Mary Anna Evans

To save her ancestral plantation home in Florida, Faye Longchamp illegally digs for and sells artifacts on the black market. But while she's on a legitimate dig on a nearby island, two young members of the crew are murdered and the bones from an older murder are found.

Artifacts

A Novel

Traitor Beside Her

Physicists' Daughter

After a spiritual medium leads Faye Longchamp and her assistant in a sâeance, the medium winds up dead, and Faye must sort through a town full of spiritualists--and suspects--in order to find the culprit.

A Faye Longchamp Mystery

Rituals

F lush with her brand new PhD, Faye Longchamp and husband Joe Wolf Mantooth have founded an archaeological consulting firm —just in time for the economy to tank. But a meeting with a couple who run an elegant B&B in an historic home in St. Augustine, Florida, lands the firm’s first big project. Within a day of their arrival at Dunkirk Manor, a lovely young employee disappears, leaving be-hind a sinister smear of blood in her car, a collection of priceless artifacts, and a note asking for Faye’s help. Two days later, the missing woman’s jerk of a boyfriend is found floating in the Matanzas River, his throat slashed. The detective in charge of the case believes that the artifacts are key to the crime and hires Faye to track down their origin. The artifacts Faye and Joe excavate at their work site date from every era of St. Augustine history, and the discovery of a buried cache of children’s toys from the 1920s hits eight-months-pregnant Faye particularly hard. Dunkirk Manor seems haunted in a way that Faye can’t explain. Then the most stunning discovery is made: the diary of a priest who left Spain in 1565 and was present at the city’s birth. Faye is driven to translate the manuscript. In what seems like an unfolding tale by the Brothers Grimm, Faye and Joe uncover terrible secrets past and present.

Strangers

Faye Longchamp is once again in Florida, at Joyeuse, the family plantation she labors so lovingly to restore. She’s doing archaeological work for pay, excavating a site once owned by her family. Her joy abruptly ends when thieves break into the home of her beloved mentor Douglass Everett and kill him while inexplicably ignoring not just the impressive display of artifacts in his mansion, but its valuable art work. All that’s missing are Faye’s field notes. But the thieves left, on Douglass’ body, a magnificent emerald; a gem Faye had just unearthed and brought to him that fateful evening. Surely this fabulous jewel has a romantic history. Then another murder quickly furnishes a clue that only Faye is likely to interpret. It launches her on a treasure hunt connected to Marie Antoinette and to the history of the Confederacy. Faye’s research rubs a number of people wrong, including some Civil War souvenir seekers. And her quest to solve the murders forces Faye to look hard at the people close to her, friends and lovers, in a journey paralleled by that of a Civil War-era neighbor to Joyeuse. The killers have shown they will stop at nothing to get the information in Faye’s notes. It’s only a matter of time before they come for Faye.

Findings

Faye Longchamp and Joe Wolf Mantooth have traveled to Neshoba County, Mississippi, to help excavate a site near Nanih Waiya, the sacred mound where tradition says the Choctaw nation was born.When farmer Carroll Calhoun refuses the archaeologists’ request to investigate an ancient Native American mound, Faye and her colleagues are disappointed. But his next action breaks their hearts: he tries to bulldoze the huge relic to the ground. Faye and Joe rush to protect history with their bodies, if necessary. The situation grows more dangerous as Choctaws arrive to defend the mound and the farmer’s white and black neighbors come to defend his property rights. A popular young sheriff is able to defuse the situation, but tempers are short. That night, Calhoun is found dead, his throat sliced with a handmade stone blade. Was he killed by an archaeologist angered by his wanton destruction of history? Did a Choctaw take up arms to defend an embattled heritage? Did someone decide to even the score with an old rival? The sheriff is well-aware that Faye and Joe were near the spot where Calhoun’s body was found. The whole county saw their confrontation with him over the mound. And their combined knowledge of stone tools is impressive. They had motive, means, and opportunity—but so did almost everyone in Neshoba County.

Effigies

Faye Longchamp, back in school to pursue her dream of becoming an archaeologist, has been asked to run a project for which she is barely qualified, under the direction of a man who doesn’t seem to like her much. Her assignment: to uncover the origins of a mysterious ethnic group. The Sujosa have lived in Alabama’s most remote hills for centuries and have shown impressive immunity to many diseases...including AIDS. Late one night, Faye awakes to find the house in flames. She saves herself and one of her housemates. But her friend Carmen, the project historian, never had a chance. Then within days, an 18-year-old boy jumps from a cell phone tower that, when completed, would connect the outside world to the Sujosa community....

Relics

Your Novel: Day by Day is designed to be an all-in-one guide to planning, writing, editing, and publishing a first novel, guiding a new novelist through the day-to-day details of the process. Its author, Mary Anna Evans, is an awardwinning writer with eight novels, two nonfiction books, and a collection of short works to her credit. She says, "This is the book that tells other writers the things I wish I'd known ten years ago." Work through this book of practical advice with Mary Anna, day by day and page by page, as she advises you on- crafting a plot, fleshing out believable characters, organizing a novel's timeline, crafting believable motivations for your characters, editing objectively, evaluating traditional and independent publishing options, and marketing to agents, publishers, and readers. Because she understands the importance of maintaining your own motivation during the arduous process of writing a novel, Mary Anna has chosen a narrative structure that will provide you with a written companion for a year's worth of writing. This book consists of 365 essays on topics that range from nuts-and-bolts writing tips to words of encouragement to periodic kicks in the pants. She has even included the actual synopsis she used to query her agent and to sell her first book. If she could sit with you, day by day, as you learn about this exciting art form, she would. Since she can't, this book is the next best thing.

A Fiction Writer's Companion

Your Novel, Day by Day

2012 - Florida Book Award Bronze Medal Winner for General Fiction 2012 - Florida Book Award Bronze Medal Winner for Popular Fiction "Details of archaeology, pirate lore, and voodoo complement the strong, sympathetic characters, especially Amande, and the appealing portrait of Faye's family life." —Booklist Faye Longchamp and her Native American husband Joe Wolf Mantooth are working near the mouth of the Mississippi, researching archaeological sites soon to be flooded by oil. The Deepwater Horizon disaster has morphed her run-of-the-mill contract job into a task that might swamp her fledgling consulting business. Then her injured babysitter leaves Faye to work with a toddler underfoot. Thankfully, Amande, a bright and curious teen lives nearby with her eccentric grandmother. But when the girl's grandmother and her no-account uncle are murdered, Amande's prospects worsen. The girl has but two known relatives, both battling over her small inheritance: a raggedy houseboat, a few shares of stock, and a hurricane-battered island that's not even inhabitable. Pirate-era silver coins are found and disappear. A murderer is on the loose, and as the oil slick looms, Faye can see that Louisiana is still being plundered....

Plunder

Centuries of tragedy shadow New Orleans—wars, slavery, and a monumental flood that killed a thousand people and still threatens to wash all that history away. Faye Longchamp and her team of archaeologists, fighting to save New Orleans’ past, are horrified when they discover a corpse that’s far too new to be an archaeological find. The police presume it’s just another dead body in the long, sad sequence of dead bodies left by Hurricane Katrina, until Faye shows them a truth that only an archaeologist could see: the debris piled on top of the dead woman is all wrong. Someone brought Shelly Broussard to this flooded-out house and left her dead body behind. Presumably, that someone was her killer. Faye and her assistant Joe Wolf Mantooth are drawn into the investigation by a detective who believes their professional expertise is critical to the case. They quickly learn that trouble swirled around the victim like winds around the still, quiet eye of a hurricane. Is Shelly’s heroic rescue work in the aftermath of Katrina the key to her death? Or does the sheaf of photos in her work files hold the answer? Will Faye and Joe be the next innocents engulfed in this deadly deception?

Floodgates

"An eight-year-old girl who has just watched as her sister was kidnapped... A nurse who holds the lives of a mother and child in her hands... A makeup artist who has just found a murdered starlet on a movie set... Find these characters and more in this book-length collection of short works by Mary Anna Evans, author of the Faye Longchamp mysteries. This collection includes stories and essays originally published in anthologies including FLORIDA HEAT WAVE, A KUDZU CHRISTMAS, MYSTERY READERS JOURNAL, NORTH FLORIDA NOIR, MYSTERY MUSES, and A MERRY BAND OF MURDERERS, as well as never-before published stories by Evans. Bonuses include a story by guest author Libby Fischer Hellmann and an excerpt from her environmental thriller WOUNDED EARTH." --

Jewel Box

J.C. Bernthal

The first specifically academic companion to contemporary scholarship on the work of Agatha Christie, this book includes chapters by an international group of scholars writing on topics and fields of study as various as ecocriticism and the anthropocene, popular modernism, middlebrow fiction, queer theory, feminism, crime and the state, and more. It addresses a broad selection of Christie's crime novels, as well as her short stories, literary novels written pseudonymously, and her own and others' dramatic adaptations for television, film, and the stage, Featuring unprecedented access to images and content held in Christie's personal archive, as well as a Foreword from renowned crime fiction writer Val McDermid, this is essential reading for anyone interested in Christie's work and legacy.

The Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie

An eight-year-old girl who has just watched as her sister was kidnapped... A nurse who holds the lives of a mother and child in her hands... A makeup artist who has just found a murdered starlet on a movie set... Find these characters and more in this book-length collection of short works by Mary Anna Evans, author of the Faye Longchamp mysteries. This collection includes stories and essays originally published in anthologies including FLORIDA HEAT WAVE, A KUDZU CHRISTMAS, MYSTERY READERS JOURNAL, NORTH FLORIDA NOIR, MYSTERY MUSES, and A MERRY BAND OF MURDERERS, as well as never-before published stories by Evans. Bonuses include a story by guest author Libby Fischer Hellmann and an excerpt from her environmental thriller WOUNDED EARTH. Mary Anna Evans is a recipient of the Mississippi Author Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award, a Florida Book Awards Bronze Medal, the Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Award. KIRKUS REVIEWS called her latest release, PLUNDER, "delightfully erudite." She lives in Florida with a humongous piano and an unusually charming cat.

Short Works by Mary Anna Evans

2011 - Mississippi Author Award Winner "Evans has written a fascinating tale linking the history of New Orleans' levee system to the present and weaving into the story aspects of the city's widely diverse cultures." —Booklist STARRED review Centuries of tragedy shadow New Orleans: wars, slavery, and a monumental flood that killed a thousand people and still threatens to wash all that history away. Faye Longchamp and her team of archaeologists, fighting to save New Orleans' past, are horrified when they discover a corpse that's far too new to be an archaeological find. The police presume it's just another dead body in the long, sad sequence of bodies left by Hurricane Katrina, until Faye shows them a truth that only an archaeologist could see: the debris piled on top of the dead woman is all wrong. Someone brought Shelly Broussard to this flooded-out house and left her dead body behind. Faye and her assistant Joe Wolf Mantooth are drawn into the investigation by a detective who believes their professional expertise is critical to the case. They quickly learn that trouble swirled around the victim like winds around the eye of a hurricane. Is Shelly's heroic rescue work in the aftermath of Katrina the reason for her death? Or does the sheaf of photos in her work files hold the answer? Will Faye and Joe be the next victims engulfed in this deadly deception?

The Nazis are no match for the physicists' daughter. New Orleans, 1944 Sabotage. That's the word on factory worker Justine Byrne's mind as she is repeatedly called to weld machine parts that keep failing with no clear cause. Could someone inside the secretive Carbon Division be deliberately undermining the factory's war efforts? Raised by her late parents to think logically, she also can't help wondering just what the oddly shaped carbon gadgets she assembles day after day have to do with the boats the factory builds... When a crane inexplicably crashes to the factory floor, leaving a woman dead, Justine can no longer ignore her nagging fear that German spies are at work within the building, trying to put the factory and its workers out of commission. Unable to trust anyone—not the charming men vying for her attention, not her unpleasant boss, and not even the women who work beside her—Justine draws on the legacy of her unconventional upbringing to keep her division running and protect her coworkers, her country, and herself from a war that is suddenly very close to home.

The Physicists' Daughter

Florida Book Awards Finalist "A worthwhile addition to Faye's long-running series that weaves history, mystery, and psychology into a satisfying tale of greed and passion." —Kirkus Reviews Archaeologist Faye Longchamp-Mantooth has dug herself a deep hole and she can't make her way out of it. As she struggles to recover from a shattering personal loss, she sees that everyone she loves is trying to reach out to her. If only she could reach back. Instead she's out digging holes all over her home, the Florida island of Joyeuse. In their old plantation home, Joe Wolf Mantooth is surrounded by family—Faye, the wife he loves; their toddler son he adores; and his father, who hasn't gotten around to telling him how long he's been out of prison or how he got there—yet Joe has never felt so helpless or alone. Then a close friend at the local marina is brutally murdered, the first in a string of crimes against women that rocks Micco County. Joe, desperate to help Faye, realizes she is in danger from both her inner demons and someone who has breached the island's isolation. Local law and environmental officials say they want to help, but to Faye and Joe they feel more like invaders. A struggling Faye reaches back over a century into her family's history for clues. And all the while, danger snakes further into their lives, threatening the people they love, their cherished home, even the very ground—some of it poisoned—beneath their feet.

Isolation

What secrets lie deep beneath the surface? A deafening explosion rocks a historic Oklahoma City hotel, sending archaeologist Faye Longchamp-Mantooth crashing to the marble floor of the lobby. She's unhurt but shaken—after all, any time something blows up in Oklahoma City, the first word on everyone's lips is the same: bomb. Faye is in town for a conference celebrating indigenous arts, but is soon distracted by the aftermath of the explosion, which cracks open the old hotel's floor to reveal subterranean chambers that had housed Chinese immigrants a century before. Faye is fascinated by the tunnels, which are a time capsule back to the early 20th century—but when the bodies of three children are discovered deep beneath the city, her sense of discovery turns to one of dread...

Catacombs

Next title in the Faye Longchamp Archaeological Mysteries. When tragedy strikes and everything she loves is threatened, Faye Longchamp, an expert in American archaeology, will resort to desperate measures. Because some losses cut to the bone... A murder mystery with an archaeological twist, Wrecked is: Florida-based mystery Perfect for fans of James Lee Burke and Nevada Barr For readers of archaeological mysteries The suspicious drowning death of Captain Edward Eubank breaks archaeologist Faye Longchamp's heart. It also confuses her, because he was found in scuba gear and she's never heard him even mention scuba diving. During their last conversation, he told her that he believed he'd found a storied shipwreck, but when Faye checks it out, she finds nothing there—not a plank, not a single gold coin, nothing. If there's no treasure, then why is her friend dead? But the situation quickly escalates beyond a murder mystery. Surrounded by a community struggling in the aftermath of a major hurricane that has changed the very landscape, Faye grapples not only with the loss of her friend, but with her fears for her daughter, who is being romanced by a man who may be very dangerous. As a professional with her own consulting firm, Faye had long ago given up her "anything goes" attitude when the law stood between her and an interesting dig. Now that recklessness is back. There's nothing she won't do to protect her daughter. In this riveting addition to an archaeological mystery and thriller series perfect for fans of Nevada Barr, Faye must save her most precious cargo—her daughter.

Mary Anna Evans

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