The Ria Quinn Mysteries, Volumes 1 - 3

BOOK 1: Hidden in Stone--A legacy that sets her up for life from a relative she never knew existed…A secret that began at a boarding school and haunted someone who wanted revenge…An ancient circle of stones that unravels it all…On a cold March day, Ria Quinn, amateur archaeologist, arrives in Shokan Falls in upstate New York to claim an inheritance—but who was Aunt Harriet, her benefactor? No one she has ever heard of! Ria discovers there is a mysterious, prehistoric stone circle in the nearby woods that has an impossible connection to the girl's boarding school her aunt attended thirty years before. Along with this, on her first day she finds a dead body in the snow, gets an anonymous call in the night, and encounters a set of quirky townspeople with too many secrets. How is she supposed to make sense of any of it? When a second victim is found, Ria wonders if she should just return to London, where until recently she had a lowly job as a film researcher with no dead bodies lying around, no real ones, anyway.

Yet against the sheriff's orders that she stay clear of his work, Ria intends to find out who the killer is and what link the ancient stone circle has to her aunt's past.

Hailey, the golden retriever who befriends her, is a joy to have near, reading Beowulf in Old English keeps her calm, and she finds the local sheriff more than easy on the eyes, even if he does find her irritating. Those things, together with the gorgeous and ancient Shawangunk and Catskill mountain ranges of the Hudson River Valley, already have a hold on her.

But her desire to get at the truth threatens someone in Shokan Falls, someone who is willing to put her life at risk.

BOOK 2: Messenger Out of Time--During the annual Halloween festival in Shokan Falls, Ria Quinn discovers a prehistoric peat bog on the outskirts of town. It lies near an abandoned state hospital that was originally built as an insane asylum. As an amateur archaeologist exploring artifacts in Britain, Ria had come across unstable bogs before, places where ancient bodies lay hidden beneath. She just has to check this one out. Only, when she takes a few careful steps across it, the body of a woman surfaces, one Ria knows has not spent millennia in such a watery grave.

Ria is pulled into a mystery that inextricably links the woman in the bog to the asylum and to a Native American legend drawn out of the landscape of the Hudson River Valley. Despite the wishes (and orders) of local Sheriff Gareth Matheson and resistance from the mayor of Shokan Falls, she cannot help but investigate it all, with her golden retriever Hailey at her side.

BOOK 3: The Singing Stones--A consciousness-raising group is holding their retreat at the Merlyn Inn. Their plan for a fire ceremony in the meadow across Druid Lane makes innkeeper Deidre frantic, until Ria agrees to help. When a lute-player she meets at the retreat persuades Ria to join him in exploring an ancient boulder field behind the inn, he shows her how the stones ring in bell-like tones when tapped with a hammer. While clambering over the field, they are shocked to discover the bludgeoned body of a man in a business suit, a hammer beside him that has been used for much more than tapping on the stones.

Seeing a phone video of a hooded figure also digging through the boulder field, Ria and friends go there and witness the same figure, only to end up scaring them away. Yet her presence and her constant questions have awakened someone else's curiosity. Whoever it is wants whatever it is the stones are hiding, and Ria knows he is not done yet.

She feels safe in her home with her precious golden retriever Hailey at her side—but is she?