<div><B>In a decaying plantation graveyard, Alan Graham finds a clue to a great American mystery</B><BR /><BR />The headstone reads <I>Louis</I>, and when Pepper Courtney finds it, she assumes it belonged to a slave. But when the old woman who owns the crumbling plantation house gives her an ancestor&rsquo;s diary, Courtney discovers that Louis was a white man whose drifter&rsquo;s appearance concealed a gentleman&rsquo;s manners. Who was this stranger, and why did he die with the president&rsquo;s name on his lips? Courtney&rsquo;s boss, contract archaeologist Alan Graham, has a radical theory&mdash;and there are those who would kill to keep it quiet.<BR /> <BR />Based on the diary, the dig, and the scant historical records, Graham believes the headstone may have belonged to explorer Meriwether Lewis, who was said to have died in Tennessee but may have survived to make a new life in Louisiana. To solve this centuries-old mystery, he will have to catch a modern-day killer.<BR /></div>

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The Meriwether Murder

<div><B>Digging for ancient Native American artifacts, an archaeologist finds murder instead</B><BR /><BR />Louisiana&rsquo;s past is as layered as an onion, with American, French, and Spanish history all resting atop the myriad tribes who have spent millennia on the Mississippi. Alan Graham knows how to peel back the layers. A contract archaeologist in Baton Rouge, he scrapes out a living one dig at a time. Hired by a wealthy landowner to search his property for a cache of long-lost Tunica Indian relics, he expects to find only dirt. But when the client is murdered for his curiosity, Alan knows he is close to the discovery of a lifetime.<BR /> <BR />To find the artifacts and sniff out the murderer, he must work alongside his competition: the overeducated Yankee Pepper Courtney. As the two dig into the dead man&rsquo;s past, they find it may be safer to leave some things buried. <BR /></div>

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Burial Ground

<div><B>On the banks of the Mississippi, Alan Graham confronts death in a watery grave</B><BR /><BR />In 1833, Jim Bowie is recovering from an attack of malaria when he learns his wife and parents have been killed by cholera. Desperate for death, he hauls himself onto his horse and rides aimlessly, finally bedding down along the Mississippi. There he sees a shooting star that calls him home to Texas&mdash;and to a bloody destiny at the Alamo. One hundred fifty years later, that same star will carry a dark message for contract archaeologist Alan Graham.<BR /> <BR />A bowie knife has been stolen from a small-town library, and the librarian claims to have seen a UFO. Sent to investigate, Alan finds a dead man at the bottom of the river, not far from where Jim Bowie once spent the night, murdered with a most unusual blade. Bowie left this town on the way to his demise, and if Graham is not careful, he will make the same trip.<BR /></div>

Past Dying

<div><B>An archaeological dig turns up a skeleton whose death is recent history</B><BR /><BR />The beaches are full on this sunny Biloxi afternoon, but Micah Dunn has no appetite for sunbathing. Watching a group of scientists excavate an ancient Native American site along the Mississippi, the private detective&rsquo;s thoughts turn first to the archaeologist who broke his heart, and then to murder. Hoping for beads or pottery, the scientists have found a dirt-stained skeleton whose fillings tell them he was killed during the twentieth century, whose amputated leg suggests a veteran, and whose punctured skull says death by pistol.<BR /><BR />The bones belonged to Max Chantry, a 1940s reform political candidate who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. But if New Orleans politicos killed him, why did he end up buried a state away? This case is ice cold, but solving it will put Dunn in the hot seat. </div>

The Last Man to Die

<div><B>Digging near a mental hospital, Alan Graham and his team come under attack</B><BR /><BR />A dying town just a few miles from the Mississippi River, Jackson has a psychiatric hospital, a sprawling forest, and a bloody history. In the summer of 1963, a drifter passed through town in search of work. Not finding any, he returned to New Orleans and then moved on to Dallas, where he assassinated a president. His name was Lee Harvey Oswald, and his ghost is said to haunt the woods of Jackson.<BR /> <BR />Archaeologist Alan Graham has no time for ghost stories, but he can&rsquo;t deny that there is something evil in this tiny Louisiana town. Digging near the Oswald cabin, he becomes engrossed in the unsolved murder of its original owner, who was killed with the same kind of rifle that killed Kennedy. When a member of Graham&rsquo;s team is shot during the dig, he must unravel a pair of mysteries&mdash;or risk joining Oswald in death. <BR /></div>

Assassin's Blood

<div><B>When his client is killed by a terrorist, Micah delves into her past</B><BR /><BR />Until he gets the answering machine message, private detective Micah Dunn has never heard of Julia Morvant. Calling from Jamaica, she asks him to meet her at the New Orleans airport. She needs help, she says, and he can tell by her tone that she needs it badly. Dunn is a Vietnam vet whose left arm hangs uselessly at his side, but who excels in helping the desperate people who seem to flock to his city. He has just arrived at the airport when Morvant&rsquo;s plane explodes in midair. Between the fireball in the sky and the alligators below, there is no chance of survival.<BR /> <BR />The flight was bombed, and Dunn becomes obsessed with the idea that his prospective client was the target. He knew nothing about her, but in death he will come to know her intimately&mdash;and risk his life to honor her own.<BR /></div>

The Caesar Clue

<div><B>Micah drifts into the underworld for the sake of a wrongfully accused friend</B><BR /><BR />Micah Dunn knows Calvin Autry to be an honest man. He&rsquo;s also a fighter, persevering with his mechanic&rsquo;s shop even after his wife left him and his business turned sour. But today, he is a broken man. A neighborhood child has accused him of child molestation, and Calvin begs Micah to clear his name. A private detective whose time in Vietnam taught him how to fight dirty, Micah knows that proving Calvin&rsquo;s innocence will require him to fight dirtier than he ever has before.<BR /> <BR />Calvin&rsquo;s enemies include dissatisfied customers, a scheming landlord, and a rival mechanic out to destroy what&rsquo;s left of the Autry shop. But as Micah digs into Calvin&rsquo;s past, he finds his friend is not as honest as he appears. He may not be a child molester, but Calvin Autry could be guilty of something just as evil. <BR /></div>

Deep Kill

<div><B>In the Yucat&aacute;n, Alan Graham discovers either the greatest find of the twentieth century&mdash;or the greatest hoax</B><BR /><BR />Searching the Gulf of Mexico for the legendary Isle of Gold, an explorer and his crew sail into a cyclone, which tears apart their ship, nail by nail. When he comes to, the captain is alone, captured by natives and facing unfathomable forms of torture.<BR /> <BR />Centuries later, archaeologist Alan Graham experiences a torment of his own in the Yucat&aacute;n when his beloved wife skips out on their vacation&mdash;and their marriage. He returns to Mexico to visit his lover, Pepper Courtney, who is there on a dig, but finds that she has abandoned him too: She has gone into the jungle searching for evidence of a long-lost voyage of exploration. Graham chases after her and they find something that could rewrite history&mdash;if they manage to escape the jungle alive.<BR /></div>

The Last Mayan

<div><B>A true-crime writer returns home to solve the mystery that haunted his boyhood</B><BR /><BR />After witnessing an execution, true-crime writer Colin Douglas starts having nightmares of himself as a boy, alone by the levee, trapped in the mud of the Mississippi River. Each night, the dreams grow worse, becoming horrid recreations of the day his childhood died.<BR /><BR />In 1959, Colin and three friends went camping on the levee, across from the tumbledown old Windsong plantation. When one of the boys disappeared, Colin went searching for him, and was approaching the old estate when he saw what appeared to be a ghost. The next day, he learned a woman had been murdered in the area&mdash;an unsolved crime that has haunted him ever since. Decades later, he attempts to solve this forgotten cold case, raking up something even dirtier than the muddy bottom of the Mississippi.</div>

The Levee

<div><B>Hunting Mexican guerillas, a CIA agent fights to regain his memory and stay alive</B><BR /><BR />David doesn&rsquo;t remember the bomb going off. In fact, he doesn&rsquo;t remember anything at all. He was on a mission in Buenos Aires when the explosion sent a piece of shrapnel into his skull, and it missed killing him by a fraction of an inch. His memory in tatters, he returns to the United States to heal, meeting his wife for what seems like the first time. His memory will return gradually, the doctors say, but for now he feels like half a man&mdash;half a man who is about to take on a mission.<BR /><BR />In Mexico, the CIA has been paying a guerilla organization to keep radical militants at bay. When their liaison with the rebels is found dead, David is sent to discover who killed him and why. Though his memory might never return, as he slips deeper into the shadowy world of Mexican outlaws, David will see things he&rsquo;d just as soon forget.</div>

The Mobius Man

<div><B>His career in shambles, a newspaperman looks for a new start in rural Louisiana</B><BR /><BR />Pete Brady is in a bar on Magazine Street, halfway through his third Manhattan, when he gets a message from the New Orleans underworld. In response to Pete&rsquo;s recent investigation into drug trafficking, they have sent him a message: slitting his favorite source&rsquo;s throat, ear to ear. Even a Pulitzer Prize can&rsquo;t get that image out of Pete&rsquo;s head, and so he bolts, moving to desolate Troy, Louisiana, where he buys a failing newspaper and tries to turn it into a force for good. But death is not through with Pete Brady.<BR /><BR />While tidying the graves in the local churchyard, a group of society ladies discover the body of Frieda Troy MacBride, gossip columnist, whose acid tongue has finally gotten her killed. As he struggles to keep his little paper from going under, Brady must unmask this small-town slayer before every writer on staff meets the same fate.</div>

Killer's Ink

<div><B>His mentor dead, an archaeologist returns to the mysterious Yucat&aacute;n</B><BR /><BR />A novice archaeologist, Clay Holliman came to the Yucat&aacute;n Peninsula in search of the secrets of the Maya. Taken in by the family of Doctor Leon, an expert on the local excavations, Clay discovered a world where the mysteries were not fully buried&mdash;where even the city was a jungle. Ten years later, his career is in a tailspin, Doctor Leon is dead, and the Yucat&aacute;n is calling him home.<BR /><BR />Although he tells the man at customs that he has not come to dig, it will not be long before Holliman is lured back into the jungle. He goes to the infamous site at Chan Chen that has already claimed the reputations and lives of several brilliant archaeologists, and which Holliman must conquer if he is to unearth the truth about the jungle&mdash;and himself.<BR /></div>

Mayab

<div><B>When a young boy is implicated in a murder, Brady goes hunting for the real killer</B><BR /><BR />In Pete Brady&rsquo;s new hometown, hunting is a religion, and he is expected to convert if he&rsquo;s to run the local newspaper. When Sheriff Garitty takes his son out for his first hunt, he invites Pete to join them in the deer stand&mdash;a drafty, miserable place that would be unbearable if young Scotty weren&rsquo;t so excited. Pete is staring down his rifle barrel, trying to decide if he has the nerve to kill a deer, when a shot rings out. The boy has hit his target. But when they go to retrieve the kill, they find it isn&rsquo;t a deer, but a man.<BR /><BR />Scotty has trained his whole life for this moment, and Pete can&rsquo;t believe he would have mistaken a man&mdash;even a drunk like Dwayne Elkins&mdash;for an animal. To clear the boy&rsquo;s name, Brady goes in search of an ingenious killer, and soon finds himself in the crosshairs.</div>

Deerslayer

<div><B>An old convict returns to Troy and sends Brady&rsquo;s newsroom into chaos</B><BR /><BR />As he was driven to Angola, Cory Wilde prayed his torment was just a dream. But the murder was real, and so was his sentence: twenty-nine years working the sugar cane fields in one of the nation&rsquo;s cruelest prisons. When he is finally released, he is an old man, drained of every drop of life that once made him such a terror, but his name still has the power to make the people sweat in Troy, Louisiana.<BR /><BR />At first Pete Brady, the new owner of the town&rsquo;s weekly newspaper, doesn&rsquo;t understand why his readers are so afraid of this broken old man. The original case against Wilde, whose life was spared despite the fact that he committed a capital crime, raises questions Brady cannot answer. Chasing this story could mean a lynch mob whose sights are set not just on the old man, but on Brady himself.</div>

Death Notice

<div><B>Micah Dunn investigates a murderous plot to discredit an archaeologist</B><BR /><BR /> In steamy downtown New Orleans, Gregory Thorpe is presenting an exhibition that could rewrite the history of the ancient Mayans. But when fake artifacts begin appearing alongside the authentic ones, Thorpe&rsquo;s reputation is thrown into jeopardy. To trace the fraud, Thorpe hires Micah Dunn, a world-weary private detective whose tour in Vietnam cost him the use of one of his arms and provided fodder for decades of nightmares. PI work is boring, repetitive, and safe, but clearing Thorpe&rsquo;s name will expose Dunn to the kind of danger he thought he left behind in the jungle.<BR /><BR /> Dunn has experience working with archaeology, and he knows the field is cutthroat. Thorpe is not well liked on the Tulane campus, and any of his colleagues or grad students could be responsible for the fraud. When one of the suspects turns up dead, Dunn realizes that someone in New Orleans will kill to keep the Mayan past buried.<BR /></div>

Malcolm Shuman
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Books By Malcolm Shuman (15 Books)