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.