Stone Maidens — Lloyd Devereux Richards

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.