River is confused as only an academic can be. Torn between a worldly and dangerous graduate student, Jake, and her ground-breaking work: “The Woolen Bodice: A Study of Knitting, Truck Farming and the Victorian Wool Trade,” she faces an impossible choice: finish her manuscript in time for Promotion and Tenure review or head south for the biggest adventure (and best sex) of her life.
She could take her laptop. And note cards. Right?
Living in a shrinking and rainy mid-western town, River seeks distraction and adventure through the exploits of her favorite literary heroine, chronicled in The Fanny Banks Mysteries series. She’s read them all; the last book found Fanny and her long-legged, sandy haired, ex-Special Forces lover, Antonio, tangling with a corrupt Central American government as they raced to save the kidnapped daughter of an American CEO whose company has just secured the patent to a mysterious new “green” military weapons system. River herself teaches Women’s Studies at the local university, living a tidy little life among messy, ill-tempered colleagues—until a graduate student turns up dead. And she’s the prime suspect. River may have been the last person to see the student alive when, walking home from the library, down a rundown street in an unfamiliar part of town, she stumbled upon a late-night, heated argument between the student and the chair of the department, long rumored to be her lover. With tenure in the balance, River must choose between doing the right thing, reporting what she knows to the authorities, or joining Jake at the airport and kissing the university life goodbye. “What,” River asks herself, “would Fanny do?”
The Fanny Banks Mysteries is a 75,000 word novel about a shy academic woman with a rich fantasy life who finds herself living a life suspiciously like her literary heroine’s. Combing Fanny Banks for clues, River hopes to learn enough to save herself, her lover and her career. River might be described as Stephanie Plum’s nerdy, highly educated cousin—like Stephanie, she lives in an ordinary place, full of curiously ordinary folks, and she can’t resist the mysteries she stumbles upon.
