Carolyn Brown Heinz

In this first of the Annie Gilbert mystery series, Carolyn Brown Heinz masterfully fuses history, art, anthropology, and black magic.

A strange black stone is given to Annie Gilbert to carry into India at a turning point in her life. Her mission is to deliver it to a young woman ascetic in the holy town of Rishikesh in the Himalayan foothills, where she discovers a swami building a cult around a priceless image of the goddess Kali. When she arrives, the young woman is missing, others are being pulled into late-night rituals, and a team of antiquities smugglers is after the ancient goddess. This novel richly exposes the underside of religious devotion and the lust and abuse that often accompany it.

Against the backdrop of exotic India, Annie battles a charismatic adversary and grapples with a mystery that pulls her deeper into an ancient landscape of classical Indian art, secret passageways, and erotic rituals. Drawing from an India past and present, Annie races to find answers and decide whom to trust.