enough and resolves to track down the killer herself. Fearing for her young friend’s safety, Linda reluctantly joins her, but what they find during their vigilante investigation may put them both in danger.

by Mette Ivie Harrison - Fiction, Mystery

Mormon bishop’s wife Linda Wallheim couldn’t be more surprised to learn that her son, Kenneth, is engaged. Kenneth has left the Mormon church and met his fiancée, med student Naomi Carter, at a “Mormons Anonymous” meeting. Naomi was also raised Mormon, but her family belongs to a group that practices polygamy. Naomi’s father, Stephen, invites the Wallheims to visit the family compound. Though Stephen and his five wives seem to live normal, modern lives, Linda can’t shake the feeling that the family dynamics are off. When tensions on the compound escalate to murder, Linda delves into the many Carter family secrets to find the killer.

by Mette Ivie Harrison - Fiction, Mystery

In Draper, Utah, a tight-knit Mormon community is thrown into upheaval when their ward’s second counselor --- one of the bishop’s right-hand men --- is found dead in an elaborately staged murder on church property. Carl Ashby was known as a devout Mormon, a pillar of the community, and a loving husband and father. Who would want him dead? Linda Wallheim, the wife of the ward’s bishop, can’t rest as long as the ward is suffering. But the entire case is turned upside down by the autopsy report, which reveals Carl was a biological female.

by Mette Ivie Harrison - Fiction, Mystery

One cold winter night, a young wife and mother named Carrie Helm disappears, leaving behind everything she owns. Carrie’s husband, Jared, claims his wife has always been unstable and that she has abandoned the family. Linda Wallheim, a devout Mormon and the wife of a bishop, doesn’t trust him. As Linda snoops in the Helm family’s circumstances, she becomes convinced that Jared has murdered his wife and painted himself as a wronged husband.