Stone Maidens

As the chief forensic anthropologist for the FBI’s Chicago field
office, Christine Prusik has worked her fair share of bizarre cases.
Yet this one trumps them all: a serial killer is strangling young women
and dumping their bodies in the steep, forested ravines of southern
Indiana. With each victim, the killer leaves a calling card: a stone
figurine carved like the spirit stones found among the primitive tribes
of Papua New Guinea-the same tribes from whom Prusik narrowly escaped a
decade earlier while doing field research. The similarity is eerie and,
frankly, terrifying; Prusik still carries the scars from the
tribesmen’s attack. But is the connection real? Or have the dark
details of Prusik’s nightmares finally wormed their way into her waking
life? Displaying the expertise of a veteran writer, debut novelist
Lloyd Devereux Richards skillfully builds layers of psychological
suspense and terror into a compulsively readable whodunit.