Ashes and Bones

After years of hard work, archaeologist Emma Fielding has a great marriage, a dream job, respect in her field, and a house that is finally being made livable. But she's also being bedeviled by increasingly bizarre and threatening occurrences, and what started out as a series of harmless pranks is quickly turning dangerous. Whoever is behind these events is spiraling in on Emma, through colleagues, friends, and family, and is becoming more violent each time, targeting those she loves with arson, theft, and, finally, murder. Some think the events are unrelated, but Emma knows that she's the target, and even more frighteningly, the perpetrator shows a detailed knowledge of her and her past. Is it the work of a disgruntled student, a thwarted ex–lover, or is it, as Emma fears, the work of Tony Markham, a dangerous and brilliant man who everyone but Emma believes is dead? Estranged from her friends and stalked by escalating violence, Emma must find who is behind this before she comes to the end of her resources, her sanity, or her life.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.