Quarry

As geologist Frankie MacFarlane prepares for her doctoral dissertation defense, two members of her committee are brutally attacked, one of them fatally. Meanwhile, the case on the supposedly deceased Geoff Travers is reopened, forcing Frankie to deal with the possibility that her former fiancé might still be alive. And, while working on a vertebrate fossil quarry, fellow student Dora Simpson is abducted. For her, time is running out. In the Mojave Desert, amid the arroyos and volcanic mesas of the Cady Mountains, Frankie finds the final pieces to these puzzles--and becomes the quarry. ＂Fast-paced, yet lyrical and evocative, Quarry yields a cross-section of creatures as fascinating as the fossil beds its protagonist studies. The real mystery for Frankie MacFarlane fans is how to read this book slowly enough to savor Susan Cummins Miller’s skillful prose and characterization.＂ --Wynne Brown, author of More Than Petticoats: Remarkable Arizona Women Praise for previous Frankie MacFarlane Mysteries: ＂A rollicking pentimento of fieldwork gone afoul!＂--Geotimes. ＂Assured and erudite.＂ --Publishers Weekly. ＂A gripping thriller, exciting and eager to lure the reader into a labyrinth of human deceit. . . . Attention Hollywood--this is the stuff from which blockbuster movies can be made!＂--Midwest Book Review

Susan Cummins Miller worked as a field geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and taught geology and oceanography before turning to writing. She is a research affiliate and SIROW Scholar with the University of Arizona s Southwest Institute for Research on Women, and the editor of A Sweet, Separate Intimacy: Women Writers of the American Frontier, 1800 1922 (TTUP). Hoodoo is her fourth Frankie MacFarlane mystery.＂