When her brother's girlfriend disappears, one of her students is murdered, and a fellow professor is killed, geologist Frankie MacFarlane discovers that these brutal crimes are linked by a rare alexandrite ring and must use her deductive skills to unearth a killer. Original.

Detachment Fault

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Miller, Susan Cummins

Mystery

BERKLEY

When two members of her dissertation defense board are attacked, and a fellow student is kidnapped and held hostage in the volcanic mesas of the Cady Mountains, geologist Frankie MacFarlane races against time to unearth the truth. Original.

Quarry (Murder By the Yard Mystery)

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

The first of the Frankie MacFarlane Series The mountains west of Pair-a-Dice, Nevada, hold mysteries geological, historical, and personal. Geologist Frankie MacFarlane has mapped the Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary rocks of the range for the past three summers. In the final week of her dissertation fieldwork, she searches for an elusive final key to her research: a limestone marker bed―a death assemblage of fossil ammonoids―hidden by dangerous, shifting talus. But as Frankie strives to piece together her geologic jigsaw puzzle, the denizens of Pair-a-Dice, her base of operations, embroil her in a web of ancient and recent murders, a manhunt, kidnappings, and blackmail. A thirty-truck town, fifty miles from anywhere, Pair-a-Dice boasts two restaurants, three bars, seven pool tables, twenty-one slot machines, and a motley assemblage of misfits, including Diane Laterans, a punk schoolteacher who wears her Phi Beta Kappa key from her ear; Isabel Elorrio, crusty ex-marine and motel proprietor; Lon Bovey, rancher and would-be congressman; Walker, a mute handyman; the Anderson brothers, hooligans claiming kinship to infamous Bloody Bill; and a stranger, E. J. Killeen, U.S. Army, retired. Two bodies are discovered near Interstate 80, disrupting Frankie’s research. Are the killings linked to Killeen, to the new waitress in town, to Frankie’s ex-fiancé, who disappeared four months ago, or to older violence, the clues of which Frankie discovers in the mountains? Frankie’s environmental sensibilities and her grasp of geologic and human continuums make her truly a woman―and sleuth―of the new millennium.

Death Assemblage (Frankie MacFarlane Mysteries)

Texas Tech University Press

Death Assemblage

Finalist, Mountains &amp; Plains Independent Booksellers Award, Adult Fiction ForeWord Book of the Year Award, Honorable Mention After the murderous rigors of her Ph.D. field research, Frankie MacFarlane is happy to be settling down in her native Tucson, house-sitting the family home and teaching geology at Foothills Community College. Little does she imagine that a brief fishing trip to Mexico with her brother Jamie and his girlfriend, Carla, could entangle her in a string of murder, mythology, and international intrigue. Nonetheless, Frankie responds in true form. Noticing every nuance of her surroundings, both natural and manmade, Frankie skids through a heart-stopping and unforgettable chase from the Sea of Cortez to Tucson’s Sabino Canyon.

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

Quarry

United States

Southeastern Arizona is a tinderbox. Down Under Copper’s plans to explore for minerals pit landowners, worried about their water supply and land values, against those hoping to profit from the mining venture. Someone snaps. In the traditional homeland of the Chiricahua Apaches, an environmental lawyer’s body lies in the burned wreckage of his trailer. As if in retaliation, a DUC executive is shot. Geologist Frankie MacFarlane, her students, and Joaquin Black, an old friend and local rancher, find the executive’s body in a clearing among the volcanic hoodoos of Chiricahua National Monument. And that night, near Paradise, on the eastern side of the mountain range, someone kills an ethnobotanist―a walker and puzzle maker who hasn’t spoken in years. When Frankie, Joaquin, and Joaquin’s brother Raul become suspects in the murders, Frankie must decipher interlocking puzzles to clear their names and to find the killer―or killers―before they strike again. In the process, she discovers that, contrary to geologic principles, the past is the key to the present. Miller weaves together geoscience, Western history and culture, ecology, family, and place into a compelling puzzle mystery narrated in Frankie MacFarlane’s unique voice.

Hoodoo

Geologist Frankie MacFarlane and P.I. Philo Dain, just back from Afghanistan, are packing for an R&amp;R trip to a cooler clime when Philo’s Aunt Heather is murdered in her empty Tucson mansion. Her husband, wealthy developer Derek Dain, is the prime suspect. The day before, Heather had left town with the Dain coin collection, worth millions. Now it's missing. Though Philo and his uncle haven’t spoken in years, Philo and Frankie agree to backtrack Heather on a quest that takes them from the sun-baked Tucson Basin to the foggy San Francisco Peninsula. Among California’s fault-scarred hills they uncover painful secrets from Philo’s past―and clues to a mysterious chess set worthy of kings, long protected by one family and long coveted by another. A treasure worth killing for―but who will survive to claim it?

Fracture (Frankie MacFarlane Mysteries)

Detachment Fault (Frankie MacFarlane Mysteries)

Chasm (Frankie MacFarlane Mysteries)

When colleague Dora Simpson asks Frankie MacFarlane to fill in as geology professor on a whitewater trip through the heart of the Grand Canyon, Frankie jumps at the chance. Eight days. Nearly two hundred miles on the river. One mile deep into the earth. What could go wrong? Everything. Frankie wrenches her knee on the first day. On the second, a solo kayaker forces her to choose between being gutted by a Bowie knife and drowning in the frigid water. Frankie chooses the river. Who wants Frankie dead? And why? As Frankie searches for answers, she discovers that one of her students is traveling incognito, fleeing a forced marriage. Has the Family tracked Molly into the Canyon? How can she escape when the few exit routes will be watched? The threads come together at Phantom Ranch, the only place in the Canyon where bridges link trails descending to the river from the North and South Rims. But will ecoterrorist wannabees bring down the bridges before anyone can escape? With the riveting suspense and acute attention to geological detail that readers have come to love, Frankie faces the Colorado River rapids and the perilous mystery at hand with courage, skill, and ingenuity.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Miller, Susan Cummins. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Miller, Susan Cummins

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Miller, Susan Cummins. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Detachment Fault

Quarry (Murder By the Yard Mystery)

Death Assemblage (Frankie MacFarlane Mysteries)

Death Assemblage

Detachment Fault

Quarry

Hoodoo

Fracture (Frankie MacFarlane Mysteries)

Detachment Fault (Frankie MacFarlane Mysteries)

Chasm (Frankie MacFarlane Mysteries)